"Have your say." Possibly the three most depressing words of any Internet article, on the websites of The Daily Mail and The Guardian, and a great many others. It's even crossed over to TV, following BBC news broadcasts. They are depressing because most people are a) completely uninformed, b) have no intention of having a reasonable debate and simply want a platform to spout unintelligible bile, and c) they are FUCKING IDIOTS. On the Mail website, you tend to get a hate-filled free-for-all, raving at, well, pretty much anything. On the Guardian site they are a little dull, but there are often dissenters who are there to simply piss people off and not discuss the article (the technical term for this is 'trolling', or so I'm told). On the BBC people just tend to send in photos of snow. They are everywhere - on your average James Delingpole post there are countless pricks all congratulating each other on sharing the same illusion of being bamboozled by every scientific institution on the planet as well as Governments the world over and, of course, the 'loony left' (which is an hilariously ironic name because, well, have you heard the main thrust of their conspiracy theory? Who are they to call anyone loony?).
There are other sights out there that are so filled with unimaginable idiocy that I suspect sometimes the comments are made by people trying to be ironic by posting shite to take the piss out of other people who are deadly serious when they post shite. If you follow me. The Daily Star, Fox News, Rebecca Black on Youtube, The Telegraph, The Huffington Post, and a host of other websites; there are so many human-shaped shits voicing useless and pointless opinions it's enough to make you give up on humanity and prowl the streets with a sawn-off shotgun blowing the mind out of anyone who admits to posting on these sites. This relatively newly-embraced obsession with what the average turd on the street thinks about events he has zero expertise on has led to a disturbing turn of events on channels like Fox News in the U.S. and Sky News here in the U.K. where the opinions of the uninformed are given as much weight as those of experts, provided those opinions reinforce the political stance of the broadcaster (in the case of Fox News, this is because the expert opinion is usually contrary to that of the channel's owner). News no longer reports on the state of the nation; it now has an agenda to influence it.
Galvanised by the willingness of viewers to believe what skews most to their personal point of view regardless of the suitability of the person saying it and the credentials of the person speaking to the contrary, in America the Republicans have declared their refusal to accept the established scientific evidence of climate change and have set about reversing any and all legislation controlling carbon emissions and attempting to strip the EPA of any power to enforce controls. They, like those drawn to the comments sections like moronic moths to a flame, willingly choose ignorance because it's how they prefer things to be.
So if you think the comments on these websites are made by nobodies who could never possibly wield any true influence, remember willfully uninformed people just like them are helping to run Governments the world over. And that may be one of the most frightening thoughts of all.
Oh, and yes, I am aware that I am criticising people who rant about bugger all in a completely disconnected way by, um, ranting about it in a completely disconnected way. I never said I was irony-free. A blog called 'Yet another nobody screeching into the void' should have given you some clue, however...
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An interesting post. As always, I'm impressed by the well thought our arguments and debate but, in this instance, I'm particularly impressed with the correct use of the semi-colon - a punctuation mark that, like the apostrophe, will soon die due to ignorance of its use.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, enough of my grammatical extremism.
I'm not really sure whether it is right to comment on this post. You're making me feel a little guilty already. After all, who am I to voice an opinion on this? Well, I suppose I could argue that I've blagged myself a career in social media, but instead I'll just mention that I've just finished "Cult of the Amateur", Andrew Keen's "Insider" opinions on why social media (or Web 2.0 as it was called when he wrote the book) will destroy our society. His view on social media as a whole is, broadly, the same as your views on comments. I don't disagree with either of your positions, but I'm not entirely with you either.
There's a wonderful assumption that professional news is of high quality, that those who produce papers or broadcast media, whether as journalists , columnists, writers or commentators are not simply idiots spouting their views. We know, of course, thanks to people like Richard Littlejohn and Jan Moir, that this simply isn't true. However, we still go a fair way to believing that journalistic copy is genuine. A quick read of the "tabloid watch" blog shoes this to be the case. Watching the live coverage on BBC of March 26, I heard error after error. OK, live TV, accidents happen, but it is another example of the eroding quality.
So, in the 90s we got the "listener's voice" with programmes like PointsOfView and Right to Reply. We still have that with the dreary and pointless "Newswatch" programme. On them, an editorial team select people with views that they deem entertaining or topical which are then "debated". Roger Bolton always did a good job on Right To Reply at giving broadcasters a hard time but PoV never really responded and Newswatch producers always say: "yes, nice views, but we don't care".
In fact, the so-called "great unwashed", have very valid opinions on things. It's easy to get snobby when someone who knows only about X-Factor starts trying to engage you in a discussion about the merit of Alexandra Burke over Leonard Cohen, but the fact is that many people's views on music are now based on far more (or, I would argue, far less) than the cleverness of lyrical content and arty production values. For years, the industry as a whole has ignored these opinions, while non-musical marketing types, of which Simon Cowell is surely the spiritual leader, have capitalised on these values.
