User Comment Rodeo: Lazier and Funnier than Ever!

Hey readers, you're probably quite excited that the UCR hasn't been lost or destroyed in a fire yet, right? Oh, you aren't... well it's back. 2014 has probably been a great year for stupid user comments, but we're going to find out. Okay, well, here's a bunch of great user commentary, bitching, and the occasional gem - dug up in the most unhealthy way possible.

 

Highly potent stuff. Hahahahaha. I can definitely see why the UCR 3000 or whatever picked this up. Great shit. Hahha. Not a waste of twenty thousand dollars.

Ahahaha holy shit somebody got owned [for teh internet savvy browsers: 'pwned'] pretty hard in the comment section that day... goddamn that's some serious incest.

Damn look at this guy who can see through the facade of lowered violent crime rates and other liberal mumbo-jumbo hexapentatonic voodoo to the truth: ancient biblical cities that were destroyed for lawlessness and immorality are essentially the same as the modern United States. Obozo, good shit dude... betcha didn't come up with something that good yourself.

Hell yeah that's got me spinning in the chair, spitting out my tea/coffee/beer, and laughing all the way to the bank!

In twelve years the above user commentary will be cited in a study conclusively proving that video games promote mental illness on a level at least equivalent to marginalization, drug use, or genetics. I don't know what the hell is going on, but people live like that... imagine their internal monologues and all the stupid shit they get excited about... mental illnesses and neurological problems... seriously hilarious shit.

 

Climate science is the lowest target besides almost everything else an unthinking buffoon commentates on. Let's see what might or might not happen (much like we as a species do with earth and climate science).

You see? Hippie shit.

Oh, and highly reasonable responses that lead one to question why the commentator is wasting potential arguing with people in the user comment section. Why not go to school? Or use your time responsibly... maybe these saints have bigger plans than any of us know, and don't mind getting mired in incredibly stupid and wasteful arguments with hardened skeptics. Maybe they don't even get hopeless or angry or wracked by belly laughs when they engage the user comment sections of the internet... and there's a lot of those.

Come on, YouTube.

You used to be a place where I could sensibly browse for videos. Now you offer me a few topics and "Recommended for You" shit. I loved when there were 15 pages of 'most viewed today' videos, and you didn't creep my video history to tell me what to watch. Every one-off video I watch when I'm logged in now means I get a bunch more recommended and have to go all over the place in search of something original.

Oh, for Me?

"Most viewed" is too archaic, apparently. I can only watch what you want. Sure, there used to be all kinds of segregated sections of videos, and lots of things were hard to find, and there was pretty much always a bunch of bullshit. You always hyped the worst things based on the metric of how popular they were. I didn't care. I knew there was always an unbiased list of worldwide views. People gamed that system all the time but it generally brought me joy and decent videos. There used to be a front page where unsorted videos could be browsed according to whether they were recently posted, most views, most liked, most subscriptions. Y'all remember that? That was awesome. There was a 50/50 chance, every day, of finding something new and either interesting or funny, or just completely strange – no searching, just actual, lazy, unguided browsing.

You still got the search bar. If you got rid of it you'd be Web 3.0, of course: the era in which all the internet, like a modern game, plays itself. You redesigned a bunch of times. I never saw the reason for it, but I'm not a capitalist so my opinion doesn't matter for shit. I realize people need money to make things 'better' and the internet is hugely profitable. But your reconstruction wasn't for the better. If I can't see ~100 of the day's most viewed videos then what's the point? You want me to play the game your way, but there's not that many channels worth subscribing to, no matter how many of them can waste my time more or less enjoyably.

It's not about me anymore, it's about You. I understand why I can't find any television show ever made anymore. That was never going to last. I just want to actually browse. I mean I want to see a large variety of things in one place arranged logically, not according to metaterms or what's trending or what you think I should watch. I used to be able to do this, to find new, unlisted, unhyped things every day, but now I feel blind. I get 'trending' instead of 'most viewed' and it's just plain frustrating that there's no way to arrange things logically anymore.

You're like a giant focus group now, YouTube. Except they're all yes-men and cronies, and they're crowding me into a small room, and there's no window, so all I smell is their terrible coffee breath, and all I hear is their terrible opinions about what's good, and it's dark, and I don't want to have Minecraft videos recommended to me. 2010 is over, YouTube.

Maybe I'm a bad internet browser. Maybe I get frustrated about nothing, and I just don't know how to navigate your many avenues properly, and you still offer a 'most views' section, and I'm just crazy for not getting to it. I hope that's the case, because then I'd have a reason to have a bit of faith in you, and it would have been me who was blind. Not you blinding me. I don't think I'm crazy. I think you changed for the lamest, like you've always been doing, and if this is the future of the internet then good luck with it. We both know I'm not the center of the universe, and playing some terrible algorithmic joke to make it seem so is unimpressive and creepy. I want options, and less of this Mickey Mouse horse shit.

