About hateful comments

Just found out that back in my homeland they are discussing the possibility to legally stop people from commenting under the newspaper articles. This is a very interesting development as we are still in a early stages of Internet and obviously the whole humanity needs to learn how to use it without being hurtful, hateful and aggressive. If anybody told me just a few years ago that comments might be blocked, I would find it offensive and dangerous but right now this seems as a perfectly logical solution.

Not long ago, in some other, pre-Covid times, there was a time when comments were actually funny. Often I would laugh out loud because of some wise remark or a punch line that was million times more entertaining than the original article itself. Obviously, when not under the stress and in the normal circumstances people can actually be genuinely funny and checking out the comments became regular part of reading the news - first you read the news, than you go for the comments. Or you go straight for the comments because there is always some funny guy there who will make you spill your coffee. But something happened with time and we must all had noticed that comments eventually turned ugly.

Instead being funny, entertaining or witty, they just became vitriolic, hurtful, ignorant, racist and psychotic - in the turmoil of uncertainty about everything (the virus itself, the news, medicine, scientists, government, God) people became more and more aggressive, protected by anonymity of Internet and it became almost a norm that under everything and anything there will always be a psycho who will argue, rage and spew abuses. 

The longer our present drama continued, the more these comments became hurtful. I have noticed this because I am following the news and out of old habit, continued to check comment section but it became so upsetting that I have stopped. Reading these comments, you might get the impression that compassion, understanding and goodness has completely been erased and eliminated from the world. I am not even talking about disagreements, I am talking about articles about Covid-connected deaths, where people still argue, curse and refuse to believe them - there was a doctor's suicide recently in my homeland and abuse in comments sections were just incredibly alarming. Instead of feeling compassion for somebody who obviously couldn't take it anymore, the anonymous mob was just horrible. I had to stop reading these comments because it felt disturbing, like I am witnessing a public lynch (of someone who had already committed suicide). 

The first sign that things might change was when I discovered that many times comments were blocked on youtube - I actually wanted to compliment something (in general I prefer to leave a positive remark, instead of adding to negativity) and it was not possible. And that was perfectly fine, I understand why it was done and it made a perfect sense - you are here to watch the video clip and whatever opinions you might have, keep them for yourself. Than Yahoo News did exactly the same - they simply blocked the comment section. The news are here, from all around the world, but the wide, anonymous mass is now unable to spread the hatred, anger, frustration and their mad theories. And seriously, I have absolutely no problem with that - people will always complain and in this case they might claim their freedom of speech was taken away from them, but in reality the haters will simply be unable to continue their misogynist, racist and awful business. One day somebody will have to look back and figure it out who are these anonymous haters, so brave behind their nicknames - for now, we need to carefully re-organise and somehow arrange this virtual space. I am all for closing comment sections completely and serving simply articles or whatever the web site is for - people who want to continue discussing, arguing and hating will find forums where to do so, but it won't be so drastically out in the open.