Intercourse is overrated

Drew Sheneman's Congressional puppy not only draws on the popular Dog Shaming meme, but ties in with a link-and-conversation I had on Facebook yesterday with Owen Dunne. 

Owen posted this link to an article about research on how on-line comments undermine the content of an article, and, specifically, work against people learning anything about science.

I said I thought it didn't just apply to science, and that anonymous comments undermine any sort of intelligent commentary, and have since the days of the "Speakout" columns, in which anonymous haters phoned the paper and recorded snippets of incendiary drivel to be transcribed and printed in the paper.

We agreed there was a distinction to be drawn between those anonymous comments and Letters to the Editor, which, at most newspapers, must not only be signed but are supposed to be verified to make sure they really came from that person. (The ongoing success of Heywood Jablomey in having letters published showing how often verification doesn't happen.)

But even the swill in the Speakout columns was vetted for libel, racism and obscenity, even if delusionary nonsense was permitted to go through.

Which brings us to the Dog Shaming meme. And how many people simply don't get it.

Dog Shaming began last summer, and was an absolute crack-up, with entries like this:

Part of the humor is the dog's expression, which is more likely from being told to sit and stay rather than any actual guilt over the underwear. Mox nix -- it works, and the more you capture the dog amid the destruction, the funnier the shaming becomes.

But then people started staging the destruction, or simply thinking up captions for cute pictures of their dogs that didn't involve shame at all. Now you have to sort through a lot of nothing to get to the few pics on the site that are (A) genuine and (B) funny.

Ditto with mondegreens. There was a site at SF Gate in which Jon Carroll collected these snippets of misheard lyrics, and the first rush of participants had some very funny examples. But it didn't take long for people to begin submitting obviously contrived, impossible examples.

So here's the question: Which is more cynical to believe?

1. People are no damn good. These people make up these things simply to get themselves out there for all to see.

2. The world is full of really stupid people. They're not trying to be dishonest. They really just don't get it.

Working on the premise that one should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, I'm inclined towards #2.

And it's just not that they will make stuff up, though obviously somebody at some point does invent the stupid things that rocket around the Internet.

But they also pass on stupid stuff unquestioned. People believe what they want to believe. Evidence? We don't got no evidence. We don't need no stinking evidence!

If you ran an article that was nothing but that PressType faux-Latin gibberish people use to lay out brochures, and inserted the word "abortion" in the headline, you would get 100 comments agreeing with it, and 100 comments attacking it.

The content of the article doesn't matter. If they read it at all, they read it through a filter so dense that it only reflects what they had expected to find in it.

I saw another Teleprompter joke today, from a professional cartoonist who gets paid to ... well, I guess to draw things that make people laugh, but, come on, man. The Teleprompter thing never, ever worked. Not given that every president in the past half century has used Teleprompters, and especially given that, if anything, Obama is too articulate and doesn't speak in soundbites but in whole paragraphs.

It's too easy to say they can't believe a Negro could speak so articulately without a Teleprompter. Maybe the person who started the meme believed that. It's even likely. But it survives because it exists. It's there because it's there because it's there because it's there.

Like the ridiculous but hugely popular notion that any sharing of public funds is "socialism."

And this goes both ways -- I saw someone the other day praising Khaddafi's Libya as a successful socialist regime, destroyed by Obama's imperialist aggression.

If socialism means handing out bread and circuses to keep the masses at bay, they're right -- and certainly you can replicate that worker's paradise in any country that happens to have massive reserves of oil and not a whole lot of people with whom to share the proceeds. And in which many of those people are happy to go overseas to work in non-socialist countries and send their pay back home.

But that's a tough model to replicate and it isn't "socialism" anyway.

He said, speaking to the wall.

I don't know that the comments under articles undermine the article so much as they reinforce the misconceptions people already had, for the simple reason that, judging from the comments, these people apparently don't read the articles -- they read the headline and either skim it lightly or leap straight to the comments section and start venting.

