There Are No Comments

Just to get to something before I start posting in earnest, you may notice there is not an option for posting comments.

There will not be one.

This is a deliberate decision on my part, as opposed to just not having certain features on the site cause I don’t know where all the buttons are yet.

There are no comments for several reasons. Again, one of my primary inspirations for blogging is Andrew Sullivan’s site, The Daily Dish, and he decided fairly early not to allow comment posts on the site, although he did sometimes respond to mail. At first, free speech advocate that I am, I didn’t agree with this idea, but as I’ve gotten more and more involved in social media, I have come to see the wisdom of it. And when I refer to involvement in social media, I mean Facebook. And I’ve noticed that posting something usually sets up a debate that really isn’t a debate, just two or more people reiterating their pre-decided talking points and not actually getting anywhere. The more disturbing aspect of this was when two people would get into a particularly angry argument and one of those people wasn’t ME. It was like my post had been hijacked. So in addition to losing the post, there was a lot of negative feeling associated with it. (And if you’re one of my Facebook friends, and you feel the need to ask ‘am I the person he’s talking about?’ … you probably are.)

The other issue being that as a free speech advocate, I posted on Facebook because I wanted debate. And again, I eventually saw the wisdom of changing that opinion. I frequently advocate for libertarian positions, and while some of my leftist friends will go into detailed discussions of the movement’s flaws, that at least indicates they’re taking the subject seriously. Then there’s people who invoke “Somalia!” as an example of libertarianism in action, as though some guys in Mogadishu got together with Ayn Rand and Chicago School economist books and decided to run the country, or as if “Somalia!” was a magic word that strikes you with lightning and gives you superpowers. A similar line of “argument” is when they’ll say something like “if you don’t like the government, why don’t you get John Galt to run this for you?”

(The joke being that for every reader who thought, ‘that poster obviously never read Atlas Shrugged,’ there’s at least two more thinking, ‘who is John Galt?’)

Now sometimes on Facebook I will look at the pages of certain lingerie models and former PLAYBOY models and make the mistake of enlarging the photo which causes the comments to become visible. And while I am hardly a politically correct man (for one thing, I like looking at nude and lingerie models) I really can’t understand why a woman would get involved in that business, or even non-sexual cosplay, given the knuckle-dragger comments I see on their pages. Adrienne Curry, for one, has been very outspoken about this. Generally speaking, such comments are made by men whose names and mangling of the English language indicate they live in countries where white slavery is still legal, and their posts usually involve putting the woman through maneuvers that are probably still illegal in Utah.

On the other hand, I consider the medium, and I think, “what do you expect? It’s FUCKING FACEBOOK.” It is a perfect example of casting pearls before swine. And then there’s Instagram and Twitter, which are apparently designed for people who think that Facebook is too intellectual.

To me, when you go “Somalia!” to a libertarian, you’re basically saying, “My opinion can be summarily dismissed because I’ve demonstrated that I have no clue what I’m talking about.” It is the political equivalent of going on the lingerie model’s Facebook page and posting “YOU GOT GRATE JUGS LETS MAKE FUCK”.

Don’t be that guy.

And don’t waste my time.

If you really need to express your opinion, do what I did: Research how to start a blog, and then just do it.

Having said that, I’d obviously appreciate it if this site got some traffic, and I’d be willing to correspond to somebody who is serious. I am also willing to post the most ridiculous trolls to the site for the purpose of making fun of their stupidity.

Sorta like this guy.