Have you ever been angry at the wind? I have. I was out for a bike ride, or maybe I was trying to get somewhere on my bike, or maybe I was lost or something. I just remember at one point making a turn into a strong headwind, and finding it frustrating, and actually jerking my front wheel up and down a few times in anger.
I was young, full of hormones, took everything personally, et cetera. It’s silly, of course, to be angry at the wind. To think that the wind was blowing just to slow me down, just to keep me from my destination, to sap my enjoyment.
Been feeling that way about the internet, lately. And by “lately,” I mean for a long time now. So many vicious people on the internet, writing awful things about, well, everything. And while such viciousness is not necessarily a core definition of what the internet is, the ubiquity of it is almost too readily accepted by all.
I just read an article about how wrong it was for Shailene Woodley to wear Vibrams to a Golden Globes after party. I’m not sure if the writer was being serious or not, or purposefully hyperbolic as a kind of sardonic parody of other fashion criticism. Doesn’t matter, though, because the comments that followed where obviously not written tongue-in-cheek. Back and forth they went, calling the shoes ugly, calling anyone who didn’t recognize how good they were for you stupid, calling people who like wearing them sheep, calling people who called them sheep idiots, and so on.
I have friends who tell me I’m an idiot for reading internet comments at all. But I’m looking for more than one opinion. If I read an article about, say, Newt Gingrich’s equating food-stamps with laziness with African-American culture, I don’t trust that the article told me the whole story. So I read the comments to see if anyone can give me more information. It’s like an instant fact-check. I know I come to stories like that pre-biased, I know I’m the choir being preached to, and I want to make sure, at least, I’m not being fed dogma-food.
But instead of getting a different perspective, I end up with a brick-ton of mean-spirited perspectives. And I find it frustrating. I find myself wanting to make my own pithy comments to put all those jerk-holes in check. I want to say something brilliant and to the point, so that they’d all be forced to reply “Oh my goodness, I was a fool, you are so very right. Thank you for humbling me.”
I might as well shout at the wind for blowing. I need to remember that, for the most part, anonymity is a force of nature, and I can’t take personally anything said by someone I don’t know. (Not even if an anonymous person is directing his or her comments at me, personally.) Without being able to contextualize what’s being said with the personality of the speaker, comments like that are just a lot of hot wind.
What I really need to do is stop reading the comments on anything that’s ultimately just an opinion piece. Hoping for a fact-check on regular reporting is fine. I was an idiot to think I’d find anything useful or good in the commentary on article about footwear of the star of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”