Commentary Reason
As you might expect of someone writing a blog, I’ve done a lot of reading on the web. Many places, here among them, offer the ability for people to comment on the articles they post. One of the things that often strikes me when I bother to read the comments on an article is the number of people that are driven to speak but have absolutely nothing to say.
They’ll post something like “I agree completely.” Or “good article, keep writing them.”
So I asked God why they do it. We talked about it for a bit. We talked about how in some cases it’s just a carry over from live conversation. When people get together and talk they sometimes interject meaningless chatter just to show that they’re paying attention. They throw in a quick, “yup,” or “mm, hmm,” but in a comment form those don’t really seem right so they expand them into a real sentence. The thing is, in live conversation these things are ephemeral, you toss them out and then they’re gone, like cotton candy in the rain; but on the web they last, they stay there just as long as the article does. The other thing about them is that in live conversation they tend to happen in parallel. While you say them the person you’re talking to doesn’t have to stop, they just keep talking and maybe nod their head to show that they heard you; but online they interrupt the flow, you have to work your way through them to get to the next comment and see if it offers anything that’s actually interesting.
The other thing God offered that I found interesting was that a lot of these comments come from the same place a lot of graffiti comes from. Not the graffiti that offers to help you find a good time, or a quickly scrawled joke, but the kind that does nothing more than tag something with the “artists” name or mark. It’s the sort of graffiti that just says, “I was here.” Like a dog peeing on a tree.
So if you ever find yourself interested in making a comment on someone’s web forum think about if that’s what you’re about to do. When you take that moment to think, I’d like to suggest that you follow the same advice we give here on Unscriptured, be substantive. Be substantive or don’t bother.
And for a final take on the subject, let me just leave you with this passage from the King James Bible: “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.” — Proverbs 17:28
Hey, an actual Bible quotation here on Unscriptured. How rare is that?
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