MadBird
Well-known member
I'll put this here, since the snark level seems higher in the basketball forum, altho still there in others. And I come to Redbirdfan.net every day, appreciate very much what Quinn and his able assistants do here and have no complaints, and I've never blocked anyone since I like to see what all people are saying. And I've tried to lay back many many times from engaging with some of the geniuses, following the "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing" rule. It's been hard at times. Anyway . . . . .
I was reading this column today about politics, and how a political party and a cable "network" have been, let's call it hijacked, and I thought a few lines kind of capture what goes on here at Redbirdfan.net at times. I'll try to bleep out the political parts. The article is referring to "comment sections" on online sites and "chatrooms", which I'm equating with our dear forum. Thanks for listening.
I was reading this column today about politics, and how a political party and a cable "network" have been, let's call it hijacked, and I thought a few lines kind of capture what goes on here at Redbirdfan.net at times. I'll try to bleep out the political parts. The article is referring to "comment sections" on online sites and "chatrooms", which I'm equating with our dear forum. Thanks for listening.
Is the "party" becoming a dysfunctional chatroom?
In economics, Gresham’s law on currency markets holds that “bad money drives out good.” That same principle also applies to the comment sections on online sites.
In comments sections — including such mega-versions like Twitter — the nastiest commenters post more, and more obnoxiously, than the decent ones until, eventually, the decent folk just decide not to hang out anymore. The only remedy for this is comment moderation, where grownups in charge try to thwart the trolls lest they lose their more valuable customers.
In "Mr. Smith's" book is a chapter titled, “Centering the Comments Section.” In it, he explains how, as the communications director of a "presidential campaign", he courted "a news site", then run by self-described “Leninist”. The courtship didn’t work out. But "Mr. Smith" describes how "the Leninist" and other "people" embraced the strategy of pandering to the comment section warriors to boost traffic and “engagement.”
“It was the commenters,” "Mr. Smith" writes, “the hobbits who had taken charge. And they were the ones dragging us along, no matter how we assured ourselves that we were in control.”
Fast forward to today, and you can see how that process never stopped. "The network's decision to “respect the audience” - the loudest, most hardcore viewers, before and after the election — led to huge public relations, legal and financial disasters.
According to texts revealed by a lawsuit against the "network", "Mr. Jones" warned that this was folly: “What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff.”