Here's what I do know:

The comments section of far, far, far too many news sites have become clubhouses for some of the most ignorant, bigotted, foolish people in the world, and it's the fault of administrators who seek hits rather than to disseminate information.

It is like a restaurant that keeps serving a loud table full of obnoxious drunks despite the discomfort of other diners.

And then complains that business is down.

We need an Editor Shaming meme. It is disloyal to the community you serve, and to the nation at large, to allow and, however passively, to encourage the proliferation of ignorant, delusional hostility that creates ignorant, delusional, hostile political factions to clog up our legislative system.

Meanwhile, if you've read all this because you were looking for the part about sex, you're not part of the solution. But thanks for the hit.

Comments

[Woodrowfan]

The comments on any mass audience website, Yahoo, Youtube, and big newspaper are usually depressing. It takes a lot of effort, such as you see on some of the Atlantic blogs for example, to keep a mass audience website from devolving into Trollville.

And I am glad you mentioned the teleprompter gag. There is a bit of "the black man can't be articulate" stench to it.

[bill]

Your welcome

:)

[Sherwood Harrington]

Well, you did say "disseminate."

Our sage, the only living boy in New York, said it well decades ago: "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

[Dann]

Y'all are missing the point of the Teleprompter gags. Although Mike's take is close.

The point is that if he is the eloquent intellectual that everyone claims he is, then why does he appear to use a teleprompter for occasions where other Presidents would speak off the cuff?

The point isn't to say that a black man can't be smart and/or eloquent.

The point is that this particular man isn't what his promoters claim. Regardless of his skin color.

I try not to swim in that rhetorical part of the political pool too frequently. But I do try to at least understand the argument being made there.

In any case, I agree with most of what Mike has presented....even though I'm sure we disagree on some of the particulars. ;)

[Richard J. Marcej]

I couldn't agree more. (well, I guess I could, but what would be the point)
I've stopped reading comment sections on news sites long ago. There never seemed to be a point to reading them, in my eye, because they never added to or brought anything new to the conversation. Now I find myself beginning to avoid reading comment sections on any blog or article, especially when they don't require the commentor from using their real name.

The added benefit from not wasting time reading all those comment sections is that I now have more time to read more articles.

[Mary in Ohio]

All of the above helps explain while we're here reading and (sometimes) commenting!

[Dave from Phila]

To offer more to support Mike's points in todays blog ... Go to http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16354535-collapse-in-congress-lawmakers-should-learn-from-tribal-elders#comments. UCLA Professor Jared Diamond discusses his thoughts on what the American society might learn from what he calls "traditional socieites" - tribal socieites. Amazingly, it only took until comment number 5 and Godwin's Law had already been triggered! (Goodwin's Law - As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.)

[hildigunnur]

Did you see the fight going on at our place: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/01/facebook-violence-women/ ? Been getting through to the world. Doesn't have a lot to do with the commenting evil (which we, I'm afraid to say) have in abundance. I always get in the foulest of moods when I enter that sewer.

Never saw that Dog Shaming meme, will look.

[Jan]

Y'know...I read your heading and your article and didn't even remember the heading until your last paragraph. At which point I went back to the top to see what is was. Must be my ADD. It can be a good thing.

[Mike Peterson]

Dann, I'm going to challenge your claim. There are some BS accusations -- the most prominent being that he used it at an elementary school, which is true, but only for the portion in which he gave a speech, not while he was talking to the kids. Meanwhile, his press conferences prove he doesn't need it.

It doesn't even make sense. Most presidents have used teleprompters for speeches, even on the road. And teleprompters are useless when you aren't giving a speech.

So, show me the numbers. Not just of when he did, but how it compares to other presidents.

Because -- with all due respect and affection -- I think you're simply making my point that people believe what they want to believe.

