Meh, I was unimpressed with that. There are a lot of ways to describe the general character of the ~300,000 comments on this site, and that didn't seem like one of the more illuminating ones.
And we're way too meta lately, are we not? (Not you, The Hero, but we collectively.)
She's describing a certain register of Unfogged pretty accurately, maybe.
About CT she writes: Kieran's tone rides a mean edge, and the comments on his posts are markedly meaner than others.
Can't say I've noticed that, myself.
3: "Mean" is not the right word; his posts are more pointed than those by others. Which is why they tend to be better than those by others.
Yeah, the CT thing was even worse; yes, Kieran had a couple of cutting posts about Jane Galt this week, but that hardly characterizes his style, and the comments there are such a wasteland that I don't know how you even begin to distinguish those on one post from another.
Unfogged, you look exactly like Ogged.
Except for your eyes. Your eyes are so like LizardBreath.
A couple weeks back I laid waste to Jane Galt with four queens, the last one on the river, both of us all in.
Huh. I just commented on that post, and I think I'll copy it over here. Blockquote, right?
First, what are the rest of us posters at Unfogged, chopped liver?
Second, passing over the question of moral responsibility for what's in your comments (I do feel that on some level, but that's because I have the sort of deeply work-avoidant obsessiveness that allows me to read and respond to pretty much everything at Unfogged) I do find it fascinating how (this is going to be hard to say without sounding offensive) on political issues, almost every blog's comment section is a more extreme reflection of perceptions of the blogger's underlying political allegiance, rather than their conscious moderation.
The Volokh Conspiracy is largely a bunch of not particularly politically extreme bloggers, mostly focused on technical legal issues, and they're generally very consciously qualified and evenhanded when posting on political stuff. But as a liberal, I'd call them distinctly right of center, and their comments are much more stridently so. Same with Megan McArdle -- while I disagree with her about a whole bunch of stuff, her posts run toward the mild and qualified rather than redmeat political rabblerousing, but her comments are populated by a fairly well roused rabble. You could say the same about Unfogged too -- not so much now, but before I and the other new bloggers came on, Ogged was pro-war, and otherwise pretty centrist albeit leaning left, but the comments were much much leftier.
I don't know if this means that comments are a true picture of the blogger's soul, or a distorted, extreme picture, but it seems like a consistent pattern.
7: I hope you were wearing a condom.
Except for your eyes. Your eyes are so like LizardBreath.
And his butt looks like heebie's?
Why are the pages of Ogged's book stuck together?
Ogged was pro-war? Ogged!
It's a good thing I only started reading this blog at the "fuck you, clown" point.
And his butt looks like heebie's?
Unfogged is so pert.
Ogged was pro-war? Ogged!
Never mind, Frowner. It was the love of a good woman that changed him.
"Why are the pages of Ogged's book stuck together?"
He didn't give away enough of his stickiness before he started blogging.
"He didn't give away enough of his stickiness..."
Any idea how long that'll take? I've been giving it away for nearly 20 years and I'm still with the sticky.
I'm not going to click the link, but I bet that she decided her own commenters were just lovely people, with a variety of characteristics from all walks of life, with no particular distinguishing characteristics except perhaps a tendency to be right all the time? Hang on no, I'm getting something else ... could it be that at other blogs they get in pointless personal slanging matches but at mine hers we tend to stick to the topic (but hey we're passionate about our beliefs and we like to have fun too!)? Yes I think it could.
Did I win my bet?
Kieran's tone rides a mean edge, and the comments on his posts are markedly meaner than others.
Can't say I've noticed that, either. I have noticed that CT threads seem to get more than their fair share of nutters, though.
20: Not exactly. As I recall, she cops to a tendency towards righteousness, stubbornness on ideology, and some other stuff.
I'm not going to click the link, but I bet that she decided her own commenters were just lovely people,
She spends most of it pining over your absence, dsquared. I think she loves you.
2: Yep. I get into the meta discussions, but too many of them become dreary.
Merely clever is a terrible fate. But how can one "do anything" in internet paragraphs? I'm doing something when I'm a parent or when I'm working. Concise snark or chat is easy, concise personal insight is hard and takes context. Since comments are easy, comments show something different than more focussed efforts.
I guess I opt for distorted, extreme picture.
And the title of the book is, "A Thousand And One Mexican Absurdist Sentiments, Linked Together In No Particular Order, In Beloved Service To Matthew Yglesias."
"Dreary" is such a wonderful word. Well-played, LB.
For the record, I don't really understand what "meta" means. Commenting on the act of commenting?
