Putting positivity in its place! But only for a minute. I promise.

Last week I started a new feature called Weekly Bitches which was intended to give us bloggers (or anyone who cared to leave a complaint in the comments section) a brief respite from the pressure we put on ourselves to be positive all the time. For weeks leading up to it, I had compiled a list of silly things that I found annoying and wished to address in this space. However, after reading the contribution made by Liz from A Simple Imp, which was a genuinely thoughtful and funny objection to an alarmist article on hygiene off the Huffington Post, I decided maybe should stop goofing around with my gripes about Vitamin Water Zero caps and write about something that actually needs attending to. Especially when I saw how Liz ended her piece with two constructive solutions and another hilarious, if not obvious one. It made me think that if I took myself seriously for a second, perhaps I could actually effect positive change in my life. So while I’m not promising that all my grievances are going to be quite so heavy, I’ve chosen to make this one about something that has truly been bothering me lately and in serious need of some bitching:

The Comments Section

I often find myself legitimately sick over the absolute human trash that I see in the comments sections of internet posts. Sick in the sense that after reading a slew of them on anything from a YouTube video to a Facebook link, I begin to feel my mood change with every disparaging remark written about nothing in particular, every hateful jab taken for an unapparent reason. I start to see the online comment community as representative of the world in general and begin to feel hopeless about who we are as a society.

So why read them? Well, that’s a good question.

I never used to read comment sections, that is until my own articles began to pop up on sites much bigger than this one which garnered much higher response rates. The first I ever had published was called My Friend’s Horrifying Breakup Is Really Making My Day! It was silly take on a sad situation, where I talked about the obvious, if not ill-gotten, benefits that often come out of your friends’ breakups. Namely that you get to see them more and for a single girl like myself, I couldn’t help but be a little bit happy about that factor, while at the same time, still sympathetic to the suckiness of the whole scenario. When XoJane said they wanted to publish the post on their site, I was super excited to see what people thought because I had never had an audience that big before.

I was floored with what came back.

The major consensus was how selfish I was. There were comments that skewered me for my “inability to be happy while my friends were in relationships” and others which insisted that I didn’t deserve friends if I “couldn’t be excited for them when they had boyfriends.” While I was surprised by how seriously everyone took the article, it wasn’t the people who were put off by the tone of it which I found disturbing. What I thought to be weird was the rage it inspired. To be honest, aside from being slightly cheeky, I thought what I wrote was relatively benign yet I was called pathetic, co-dependent and needy because of it. When one commentator came to my defense by saying she’d bet two bucks the whole thing was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, another responded with this:

“Dude I’ll give you two bucks, but I’m fairly certain that even if it is tongue-in-cheek, the author is still a bitch.”

And as far as angry internet comments go, these were all pretty tame. Since then, I’ve started paying more attention to what comes after the posts and videos that I watch and it’s despicable. Take C.D. Hermelin for example. This is a guy who I actually met in Union Square last year when he was nice enough to type me up a poem for the Flat Stanley I was carrying around. Not long after that, someone snapped a photo of him in the park on his typewriter and posted it to Reddit as an example of just how far hipsters were taking this whole “hipster” thing. By bringing a typewriter to the park, that is. He was crucified. Not only was he called a dong, a jagbag and an assdweller, he was told he should “get the fuck out of the city” and that he inspired the kind of hate which warranted physical violence.

It’s like there’s this whole planet of people out there just sitting around waiting to be offended so they can start hacking away at their keyboards, saying the meanest things they can think of, from the safety of an anonymous avatar.

And this is what pisses me off the most. I’m not trying to give people who create content for the internet any more credit than they deserve here, but writing articles and shooting videos and putting your work out there for everyone to see on a regular basis is hard. It’s not splitting the atom type hard, but it requires thought, diligence, discipline and courage. Now if I write something that doesn’t sit well with you and you want to disagree with me in a respectful way, then no problem. But if after all of the effort I’ve put into researching a topic and formulating an argument, all you can do is sit behind the safety of your user name and call me a bitch, well that’s fucking lame. It’s those kinds of lazy contributions to a discussion that say way more about the person who wrote them than the person they’re targeting. So in order to keep from murdering my computer on a regular basis, I’m going to have to adhere to the following:

Solutions:

#1 Stop reading all comments sections that aren’t related to posts I’ve written.

This seems like a no-brainer but sometimes it’s like watching a train wreck. I find myself almost dazzled by how awful people can be to one another when there’s no filter or means to regulate the tone of what’s being said. I can’t look away. However, inevitably, I always end up feeling gross and left never wanting to post another opinion piece again.

#2 Stop trying to debate everyone who doesn’t like you.

I’m not going to stop reading comments on posts I’ve written, strictly because of my own narcissism. I want to see what people think of what I’m writing, however I often find myself wanting to argue with anyone who doesn’t see it my way and expresses themselves in a hostile tone. There’s no point getting into an argument with someone who’s just trying to get a rise out of you in the first place. It will only serve to escalate in an increasingly unproductive and immature way and knowing myself, avoiding opportunities to become more immature is probably a strategy I’ll want to stick with.

Bonus

#3 For anyone who consistently critiques other people’s work, try writing something of your own and then distribute it to a thousand people who can then say whatever they want about it because no one knows who they are. Just for perspective.

*Update: My friend Cortney just sent me this post about a naked yoga instructor because of the flood of awful comments and ridiculous arguments that follow it. Just another example of people being gross to one another. Also, after looking at it, I’m pretty sure I’m a lesbian now.

That’s it for this week and if you want to add a bitch you can link it here below!

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