Blogging: On Comments
When I graduated from UMass with a degree in English in 1996, I was so burned out on writing, I thought I’d never put pen to paper, or more accurately, open up a Word document for pleasure, ever again. In fact, as a creative writer I was dead in the water for about 5 years or more. I’m not the kind of person who keeps a personal journal for just me: I have a deep need for an audience, but at the same time I can’t stand deadlines. It wasn’t until February 2003 when my friends, annoyed at yet another blizzard of emails decrying George Bush and his war, convinced me to start blogging.
“Convinced”. I say it as if they were nagging at me. The truth is I didn’t even know what a blog even was. I wasn’t so much “convinced” as I was “enlightened”. Almost four years later, I’ve outgrown the original blogger site, and were it not for yet another disaster with Verizon, I’d be writing twice as much as I do now. Long posts, short posts, entire episodes of my life and personal opinions are now a matter of record. With a readership that hovers around 100-200, I get to have my cake and eat it too: an audience and no deadlines.
One of my favorite aspects of blogging is the comments section. There, readers have an opportunity to write back to the author, agreeing or disagreeing, and almost always adding substance and context to whatever it is I’m writing about. I have never understood why some writers, usually right-wing polemicists like Michele Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, and Andrew Sullivan, have disabled their comments. These writers argue that their comments have been trolled, but that doesn’t convince me. Trolls are everywhere: Will Bunch’s Attytood blog is a hive of trolls, and none of the left-wing blogs are free of them. It is easy enough to deal with trolls: you can delete their comments, ban them from visiting, or ignore them. I think it’s more likely that these writers don’t like to be challenged by smart readers who disagree with their premises, and have the unfortunate ability to expose hypocrisy and dishonesty.
A few days ago, I wrote a piece titled “Philly Weekly: Tim Whitaker’s Sour Grapes”, which compared Philadelphia to Boston. The post generated a lot of comments, many of them negative, criticizing my reasoning, and in general telling me that I was utterly totally wrong. Unlike the Malkins of the world, this kind of feedback is incredibly important to me. Without criticism, without challenge, how can anyone know whether one’s logic is accurate, whether one’s thoughts hold up to scrutiny, whether one is bloviating or hitting the nail on the head?
To commenters Chris, Tim, Somegirl, and everyone else who waded into those comments, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You changed my mind about a couple of points. Chris, your comment pointing that comparing the two cities is a case of apples and oranges provoked a lot of thought on my part. Tim, your comments pointing out Boston’s flaws from a residents’ perspective showed me that I was acting like Vitullo-Martin myself, writing from an uneducated outsider’s perspective.
I’m not going to retroactively correct anything I wrote (that would be intellectually dishonest) and I still stand by some of my points (I’m sorry, Philadelphia is a litterbug’s paradise and our music scene suffers from a lack of interest on the part of radio), but the input and food for thought generated by my readers is priceless. Unlike the Malkins and Reynolds of the world, I invite all of you to call bullshit on me when calling bullshit is due. Hooray for comments!
One Response to “Blogging: On Comments”
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November 13th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
heh, since you thanked me for my input, i had to go back and actually say something about why i love philly.