Internet comments are what is wrong with humanity. It allows people who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near people the chance to say whatever they like, no matter how stupid, baseless, uninformed or pretentious it may be. Before websites thought of allowing users to leave their ideas on the bottom of a website, people had to go through hoops to make their opinions known (or write to Points of View). Nowadays, any old fucker can say something like “PRIVATISE HEALTHCARE” or “DAMN IMMIGRANTS, TAKING OUR JOBS” or some bullshit like that on their Windows shitbox from 1997.

I’m not saying people aren’t allowed to have opinions or share them, it’s just that blogs were created for that purpose. The idea that the world is entitled to have a soapbox at the bottom of a news story written by literature majors (unless it’s the Daily Mail or any of Quebecor’s properties in the media) is so stupid. All you do is attract a number of idiots like a dead body during a hot summer’s day.

And there are the dumb comments. Look at YouTube, which is basically proof that there aren’t enough mental institutions built in the world. The average video has a couple hundred to a few thousand views and a bar that shows how many people liked or disliked a video. Fair enough. Now scroll a bit further down to the comments. Unless it’s a video of cats, there will be so much hate and uninformed bullshit you would think you were reading Pravda. Or music videos. It’s one thing to like a song, but quoting a line from the song and adding a “<3” just shows you don’t even have the brain cells to think of something constructive to add. Of course I’ve heard the lyrics, I just did, on the video you quoted the song on. Same goes for Last.fm, where saying a song isn’t that great is like threatening to kill the President of the United States.

There are two solutions to this: stop people from commenting on websites. Websites shouldn’t even bother with comments. You should just read it and bitch about it on Reddit. Reasoned debate has been trampled on and killed by comments like this, about the Canadian government’s plan to take temporary financial control of a failing First Nations reserve:

How incredibly constructive. Sure, don’t even bother reading the article or writing about why you disagree or agree with the plan, just make the silly claim that Canada is somehow in the pocket of corporations, which is funny because that wasn’t even part of the news story. Too bad the reasoned debate should be shifted off the website, but the amount of stupidity is just staggering.

Another way is just to not bother engaging with the comments. Don’t read them, don’t write in them (unless you want your smart comment to be jumped on and torn to pieces by an idiot) and don’t ever accidentally scroll down. Make your own mind about the story and write about it somewhere else. Like a blog or talkback radio. Just not in the muddy trenches of the Internet called comments. Until people are smart enough to use analysis and critical thinking in their comments, everyone should just avoid that shithole.