I know that much of the internet wants to know every last thing about what I do so they can further reduce my purview and essentially control what I see, do, and buy. Nationalism online is already an old story.  I don't want or need that kind of reduced outlook, and their methods are increasingly obvious. The worst part is that I couldn't even put a date on YouTube's last upgrade, but essentially it was the day the videos died. At least there's still a search bar.

User Comment Rodeo: Inexplicable News Mess

I'm going to ask you to look closely at the thumbs-up/thumbs-down ratings closely for this article. Then, if you're interested in seeing cultural relativity destroy the world, check the number of comments and comment ratings on your favourite news website, but only from more serious stories. I'd like to know how this skews, because I personally got bad, bad vibes from this particular UCR.

There's a particular show called Here Comes Honey Boo Boo that is on 'The Learning Channel' and originates from one of America's numerous sweaty armpits. Piecing together what I know of this show is it follows a family of small-town/rural, southern Americans as they go about being consumers, being a loving family, and systematically destroying their health with energy drinks. It's probably just a fever dream from a febrile and dying era, but it has the sort of mass appeal that can only come from TLC shows post-2000. To be very honest, it's probably just another disposable momentary cultural flashpoint.

Stumbling across the story itself was as bizarre as it was concerning. Why would PETA care about a snowballing television program. Why would they make a bigger deal out of one ironically named chicken than out of the millions packed into shitty chicken barns, pumped with medicine and hormones, and generally grown in as unappetizing and unethical a manner as possible? I might never know. I guess PETA watches a lot of TV, even more than about 80% of people I know, who also don't know or care about this cringeworthy Honey Boo Boo business.

I found out that a chicken named Nugget is more important than the economy, and that the public finds it PETA's attitude towards this chicken more important than even the failing economy or rumors of a vague, oppressive, and menacing oligarchy. I found out that this silly chicken named Nugget was a lightning rod for opinions. And people hate, I mean Hate, PETA. It's crazy. This rodeo is going to be tame, but holy hell was I taken aback. And the numbers of votes. Staggering. And people missing the point. The best part was the big numbers, though, all for these great internet comics who really got a chance to shine:

User Comment Rodeo: Award Show the First

 I've been sleeping on User Comment Rodeo posts lately because I got very, very tired of reading them and also because I haven't seen a lot of good or juicy ones,. but mostly I've been too lazy to make another User Comment Rodeo post and there have been other interesting things to talk about. Prefab Sprout and the 80s pop debacle, for instance. That is some of my best blogging, right there. Timely, informative, helpful, and could even save you if you get cornered by a pack of label-wary musicoholics. 

So I was browsing the CBC news website, as usual, and found a rather well-written user comment with an actual structure (!) and some focus, plus it was written interestingly. It was in response to a story about oil prices or oil politics or something usually bitched about relentlessly but which is of considerable significance. Rarely do I find a level-headed, nonpartisan comment on CBC. If you read the old User Comment Rodeo posts, you can see a few descriptions of the archetypal comment posters. The rarest thing of all is that I found this post before anybody had voted for it, so it was in an ineffable state where nobody is opining or telling you what to think about the comment. 

For those reasons and more I consider the following user comment worthy of an honour. The first User Comment Rodeo award of excellence, given only to comments of outstanding value, insight, and entertainment. I doubt I will go into ecstatics, but to be safe I will show the post before I discuss it:

Look at that beautiful 'zero' rating. Untouched, unsullied by idiots, fresh from the poster. And what a post. Goddamn Latin phrase indicating which group is unpleasant? Goddamn Latin phrase indicating the entire 'user comment' mentality and existence, man! But we can't be too surprised that intelligent or educated people use the CBC website. 

Note the non-partisan appraisal of the situation. Harper is not at fault for oil prices. Goddamn right he isn't. If he had that much control all Canadians would be nerve-stapled cyborgs by now, and pulling him around on a sleigh. See the awesome dismissal of Harper, somewhat partisan, but seemingly more personal. That is beautiful commentary right there. If this was putting down a troll it would be a true masterpiece.

But this post doesn't need to put down trolls, because the Latin opening already takes care of the entire internet's population of trolls. Look at that unerring perspective, that perfect disclosure of chemical ignorance and naivete: the punctuation, grammar, and structure. Even the odd statistical fact is great.  This user comment is like Vonnegut coming down from the heavens and blessing the illiterate and subliterate with pure bleak satire they'll never understand.

Sure there are a few misspellings. Sure the perspective is perhaps even a little too truthful for anybody who's grown up on lies and self-entitlement. Sure the metaphor is upper-brow and probably flawed, and even a little offensive to Monster Truck Enthusiasts... but it's true. That's good imagery even though it doesn't make one bit of sense. I value that kind of honesty that does not pick sides, does not preach, but rather says a thing straight up as it is.