LB, what html formatting did you use? Your blockquote, at least on my screen, just looks indented. When other people blockquote, the font shrinks a little bit.
I tend to think she's right, but mostly because of the blogger-as-host paradigm she endorses. Enough of the blogs I read and enjoy have authors actively participating in comments and that author's voice is always the most trenchant one in the thread. When I leave those threads, it's the blogger's voice that had dominated my impression, I think. As a result, when I read blogs where the bloggers is absent from the comments, without realizing it I take the absence as a tacit endorsement of the most dominant voices/ideas. When there is a bunch of asshole bullshit quibbling going on in threads and the blogger doesn't weigh in, I tend to assume the blogger herself is sort of an asshole, condescending to her readers by not giving two shits what's going on there.
I'm glad you ask that question heebie.
I was about to ask myself. I figured that it was one of those words the youths used to confuse old people.
I also love dreary. "Perhaps" is a great word also. Full of lingering thoughts.
she cops to a tendency towards righteousness, stubbornness on ideology, and some other stuff
She's writes very openly about personal things. It's always hard to respond well to criticism, and to invite it on personal topics--- well, I don't know that I could do that.
But how can one "do anything" in internet paragraphs?
I think she's referring to the tendency of commenters here to enthusiasically endorse an idea -- "Yeah! Let's all do something about the election!/have a book group!/meet up with Heebie when she's in the Bay Area!" -- and then do nothing to follow up on it.
29: Use <p></p> around the paragraphs within the blockquote to preserve the font attributes.
I also love dreary. "Perhaps" is a great word also. Full of lingering thoughts.
The orange-titled posts were not a resounding success.
Blockquote without p tags
looks like this
Blockquote with p tags
looks like this
The orange-titled posts were not a resounding success.
Let us always speak of them again.
Unfogged used to be funny formatted.
A couple weeks back I laid waste to Jane Galt with four queens, the last one on the river, both of us all in.
I hope you were playing Assumption.
I tremble imagining the kinds of formatting people here will come up with once they discover Microsoft Word.
The orange-titled posts were not a resounding success.
STOP MOCKING THOSE OF US WITH CONVICTIONS
THE ORANGE POSTS WERE THE ONLY GOOD THING THIS SITE HAS EVER DONE
THE CHIMPEROR IS STILL UNCHIMPEACHED
Probably good for my soul, in that any time I feel uppity or effective I can remember the orange titled posts and be properly humbled.
The resoundingly successful posts were not orange-titled.
43 was me, no idea why it forgot my details.
24: Yep. I get into the meta discussions, but too many of them become dreary.
Does this remark constitute meta meta discussion? Discuss.
ogged was right, Megan doesn't like us.
"43 was me, no idea why it forgot my details."
Doesn't really matter, does it. All the commenters look the same.
(Yes, still commenting just so I can use the tags. It's like a whole new world opened up before me...)
52: ?? Snf. She doesn't like us?
A couple weeks back, I doubled Jane Galt into a rubber.
(Yes, still commenting just so I can use the tags. It's like a whole new world opened up before me...)
As last night's formatting-rich thread proved, Unfogged's html education initiative has been a resounding success.
Okay, we need another NY bridge night. I'd host, but no one wants to come up to Inwood.
57 - I can host but nobody ever wants to come downtown. *sniff*
30 is either not always true, or especially true for Yglesias, as JE has often complained.
Dan Kervick is a commenter, mostly on foreign policy blogs, who is always more insightful and sunstantial than the poster. cmdicely is a reason to read Drum. Phil Carter has a few outstanding military commenters.
The economics blogs have at least one regular Marxist who comments in free verse.
I hate that free verse guy. I don't even know what he's saying -- just the sight of that free verse makes me skip over what he says.
58: "tag" is an abbreviation of "taggitt," a small furry woodland creature that is often glimpsed darting across the Information Superhighway.
"Meta" roughly means the same thing as "super-awesome, like a Deceptacon exploding in downtown New York."
Back in his zizka days, John wrote a post about commenters and how they reflect on the blogger. I've wanted to refer back to it a couple of times, but it's long gone.
Maybe she meant to say I ride a mean edge on mountain bikes. In posts not so much, except when people are calling me stupid, or what have you.
Yeah, I have to say I can't tell what she's talking about there at all. More broadly, the CT comments seem uniform across the posters to me.
CT has an usually large number of commenters who generrally dislike the bloggers, or feel strongly ambivalent about them.
68, I've noticed that too. I think it may be that it's really the only blog where European attitudes are expressed to a large number of Americans who are used to reading things by Americans. (and vice versa)
mcmanus is right that cmdicely is a good commenter. He's not good enough to make me read Drum regularly.
