Comment Elsewhere: the life of a blog commenter

Over at Crooked Timber, where I rarely comment, a query on commenter behavior provoked this from me

Once a certain quantity of comments is reached, hardly anyone new to the conversation will read all the comments before commenting. If the purpose of commenting is to have one’s comment read, then it doesn’t make sense to contribute to already-long discussions.

I tend to avoid commenting on heavily-commented posts, because those usually feature well-worn positions without much chance of substantive contributions making much difference, and are usually dominated by a fairly small clique of frequent commenters (this isn’t directed at CT specifically, but it does happen here; I’m a member of the ingroup at some blogs myself, so I see it happening from both sides) who are focused on their ingroup interactions and don’t pay that much attention to comments from outsiders (unless they are flamingly provocative).

This is one of those posts that invites everyone to share their experience without really adding up to a conversation. There's sort of a discussion going on but, as I expected, nobody's addressed my point at all. Eventually, if it goes the way CT discussions often do, someone will make more or less the same point, but ignore the fact that I've made it already.

Update: The comments morphed into a discussion of "comment bait" -- what topics inspire the most comments. My contribution to that was

Declare the “END OF” something. Books, teaching, good television, bad doctors, an era, and epoch, a school of thought, a social pattern, a word, a meme, etc.

Quotation: "We are what we imagine."

"Myth has been called "the smoke of history," and there is a desperate need for a history of the Hindus that distinguishes between the fire, the documented evidence, and the smoke; for mythic narratives become fires when they drive historical events rather than respond to them. Ideas are facts too; the belief, whether true or false, that the British were greasing cartridges with animal fat, sparked a revolution in India in 1857. We are what we imagine, as much as what we do." -- Wendy Doniger [via]

Yeah, I'm liberal.

You can take a 40 question quiz in which you rate policy issues on a ten-point scale to gauge your depth of feeling. archy put his score in comments. I'll do it in white, so you can highlight the post if you want to see just how liberal I am....

295 out of 400

Comment Elsewhere: Patriotism, Dissent and the benefit of the doubt

In response to a justified but slightly excessive rant at Progressive Historians I wrote:

There has always been something of a divide between liberalism and conservativism on the issues of rights and responsibilities. Liberals emphasize rights over responsibilities except in the case of property rights, which are subject to public need; and conservatives are exactly the opposite, emphasizing responsibilities over rights except in the case of property rights which are nearly absolute.

What's most galling, to my mind, is that the criticism and sometimes blatant anti-Americanism on both sides is rooted in idealism, in the belief that an American which doesn't adhere to certain standards isn't authentic and legitimate, but the left gives the right the benefit of the doubt under these circumstances, rarely questioning the patriotism of secessionists and eliminationists, whereas the right rarely, if ever, gives the left any leeway, questioning the patriotism of even mainstream interlocutors.

Comment Elsewhere: Social Network Cynicism

Terry at I See Invisible People has been discovering that Facebook, for all its utility and entertainment value, also has blazingly insensitive aspects. My comment

Facebook is like a TV station, a cable channel, or a magazine, or a newspaper: they provide a service which attracts an audience. Then they sell access to that audience to advertisers: advertisers will pay more for an audience that is more likely to be interested in their product, so Facebook, which knows a lot about its users, should be able, in theory, to sell high-potential audiences to advertisers for good money.

Someone who uses this prescription gift app is giving Facebook a lot of information about themselves and/or the recipient.

So far, Facebook has been treading a fine line (i.e. a big gray area): trying to be useful to their advertisers without blatantly prostituting their users or violating their individual privacy. But I’m not sure they’re making all the money they think they should be making, yet. So they’re being more aggressive about extracting information, and they’re being more aggressive about finding ways to draw in advertisers, and they’re being more aggressive about attracting the high-value 18-35 demographic (though I still don’t know why that is; they’re not the ones with all the money) by being “edgy”….

Yeah, it’s a little cynical. OK, it’s a lot cynical, but I didn’t make up the business model.

Quotation: Malthus on the search for truth

From the first chapter of Thomas Malthus' Essay on Population:

The advocate for the present order of things is apt to treat the sect of speculative philosophers either as a set of artful and designing knaves who preach up ardent benevolence and draw captivating pictures of a happier state of society only the better to enable them to destroy the present establishments and to forward their own deep-laid schemes of ambition, or as wild and mad-headed enthusiasts whose silly speculations and absurd paradoxes are not worthy the attention of any reasonable man.

The advocate for the perfectibility of man, and of society, retorts on the defender of establishments a more than equal contempt. He brands him as the slave of the most miserable and narrow prejudices; or as the defender of the abuses. of civil society only because he profits by them. He paints him either as a character who prostitutes his understanding to his interest, or as one whose powers of mind are not of a size to grasp any thing great and noble, who cannot see above five yards before him, and who must therefore be utterly unable to take in the views of the enlightened benefactor of mankind.

In this unamicable contest the cause of truth cannot but suffer. The really good arguments on each side of the question are not allowed to have their proper weight. Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.

The friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross. He will not even condescend to examine the grounds from which the perfectibility of society is inferred. Much less will he give himself the trouble in a fair and candid manner to attempt an exposition of their fallacy.

The speculative philosopher equally offends against the cause of truth. With eyes fixed on a happier state of society, the blessings of which he paints in the most captivating colours, he allows himself to indulge in the most bitter invectives against every present establishment, without applying his talents to consider the best and safest means of removing abuses and without seeming to be aware of the tremendous obstacles that threaten, even in theory, to oppose the progress of man towards perfection.

Just ran across it. Not thinking of anything in particular except that the public sphere is bigger and faster than it used to be, but not all that much better, perhaps.

Comment Elsewhere: Color Coded Fiscal Crisis

In response to this story and this story about state government budget impasses leading to the brink of shutdowns, layoffs, etc. -- in the comment section here, I made a suggestion (color added):

We’re going to need color-coded maps:

• Red = Republican-induced Shutdown
• Orange = Republican Brinksmanship
• Yellow = Budget Impasse but still solvent
• Blue = Blue Dog Democrat Capitulation slashes social, educational funds and corporate taxes
• Green = Sane people still in charge.

[Welcome, Avedon Carol readers!]

Pictures: Detail

Comment Elsewhere: Pony Chokers

I wrote:

A quarter-century from now, when one of your students asks you when “pony-choker” became slang for the old Republican party, you can say that you were there at the creation….

A millenium for now, some enterprising anthropologist will note that the absence of large-scale pony graveyards in the styrofoam strata suggests that the ancient tales of “pony-choking republicans” were apocryphal. Or perhaps that the tradition of pinata can explain the idiom.

You have to go read the original to see why, and it's worth it.

(also, I noted the overlap of neo-confederate and anti-New Deal/stimulus thought....

If you don't answer any questions, the result is "fearless"

Your Word is "Why"

You see life as complicated and intriguing. The only thing you know for sure is that you haven't figured it all out yet. You question everything and believe very little. And whatever you believe is likely to change. You are interested in theories, philosophies, and religions... even if you don't buy into any of them. You are also fascinated by how things work. You'd like to understand as much in the world as possible.

What's Your Word? [via]

Also, odds are good that, had I lived in the 17th century, I'd have been a peasant, or, at best, a clerk, not an artist, inventor, explorer, poet or philosopher. Oddly, that wasn't an option.