Comments

As a person who types words on the Internet and also reads much of the nonsense out there, I preview the comments and wonder?

Who writes this stuff?

If someone, like me, takes the time to put out what might be informative or stimulating thoughts, why muck it up with comments of hateful or uneducated rants? 

A simple new story turns into a row of opinions and offensive agendas. My question is ‘Why?’

(Preface: I don’t chat or tweet or get into running streams that go nowhere and I rarely comment on post, but I do read many of them with amazement and thus my own rant)

Recently I read some article from an established journalistic news agency and reviewed the comments. The first few were somewhat intelligent review of the writing with some interesting personal reflections, but then came the blast against everything from the writer to the media to the government to religion to the man-in-the-moon.

How does this happen? Are we that distracted?

A comment (to me) should be like a critics review. Comments should be an intelligible intellectual discussion of the thoughts or actions of another who took the time to post for others to read and react to.

Most artist and writers and performers enjoy and learn from the comments of their audience. If a writer writes for profit (or survival) he or she appreciates the response of their readers. It is data from their audience that helps them perceive their better points for future efforts.

If the comments are full of hate mongering, it is like spraying graffiti on the Mona Lisa. Suggest start your own original blog to spew your filth. Like any civilized discussion, if you can’t add anything interesting, stay quiet.

With that said, and all those with strong idealism from politics to abortion to gun control to parking tickets, will wave the ‘free speech’ flag in my face. I’m sure we all have something to say, but it can be constructive or destructive and without the basics of fact version fiction, the Internet has become a pool of screaming memes. If your comment is nothing more than a selfie, I will delete it.

What I am asking is when authors, painters, musicians, and artist of every kind post examples of their creativity on social media, take the time to review it and say what you like and what you don’t like in an intellectual method?

Again my point is, when an artist posts something they would like to be responded to on the web, respond to it. Make a comment. It makes the piece grow stronger.

Comment?