9 thoughts on “Button Sunday”

  1. I’ve commented on the news before. I don’t expect anyone to read it (and certainly not take notice), but it’s helped me to vent.

    1. I’m sure in venting about a situation, you’ve never resorted to attacking other commenters, or using the cloak of anonymity to express views that are misogynistic, racist, homophobic, or otherwise hateful.

      People don’t confine this behavior to controversial topics. Any news article, any FB status update, any cartoon, any photo, any blog entry, any Tweet, anything anywhere, can become a platform for trolling, baiting, politicizing, and snarking: humans displaying their worst attributes. Never something I enjoy in any environment.

      1. Yes, very true. I deleted my Facebook account over a year ago and have never had a Twitter account. LiveJournal is the extent of my social media use.

        1. Plus your LJ is locked, so you have a lot of control over who comments there. Should anyone be unpleasant to you or to other commenters, you have the option to unfriend them and they’re gone.

          I’ve probably had fewer than 25 comments on this blog that I’ve deleted for being hateful or unnecessarily hostile toward other readers. Though I rarely talk about anything controversial here, it doesn’t really take that to draw out the trolls.

          However, many bloggers with a wide readership who take a stance on something–even seemingly benign things like what to eat, what to wear, what books to read or movies to see, how to decorate, how to parent–put up with more of that.

          In my own Internet usage, it’s news stories and opinion pieces when I know it’s best to stop at the end of the article and move to something else. Because the comments to those often cause me to feel despair for the human race. Or…the same can happen with comments on youtube videos, for example.

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