As a result, the status-quo rolls on. Nearly every single one of our Prime Ministers was educated at Oxbridge, so were all bar one of the last Labour leader candidates, most of the senior journalists we see and even our, in my opinion, best comedians. They select the content they think we care about, present the views they believe cover both sides....but do they really? When did we last see someone on TV trying to justify extremism, for example? There are well respected academics who have put forward arguments that are pro violent protest, however this is never shown. Rightly, perhaps. But who are they to decide? As the finance tightens on further and higher education this set, which was starting to expand, will contract again.
ReplyDeleteWhen faced with a constant, it is almost impossible to influence it. In many ways that's been a building block in this country. We don't have a powerful anti-abortion of creationist lobby, but then, we don't have a very powerful progressive lobby either. AV and PR still look like they will stumple at the first hurdle because of this.
The only way to make a constant change it's ways is disruption. Disruption has become a negative word these days, but it shouldn't be. Take education. We think of disruptive pupils as those that wreck it for everyone else. We've got that wrong. Those are naughty, or selfish, pupils. A disruptive pupil may have the same effect but does this by challenging, by uprooting. I'd argue, and often do argue, that actually this disruption is central to the learning process. It allows the learners to learn and the teachers to learn. Mobile phones are a classic example of this. Teachers have complained for years that students in class are using them and causing problems, but not many are starting to take note and use them, engaging learners who, previously, would not have engaged and providing new forms of communication and media presentations. This would not have happened without disruptive pupils going against the rules and brining them into school in the first place.
Comments on these sites allow this kind of disruption. Unlike blog comments that, normally, are unmoderated, we do at least maintain the laws of libel on "proper" news sites, while giving the "great unwashed" a chance to air their views. This disrupts the flow of set-value news and gives a wider perspective.
Sadly, there are two problems with this:
1 - Most of these people's views are stupid
2 - Many people can't distinguish between a well thought out view, an academic view, a professional view, a personal opinion and a biggotted load of crap
The answers to both of these problems are education. People need to learn, firstly, how to formulate opinions based on evidence as well as "gut instinct" and then how to evaluate sources of evidence. These skills will only come about if the education paradigm shifts. To do this, we need disruption.
In short (bet you wish I'd done that at the start), these comments annoy me too. These people annoy me too. This uninformed, inexperienced drivel is harmful to my sanity and to our democracy. However, I don't think it's half as harmful as removing them would be. But then, who am I to comment to this effect? Just another person typing into the void....
Commenting on this post isn't the same. In point of fact, I'm worse, because instead of posting a quick comment or insult, I've taken the time to write a blog post about it. Which is like a big comment about how I don't like to comment.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about X-Factor, which in my opinion is more of the same - the non-professionals and untalented are carving brief music careers for themselves (or rather, having Cowell and Walsh carve one for them) without earning them because of a clueless public unable to tell the difference between karaoke and something of genuine worth.
Moving on, if someone could present to me a considered and well crafted defence of extremism, I would consider it worth debating. The best defence I've ever heard is always akin to 'my God told me to do it, because he said your God's rubbish'. Most people have the sense to know killing people is a bad thing, so I can't see many non-insane zealots supporting extremism anytime soon. Same thing re: abortion and creationism. There is obviously room for a genuine debate about abortion and the stage of development at which it should become controversial, but the majority of the anti-abortion crowd will not engage in this kind of debate because, as Justin Bieber put it, 'don't they kill babies?' It's the lack of education and the inability to overcome the most primitive emotional responses and instead choose rational debate that causes such detestable ignorance in Bieber and others. Same goes for creationism. I am very relieved we don't have a strong anti-abortion or creationism movement here, and hope Nadine Dorries remains the biggest advocate the movement attracts, because she clearly comes across as nutty to most sensible people.
I agree that education is the answer, but I don't think it will be. I think a large percentage of the uninformed purposefully choose to remain that way - ignorance truly is bliss.
Obviously, I would never consider denying the spanners the right to post their bollocky shite, which wouldn't lead to a slippery slope so much as a vertical drop, but I think you know that about me.
Oh, and most obliged to the semi-colon comment. Just so you know, the post should have paragraphs, but Blogger is being silly and automatically removing the line breaks. The solution is beyond my technically limited ability, so I reluctantly consent to looking like I don't know what a paragraph is.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah! My (extremely) limited grasp of HTML has steered me right in the paragraph department. Still going to be very annoying if I have to start typing these things in HTML.
ReplyDelete