Bloviation | About the Comment Section

This is my very last first blog posting.

Getting a blog started, at least for me, was far easier than losing my virginity. In both cases, it seemed to me that everyone else got into it 2-3 years before I did. Also, in both cases I was at a loss for words, but this time it's taking me more than a minute to finish the job. I'm also expecting more groaning to result from my labors now, but enough about my writing style, what I want to talk about is the concept of the "comment section", like the ones you see attached to the end of online news or opinion articles, or blog posts like this one.

One of the whole points of blogging is to get feedback. For example, the comment section for this very post can be conveniently found to the left, right, top, or bottom of the page, depending on how I set up the layout at the time you are reading this. Assuming I convince enough people to come here and read this (so far, just you... SUCKER!), I can expect that eventually someone will be kind enough, and brave enough to tell me what they think of my writing. Keep in mind, I may have spent hours (~4.5) pouring over every detail of every word of every line of a post, deciding if "or" is funnier than "but" in a given instance (it was "or" this time), but in mere seconds, an anonymous parent or spouse (of mine) can derail my humorous intent by pointing out a typo (I friggin' HAT typos!). And as a blogger, it is expected that I will think nothing of the fact, that I will just accept it as normal, that someone compared the results of my personal life experience, blood, and tears to badger excrement. Keep in mind, I am not referring to the good kind of badger excrement, which is awesome with peanut butter!

There is, of course, a risk to getting too comfortable with the meme of comment sections. You may have noticed by now that things we accept in one area of life, over time, meander and squeeze themselves into others. For example, there was a time (circa 1977) when it was considered rude to call someone, anonymously, at dinner time. And then... telemarketing was invented! If we are to believe the PR department at National Geographic, telemarketing was invented by Time Magazine as an effort to get more people to commit acts of violence, thus increasing their subscriber base since more people are apparently interested in pictures of man-made gore than viewing rhinos on safari.

The first few years of telemarketing sales calls were met with confusion and hostility, such as the following re-enactment:

TELEMARKETER
(matter of factly)

So you can see that you will save almost twenty dollars a month using our family plan long distance service.

ME
(suddenly confounded)
Whuh, long distance service? Wait a minute, you're not my wife!

ME hangs up the phone in anger

And then after years and years of more telemarketing calls timed to coincide exactly during Norm's opening joke on Cheers ("Hi Sam. Vera's a bitch." -Norm), eventually we relaxed and warmed up to the telemarketer's charms, and learned to embrace the sweet sweet values of their wares.

TELEMARKETER
(with pauses, as if poorly read from a script)
Joining... the Fruit... of... the... Month... club has many... residual... advantages.
(beat)
Besides all the money you will save... on your produce purchases... You'll get the obvious health benefits... of eating more... fruit.

ME
(dreamily)
What are you wearing?

Today, telemarketing has, of course evolved into email spam, one of our most cherished forms of communication. In fact, according to many linguistics experts, the art of the telemarketing/spam advertising pitch has gone on to replace iambic pentameter in modern Western culture. And because we have accepted this intrusive marketing with such aplomb, we have no problem when web-browsing, for example, with accepting cookies from every corner of the internet, including web sites hosted in Germany.

Now, in your mind [cue harp glissando] try to project faaaaar into the future, to when our children are a couple of years older than they are now. Try to imagine... wait, what? You don't have any children? Fine. imagine my children, or better yet, someone else's children, like those annoying brats you wanted to kill on line at the supermarket last Saturday (fine, those *were* my children). Here's the mental image of the future I'm getting: Classified ads! And zippers. And more chains and piercings per square inch of exposed flesh. I mean, why waste a good piercing when you could be selling ad space?


At this point, you need to be asking yourself, "Where *is* this guy going with his argument?" The answer is, to take a quick break for some delicious badger excrement. You know, the good kind.
Okay, back...

So what I am saying is, the bloggers of today accept and relish the concept of the "comment section." But just like with intrusive advertising, as we get used to near-real time feedback on our writing output, it is only a matter of time before we find the "comment section" meme intrude into other parts of our lives. For example, the workplace.

Many of us work on computers all day. The rest of us sit at our desks and work with the computers (see what I did there?). It is well known that our supervisors are already tracking our internet usage, reading our emails, micromanaging our work output, and dating our sister. It is simply a natural extension for them to place a comment section onto our monitor desktops, easily located to the left, right, top, or bottom of our actual work application (depending on the layout they use that day). This way, while they are watching us work, they can comment on everything we do from one moment to the next. It won't be long before we see our work comment box fill up with critiques like:

• "Please use thicker border outline around cells F4:J23" -Your Boss
  
• "I'm afraid you just misspelled the word "homunculus" in the second paragraph of the quarterly report." -Your Boss's Boss
  
• "Holy crap! Was that a Paper Clip with eyeballs!?" -Mario The Janitor
  

And just as telemarketing evolved into junk mail, and then spam, our work "comment section" will eventually find its way into our homes, into our bedrooms, where the same anonymous spouses and parents will rate our performances, practically in real time. With the invention and proliferation of digital, pocket web cams, (thanks to National Geographic, and Time Magazine!) they will broadcast us in X-rated, digitally-streamed data packets over the internet, to web sites hosted in Germany. How will we handle the advice and criticism (almost typo'd circumcision there... but that makes sense) for that? You know in your heart of hearts this is the future we're likely facing, so you may as well practice now. Will you handle the criticism for *those* comments the same way a blogger is expected to handle her own?

• "You need to workout more!" -Your Wife
  
• "Your foreplay is noobsauce" -Your Wife's Girlfriend
  
• "Holy crap! Was that a Paper Clip with eyeballs!?" -Mario the Janitor
  

Anyway, welcome to my blog, a mix of humor, topics relating to my industry (special effects), things I find interesting, and the ever-relocating-comments section