Beneath blog posts, in the lower sections of videos and reels, and within every online forum's structure lives a seemingly essential element of life online. Comments.
The comment has been around since the beginning. Message boards and MySpace pages were replete with dogpiles of human-generated content, what we will continually in hindsight view as part of the information soup that flooded culture for decades of digital technology's reign.
Today, it's second nature to look for the comments in those nearby and never too hard to decipher places.
Comment sections are that ubiquitous feature of a protean internet that appears to many to be representative of dialogue, agency, and the democratic politics that we are told built our online world.
In reality, they are the modern day equivalent of the monologue.
I have always chosen to remove comments from my blog posts. It's never been a design constraint or fear-based decision to not include them; quite the opposite to both, in fact.
With aplomb, Seth Godin lays out his reasons for why comments lead to fear-based decision-making, not the other way around. "Instead of writing for everyone, I find myself writing in anticipation of the commenters."
In his (and my own) view, having comments is a sinecure for hedging, for evading responsibility, for hiding from the truth. But I don't see his analysis go far enough.
Comments are monologues in the wrong place. No one leaves a comment on someone's work of art, their upload, their post and expects to engage thoughtfully in charitable dialogue.
Ever since the upvote, comment like, and attention engineers got to the comment sections of internet platforms, the game of comments has been one of provocateurs and rage-baiters.
Quick, caustic, and carefully myopic critiques make for popular notes on Youtube videos. Polarizing takes and hashtags attract engagement on Instagram.
On a blog post, comments become drip feeds of more blog posts themselves that the blog's owner must host, oversee, and manage. These are further weighed down by the parenthetical rabbit holes of the ignoramus or the deflective whataboutisms of the insincere.
To append a thought-piece, creative work, or unfeigned artistic contribution with the toxic mess a comment section is designed to attract is to invite chaos and barbarism into your home, your corner of the internet, and your vital practice.
To engage in a different way and invite honest dialogue, that thing that should be the goal of all earnest commenters, requires using channels that are not public, performative, and pejorative by default...
...To that end, my website has the option to "Write a letter" tucked away in the footer as a callback to that analog option for engaging in lengthy, intentionally-crafted dialogue that serves both the reader and writer. 50-word and week-long reply minimums allow me space to respond with intention and add value, while reducing the cognitive burden of the hyperactive hivemind to keep me free to keep up my practice.
If ever there was a time to reconsider the spaces and designs we choose to be a part of online, it was surely today, it is certainly now...