[Mike Peterson]

The Wired story is both chilling and intriguing, the latter because it ties into something else I've been hoping to hear more about: The use of "reports" to stifle certain points of view on Facebook. I've seen some artists and political groups have postings removed and warnings issued on stuff that was completely innocuous, and I think they were reported as a form of harassment.

The fact that the misogyny discussed in that Wired story was dismissed while totally harmless stuff is acted upon is probably a flaw in a massive operation, but it's a serious flaw and you can't dismiss it as inevitable.

[Dann]

Mike,

I'm not claiming that the basis for the accusation is accurate. Just that the basis is less (I wish I could honestly say "not" and mean 100%) about his race and more about his individual qualities.

Which is why I qualified my response by noting that I don't swim in that rhetorical pool very often. I usually (I am human after all) prefer more substantive criticism.

A lot of BS gets tossed at Presidents on both sides of the aisle. Think about Chevy Chase and Gerald Ford. A couple ill timed moments and a comedian has a lifetime of material.

My primary point is that the teleprompter gags have little to do with Mr. Obama's race and much more to do with character and qualifications.

Regards,
Dann

[Mike Peterson]

And the character and qualification issues arise from the idea that a guy who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, was Phi Beta Kappa and not only made the Review but was its president is not qualified for ... what?

Sorry, Dann. There's a difference between bringing out liars to disparage Kerry's war record and simply declaring that Obama isn't qualified -- especially when a few pundits have specifically suggested that Harvard hands out those honors on the basis of affirmative action.

If he were white, they'd need to drag out Harvard classmates (who didn't attend when he was there, or who never actually took classes with him) to talk about how lazy he was. But their peanut gallery is willing to believe it simply on the basis of ... what?

Well, if he were the son of a Swede, and the color of a Swede, the birth certificate issue would never have arisen.

Lie down with the dogs, get up with the fleas, man. I'm not saying everyone on the progressive side of the aisle is spotless ... but you probably shouldn't waste a lot of breath and energy trying to make that claim on your side, either.

[Dann]

Except I'm not claiming they are spotless. In fact, I pointed out that obviously there are folks that do consider race to be a pretty significant issue.

It's frustrating.

But then again, what exactly had he accomplished before being elected President?

He taught law as an instructor, not as a fully tenured professor. He made one memorable (for some) speech. He was elected as a Democratic senator from a state dominated by Democrats. His performance in the Senate was not particularly important.

He never held office as an executive. He never ran a large organization (in either the private sector or in government).

He's never really built anything. He had never had to display any real leadership.

Keep in mind, I think he's done a few things as President that were well done. I was pleasantly surprised when he kept the country engaged in the War on Terror. I'm glad he green-lighted the hit on bin Laden. The $8000 giveaway to first time home buyers was reasonably sound policy (and I'm pretty libertarian about such things).

But for a guy that is supposedly such a great President, I've yet to see it demonstrated.

[Woodrowfan]

looking at the dozens and dozens of bogus right wing lies about Obama on Snopes--he's a secret Muslim, he was born in Kenya, he can't talk without a teleprompter, he used a Koran when he was sworn in, he wears a "Muslim wedding ring", he sympathizes with al Qaeda, he's an affirmative action President, whitey tapes!, angry anti-colonial Africans, Malcolm X is his real father! etc, etc. But yeah, the problem with Obama is his "qualifications." i.e., he's black..

[Dann]

Y'all must not remember the last time we had a President who wanted to socialize health care and was projecting big deficits as far as the fiscal eye could see. His name was Bill Clinton.

And we rewarded is fiscal incompetence with a GOP led Congress in 1994. At which point, gridlock took over. No one in Washington got anything they wanted and the rest of us grew the economy to the point where the deficit was almost eliminated.

If you think the people generating all the Snopes fodder would accept Mr. Obama's government initiatives if he was white, then I respectfully suggest that you think again.

If you think those same folks are dominating the GOP, then please think again.

As Mike has pointed out on countless occasions, it's the few idiots that get the press while all the normal people around them get ignored because they aren't "interesting".

Regards,
Dann