User Comment Rodeo

User comment boards are now-ubiquitous elements of the internet (or 'web 2.0' if you're an I.T. hipster) which allow spectators to wax sycophantic, display their ignorance, or attack their enemies. The historical precedent for the user comment board is graffiti, and how this obvious connection escaped the people who created and encouraged user comment sections is anyone's guess.

User comments are not entirely negative, nor entirely positive. Nor are they entirely like graffiti, because some people use these sections to engage in reasonable discussion. However, the percentage of society mature enough to post positive or non-offensive comments is often less than 25% – when anonymity is provided. User comment boards are repositories of hatred, anger, stupidity, and ignorance that display the opulence and redundancy of the world's internet. User comment boards are an overt concession to populism that often endorse only the forced sterilization and elimination of humanity, which makes them explicitly anti-populist, since they do not form an encouraging picture of the masses.

If you take the internet seriously, the existence and content of user commentary can bother you to a serious extent. It doesn't have to be this way: you don't have to be angry. I have been known to skim user comment sections and find useful information amid the proud declarations of idiocy, self-marketers, and trolls. For my part, I rarely post user comments, but I welcome them on this blog, and I don't mind their existence anywhere (including the famous, fractious YouTube boards). We all have to accept how they work, and that their problems are unlimited and difficult to solve.

For my example, I went to CBC.ca and read a story about the ONE and ONLY case of BSE in all of Canada this year. Considering the number of cattle raised in Alberta, let alone the country, the existence of one cow with a misfolded protein disorder is not very surprising. Considering the way livestock are farmed, it is even something to be expected, which means that the public safety organization is prepared to take necessary preventative steps and then publicize the case.

The story reads like you might expect: very basic, with plenty of nuance between the lines. It puts you at ease, but reminds you of the various threats of entropy, and the frightening class of afflictions that ravage the brain. That's it.

Then you look at the user comment section, just for the hell of it, already knowing what you will find:

There is the usual, know-it-all power user who is highly literate and knowledgeable but even more eager to display that knowledge and wisdom. Typical semi-activist user, between ages 15 and 30 (sometimes older), who will point a finger and throw as many affective terms into one sentence in order to let you know that things are scary, and that the powers that be do not care about crucial earth-shattering issues. Prions kill, but politics kill much more quickly.

Next:

There is another user, the anti-alarmist, who knows almost nothing beyond general information and disinformation and who likes to misuse logical arguments to try and force hideously biased or ignorant conclusions into your brain. In this case I will disagree with the post and write it out so you can see how user comments divide people: BSE does not exist in chickens, there are almost never bugs in cereal boxes because this is not the early 1900's, and we cannot simply trust inspectors, because inspectors are fallible and governments are fallible. Note the very high rating compared to the former poster: these are the populist types, who do not flog their own knowledge for the show, and who advocate obedience, power-worship and calm. These are people who, in all likelihood, work for an inspection agency or the government, or are lobotomized versions of the first poster, now used to placate the masses.

Next:

Ah, the common troll. The most distinctive, invariable, and prolific type of poster – the smoking gun of the internet. Trolls have loud, unashamed agendas that they flog at any opportunity, even if (as in this case) not a single opponent (animal rights activist - 'petafile' ) has posted in the user comment section. From hackneyed and rudimentary fact-arguments that are quickly abandoned for straw-man tactics to outrageous statements, the crippled mind of a common troll displays all the sorts of argumentative prowess that are not unknown to children, and therefore universally understandable: "Look at me: I'm right! Hey! Listen to me, I'm going to shout at these losers! Look how foolish they are: the facts speak for themselves. Let's lynch these losers!"
For trolls, context and timing never have to be right; only the feeling of perverse, stubborn righteousness.


Next:

This final post (from YouTube) is merely to place two types of posters in proximity. The upper poster is the 'average user' who posts earnestly to learn or sometimes merely to state an unoffensive personal opinion. These users do exist and sometimes form a majority. Often they post simple truths and maxims by which other users can avoid pain and suffering. They are friendly, responsive, and not particularly noteworthy.

The lower poster is a classic self-promoter. The classic self-promoter is often buoyed by his ability to confuse and dupe the unspoken 'idiot majority' who believe that ghosts, reversals of the law of conservation of mass, and free unofficial internet giveaways exist. Self-promoters are worth knowing if you have a million 'perpetual motion machines' to sell, or a warehouse full of decorative tacky china, or are yourself a Chinese businessperson looking to rip off westerners.

This is just the tip of the user content iceberg. These are just a few examples of the archetypal users you can find on the internet, and I hope it helps you stay cool when confronted with the multitude of unenlightened discourse available on the internet.