Flay me if you wish..

Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas.

...but the truth of the matter is that most comments I read online at sites such as 'The Hamiltonian' or 'Raise the Hammer' are...well... Disposable. they fall in the category of what I refer to as 'unqualified opinions'. Chaff. Sludge. Intellectual speed-bumps. Irritating rashes. Chafing-

LMAO.

OK; even I grant that riffing on this stuff is a little too indulgent. So instead, I'll post a tirade previously published elsewhere, but before I do, I'm compelled to post this quip made to me recently about a fairly well-known 'commenter/personality/gadabout':

"Yes, I find his comments are intentionally disruptive, and it seems he gets pleasure out of this approach."

I think I've determined my view on Comments sections, on message board contributions.

Now, I'm not talking about one site.

Or one topic.

I'm referring to a broad spectrum of both. Low-brow to the intellectually challenging. From IMDb to ESPN to The Washington Post to the Toronto Star to Newsweek to The Huffington Post to PBS.

Sports. Politics. Entertainment. Relationships. General news.

Here's what I've come up with:

Roughly 90% of all posts aren't worth reading. Are a waste of time. Contribute nothing to either generating or furthering dialogue or discussion.

Roughly 7% of all posts have some degree of merit. Contribute something to generating or furthering dialogue or discussion, even if it's well-mannered filler.

Roughly 3% of all posts actually further discussion, promote dialogue, elevate the exchanges, or inspire heightened awareness, promote intellectual investigation.

And to be honest, I think the last two numbers are a little high.

Seriously; what depresses me the most is that people use the Internet as a means to validate their existence by typing something and pressing 'Submit'. That's all.

As with the case with cell phone technology (which absolutely, positively has not made relationships in general 'better', and I highly doubt has done much to 'improve' the world, certainly not to the extent of its penetration into modern life), access to Internet discussions has not heightened political acumen, has not increased peoples' general awareness levels, has not endowed them with much beyond the ability to spew.

To hector.

To hate.

Here's a further truth, from someone who has, this week, been accused of being an 'intellectual snob': many people have nothing to say.

Many people are 'functional' intelligence-wise, but are not capable of much beyond this.

'Small minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events. Great minds talk about concepts.'

This is oh, so demonstrable online.

The Comments section of articles is the equivalent of old-fashioned Letters To The Editor. How many people who take sixty seconds to type out a vitriolic response do you really believe would make the effort to write an actual letter to a publication?

We live in a world where people are fear-filled. Scared. And in this state, they lash out. They're not willing to consider, they're not interested in rational debate, civil discourse... They want to damn this person to hell, they want to dismiss entirely that person's skills...they even want some people to be 'dead'.

'Net Courage'. This is what fuels so much of what you can see online. The energy that allows someone sitting at a keyboard to say things to someone else that they simply would not say to their face. Or to the collective face.

People talk about how the Internet has brought people closer. They talk about how Facebook and Twitter have allowed people to reconnect, to maintain 'relationships' from a distance.

From my perspective, it's allowed people to believe that they're connecting, to convince themselves that they're engaging, that they're in the middle of a 'relationship'. When in reality, they're not.

Further to this, I believe that all electronic communication is, to a large extent, false. I may come off as a real luddite here, but I'm beginning to believe that unless you can breathe the same air as the other person is breathing as you're 'talking', it's not real, true, substantive communication. The further away you get from this, the further away you get from authentic exchanges. Standing in front of the person is better than the phone which is better than writing a letter which is better than an email or an online chat which is better than a text which is better than a Tweet. God didn't design us with built-in modems. We're living, breathing animals, living in an animal world. As I came to understand years ago, 'It ain't real until you kiss 'em.'

It saddens me that so powerful an influence hasn't really accomplished much in terms of enhancing communication between people. Instead, it's acted as a means for people to vent, to somehow validate vacuous existences, to empower those who clearly need to address their lives and not give them a false sense of entitlement.

I think that in many ways, the more efforts that are made to promote 'equality', the further into the dreck we wander.

That kind of thought undoubtedly makes me a snob of a different type entirely...but I'll save that for another time.