Shinin' at me

[degringolade]

 

Post-Impressionism / Vincent van Gogh/ Olive Grove - Bright Blue Sky

Bit of a ramble today.  I am trying to get a better handle on things so I am just in  “stream of consciousness” today.  

Screed

Dunning-Kruger is rampant here in the good old USA.  It was always to be expected.  In a word, it isn’t a bug, it is a feature of the education/child rearing system here in the good ol’ US of A.  I think that nearly everyone has this to some degree.  Comes with the participation trophies and self-esteem I guess.

You may be asking why I am mentioning this obscure little piece of trivia, after all, since everyone has it, doesn’t that mean that I carry the taint as well?  Well, yes, I do in fact carry the trait.  But I try desperately to soften its effects by actually shutting up for a little while and thinking before I act/speak.  It doesn’t always work, but It keeps me from looking stupid a lot of the time.

Caveats now laid out, let’s talk about comments here in blogoland.  I never looked at comments much when I had the old blog and those kinda things happened reasonably often. Most of the time I didn’t bother turning on comments because when someone actually commented on what I was writing, the comments usually ignored anything that I said to support my views and just went for ad hominem attacks.  Here on Dreamwidth, with my low profile and low audience numbers, I haven’t had to deal with it much.  A while ago I got a nasty infestation of trolls and I almost turned off the comments.

Where I am going with this is that lately I have been reading other blogs comments.  This might have to do with my morbid fascination just how badly at our erstwhile leadership here in the land ‘o the free is fucking the Ukraine.  I spend only minimal time reading the pronouncements of the mainstream media as they seem to be shills for the government rather that any kind of independent check.  So I read blogs that appear to know what they are talking about and try to strip away any bias in an attempt to figure out just what the fuck is going on.

What this has to do with comments is simple.  If you read the actual post that the author puts up, you can at least identify his point of view and use some of his logic/thoughts to improve your own worldview.  This is how thoughts are burnished and can come closer to an understanding of what you are trying to comprehend.  

But the comments, especially the trolls, are a different kind of understanding.  I do read comments on open threads when blogs put them up.  I have a hunch that this is a way for the blog’s owner to chum for ideas for new posts.  Sound plan by the authors.

But doing this chumming must be a little frustrating.  From my POV, the ore that these blog owners are mining appears to be pretty low grade.  If it isn’t fawning, it is trolling.  Maybe 5% of the total is thought out and adds to the conversation.  But, I suppose that is the way of most things.