When Adorable Child (AC) eats with her fingers, or sucks air for a deliberate belch, Polimom’s standard response is, “Did you grow up in a barn?” and we all laugh. It’s a long-standing, lightly-delivered reprimand — a reminder that civilized people have standards.
Polimom, of course, didn’t grow up in a barn, and frankly, I don’t think anybody else did, either. They just act like it:
These loonies need to die.
Period.
They are what is wrong with society and God needs to strike every last one of them DOWN.
Let’s at least dig into these bastards’ lives and GET something on them. Splay them out for the media to REALLY ridicule.
To me, that’s the online equivalent of belching at the table, folks.
The comment above came in Friday in response to a post (indirectly) about James Dobson several weeks ago, but there was nothing in the original to inspire such viciousness. I stared at it for quite a while, trying to decide whether I should respond, ignore it, or delete it. In the end, I registered my reaction (“Hunh??”) and moved on… but that comment stayed with me all weekend.
Who are these people? And can they possibly be serious??
My little blog doesn’t catch very many of these, happily. I’m off the wider radar for the most part, and I consider Polimom’s regular readers to be extraordinarily sane. However, that comment reminded me that I am, in fact, part of a larger community — the political blogosphere — and it’s really not a very pleasant place.
There’s something inherently dysfunctional about a community that sanctions such sentiments, and no, it’s not the result of the election cycle (although I agree that things are extraordinarily nasty just now); this has been the “norm” in the online community all along.
Whether one believes this is being fostered by the anonymity, or by the bile spewed by some bloggers, the result is the same: all this nose-picking, fart-popping, armpit-scratching bile is turning the political blogosphere into the online equivalent of a fetid barnyard.
If the blogosphere ever hopes to “arrive” — to be taken seriously as a viable media source — then its participants are going to have to start learning some table-manners.
Only if the one belching is a dragon. I would liken it more to someone bursting into your house with a kitchen knife, and hollering about how the UFO aliens gave them ‘the probe’ and therefore they must go out and stab all the steaks in your fridge.
I agree with your observation that this has been seen on the ‘Net for quite a while – just hop on over to Usenet (but be sure to put on a hazmat suit first, and take out AC’s eyes and put them in a vault for safe-keeping) to see what long-time ‘Netizens have been dealing with.
I think part of the problem is that people get the sense that they are ‘anonymous’ when they are on the ‘Net. And, one way to educate them is to post the IP address of the poster whenever they post something so incredibly stupid and loony. I do that over on other sites I manage, and believe me it does get some folks’ attention – especially when they post from their office!
BTW, I think I may put up a posting on this whole gardener brouhaha tonight or tomorrow – did you read Rick Casey’s latest column on it in Sunday’s paper?
~EdT.
Yes, I saw the latest. The escalation was, in fact, part of this post originally, but I decided to pull them apart. Maybe I’ll just post a link and update on this still, though — because it’s absolutely related.
[Ed. to add…] Apologies for leaving this hanging. The “latest” from Rick Casey is here (link).