68: I have the impression that CT draws a lot of commenters from "decent left" sites like Harry's Place, which would explain some of the dynamic.
I'm glad you ask that question heebie.
I was about to ask myself. I figured that it was one of those words the youths used to confuse old people.
But of course, Heebie Callipygous Geebie is the youngest person here except Teo. So "meta" is in fact a word used by loathsome middle-aged people to exclude young, attractive people from their pervy conversations.
What phase of Kubler- Ross are we in? Commenting on other blogs commenters? I remember reading what, a dozen blogs before 9/11, then hundreds daily, now back down to about six, but the ghosts remain.
I think that we can safely conclude that our relationship with Megan is a difficult one, not to be repaired simply by throwing a burning couch or two of the roof of one of our huts.
As for Jane Galt, at CT I was disenvowelled on her behalf. That was the same day that I single-handedly attacked a screeching mob of 200 million Potterheads. I wasn't drunk, but was suffering from a flu, which I almost never get.
I was thinking you sounded testier than usual. And that's a fairly high bar.
Feeling better now?
Somewhat better. The symptoms have been only moderate, but since I never get the flu I end up wondering if it's something serious.
But of course, Heebie Callipygous Geebie is the youngest person here except Teo.
I just act like I'm fourteen. I'm really rather middle-aged.
Emerson is a national treasure and should never be disemvowelled.
Have I made everyone mad at me yet today?
I do think commenters reflect on posters, although in complicated ways. I am amazed at the vitriol in Steve Clemon's threads, usually directed at Clemons. Toughest fucking crowd on the nets. They all hate him.
And phrasing this as delicately as possible, I inferred something opposite but related about hilzoy from the regulars she attracts. hilzoy is a true Kantian, a pragmatic rationalist.
Much of what goes on on blogs has the appearance of philosophy. As a Nietzschean or Kierkeggaardian or just an asshole, I am interested in the psychologies of philosophers, the subtle symptoms of this disease.
I have a practical ethical question for you guys. I thought about submitting it to Ask the Mineshaft Thread, but I've already done that once, and my question is not totally unrelated to the question of talking about things rather than doing something about them.
The other evening I was walking passed MGH, and I saw some sort of security guard yelling at some sort of possibly homeless guy. He said, "Fine, then go to the VA or some other hospital, but if you walk near that hospital again, I'm locking you up."
I thought his behavior was pretty appalling, so I turned around and walked past the guard guy and saw that the patch on his arm said "Police Security."
I didn't see a badge number. I'm not sure what I thought that I was doing except that I wanted to say to the homeless guy: "You're not inhuman. I see what this guy is doing to you. Your not untouchable,and you're not ignored."
I didn't see a badge number or anything. I thought taht it was awfully strange (in theory, if not in fact) for a plain old security guard to be threatening to lock someone up, but I don't know whether he worked for the police department in some way. In any case, I thought that his behavior was kind of abusive. I haven't done anything about it. I didn't think that I could just go up to the guy and ask for his identifying information, but if I had, what could I have done?
Rrrr. Dunno what to do other than speak directly to the guard, which I probably wouldn't have had the chutzpah to do either.
BG, not enough info for me. The derelict might have been a junkie, a Munchausen, someone seeking 3 hots & a cot, tend to acting out, or whatever. There might have been a long history. There might have been an official hospital policy, quite likely in fact, in which case the SG was caught between. Or you could be right.
This is a story of medical care denied in Iraq. I may have linked it before.
I was a security guard for a little while. I was really bad at it, and got fired.
The guy might have been a lot of thigns, btu I don't think that a private security guard shoudl be threatenign someone with jail time. If that's company policy, then I'd like to report it in some way, because it shouldn't be legal to misrepresent yourself in that way. By threatening imprisonment, you're pretending to be a cop, essentially.
Maybe the guy was trespassing, but ti seems to me that there have to be better ways of handling it. And the guy wasn't close to any buildings. He was on a public bench by the public street.
84: This is great. I know I shouldn't project blog-commenting persona onto real life, but I totally picture you as a security guard getting into a conversation with someone loitering around whatever you were guarding, ending up with the both of you hurling bricks through the windows.
That's pretty much how it went down, right?
86: I could see Bob as a cab driver. Was it ever so?
BG, you were bothered that he didn't say, "Fine, then go to the VA or some other hospital, but if you walk near that hospital again, I'm calling the police"? That's now what I took the problem in 81 to be initially?
