I’m constantly reading things on the internet, everyday; in fact it’s my only source of information.  I’ve disciplined myself enough that I don’t hear the useless chatter of traditional forms of consuming news.  I’m happy that I don’t know the exact circumstances of what Hank Williams Jr. said or what happened to him and I still don’t know what that latest murder court case was about or what happened.  I don’t need that noise and I’m better for it.

The current internet though has the comment option at the bottom of almost every piece of content published.  It’s so prevalent that when websites like Grantland don’t give the unwashed masses the ability to include their uninformed two cents, it feels quiet, like a library.  Often I do like the comments on articles as it can give a sense of the audience’s reaction, which alarmingly lines up with the original content in the first place. The only disconnect I can think of is The A.V. Club where the content is usually smart but the comments are among the dumbest.

But recently I’ve been reading the things I always read on the internet and enjoying them, but avoiding the comments.  I’m not sure exactly why, but I’m just sick of the “sounds interesting” or “why this is wrong” or “exactly” that you usually get.  If you have something to say, publish some media yourself and put some thought into it.  Do enough research that you can make a informed thought that pushes the conversation forward.  Curated sites like Hacker News do this all the time in which well thought out responses are created in curated on a topic, today it was the topic of Google’s new programming language Dart.  Until then, don’t waste everyone’s time.