80: Dude, have you ever read his blog? Especially earlier this year, when he was just absolutely in man-love with Chuck Hagel? Until very recently, Chuck Hagel talked a big game but continued to support the administration's Iraq policy with his vote in the Senate, and that was perfectly okay with Clemons as long as Hagel *said* the right things in Very Serious foreign policy speeches. Lately, Hagel's been voting his conscience, but when he wasn't, Steve Clemons excused his votes by saying that he respected the fact that Hagel was "keeping his powder dry."
What utter bullshit. I'm was one of the commenters that tried to get Clemmons to explain himself, but eventually I just got sick of it and left.
Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
now s/b not, and there shouldn't be a question mark at the end.
86:Nah, a night guard at a geriactric (sic ?, but not a Holbonian sic) unit, I walked the routes once an hour for week. Then after nothing at all happened, and because I wasn't likely to stop anything serious happening, I watched the door, kicked back with a book and radio instead. I did open the doors a couple times a night to let the deceased be taken away.
The first floor was empty. I guess the nurses were scared of people climbing the walls. I turned my lastcheck into black beauties and Heineken and went to Austin for six months, listening to Messiaen and reading early John Barth, Barthelme, and Irving.
89:Dude, I didn't say the commenters were, like, wrong. It is just interesting that Clemons puts up with them.
He did say that. It's part of what I found disturbing. He was very much in the guy's face, and the guy was not on private property.
I don't like abusive cops, and I don't like people who pretend to be cops. The guy didn't look that bad, in fact.
No, I amended "locking you up" to "calling the police" but then made it look like everything was being quoted from you because my brain shut down and made it as unclear as possible. I was asking because you said you were bothered by him making a threat which he didnt have the authority to carry out, so I changed it to a threat which he could.
For what it's worth, I once walked up to a guy who was berating a homeless guy and simply said, "what's the problem here?" and the guy backed off immediately. He did try a little "it's not your business" bluster, but there's a lot to be said for female intervention when guys are getting all macho about shit.
Obviously there are situations where stepping in is dumb. But it's interesting to realize that the fear of doing so is probably really exaggerated, especially for women, and that a chick acting like she's worried about the Mean Authority Figure rather than the Scary Homeless Guy might well be enough to embarrass MAF into backing down, at least long enough for SHG to escape with a modicum of dignity.
Not that I'm saying you should have done that BG--it's certainly not something I do as a regular thing. Just if one is torn between saying something and not, saying something is often much less scary than you imagine.
87:Nah, I am a lousy driver. I think I did drive a truck delivering something for a while. The 70s are all so unclear. Note:I quit drugs and therapy and literature in the early eighties and got it relatively together, but I don't talk about that much.
Jobs I held in the 70s:Parts inventory control and disbursement; phonebanks; various cooks and cook's helpers from pizza parlours to six table haute cousine; various assembly lines;air conditioning installation & repair; polyurethane plastics R & D and QC; other industrial QC; advertising display assembler; motel desk;aide at a school for the retarded;pot dealer...I can barely remember all the states I inhabited.
95: That's true. It's very difficult for a man to intervene in something like this without it becoming physical. It's do-able, but you have to be either a very good talker or intimidating.
aide at a school for the retarded;pot dealer
One was probably good preparation for the other.
w/d. Maybe, I'm just being legalistic, but there does seem to be a difference to me. I'd have to think through why.
95: No, I might have berated him. I wasn't exactly scared. I went by and actually walked between them. The homeless guy had retreated a bit. Without reporting it, how would berating the guard/officer have changed his future behavior?
I also thought that the guy's behavior was wrong, but I wasn't sure how wrong. The badge was all shiny, and I didn't have any paper on me. Does one just ask for a badge number? If I were to call the company, would anything be done?
Does anyone know whether it's possible to hire police as security guards? I'm quite sure that hsi uniform said "Police Security." What is that?
I've seen lots of fiction which includes police working off hours as security and have assumed that it was realistic, but can't recall a real world example right now.
You see it all the time, off-duty or retired cops working event and venue security. In some places I think that it's actually encouraged by licensing rules.
100 - the guys who deal with the guests on the Jerry Springer show are the first ones to come to mind for me.
Goes on all the time. Lot of places it's done directly through the department, although in those cases you know they're cops. My brother says it's easy overtime. Businesses or restaurants will pay to have a police presence during certain hours of operation. Overtime for hanging out in his car in the parking lot.
although in those cases you know they're cops.
I know that this sounds like a dumb question, but how would you know? I mean, his badge said police security, but it wasn't a regular police uniform.
103, 104: In those cases they're cops in police uniforms working overtime; not like your guy, who might have been a cop but if he was he was moonlighting.
"There is only one thing worse than being clever..."