After five years of searching using every available piece of technology from Deep Blue to the Hubble Telescope to the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have discovered something worse than YouTube comments. And by that I mean I called them and said "Hey, turn all that shit off.
I found it." Ladies and gentlemen, having already outed myself at Super Bowl time as a football fan, it is my sad responsibility to report that NFL.
com has added a comment section to game pages.
• CUTLER WHO PIC GUY KINDA LIKE FAVRE HUH?LOL SUCKER
greenbay111 | 4 minutes ago• the funny thing is no bear fans are in here, haha where are all those guys that were talking about cutler, the pro bowl QB we've always needed, BEARS SUPERBOWL haha
thehorseshoe20 | 4 minutes ago• 4 picks for jay cutler hay all packer fans didnt all the bears fans say they were gunna kill us
packfann2 | 5 minutes ago• STEELCITY WE WON HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH NOW SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE
ozzz | 5 minutes ago• 87 yard td vs 4 picks n 1 td hmmmm….i guess GO ORTON. LOL
imanyeaman57 | 4 minutes ago• CUTLER SUCKED 2 NITE.HE LOOKED LIKE KYLE ORTEN OUT THEIR. BRIAN URLACKER GONE WOOP HIS A S S FO F U C K I N UP
bigdawg420 | 4 minutes ago• I refuse to make excuses, a win is a win and a lost is a lost.
deucewyld | 5 minutes ago• There ya go sparky is already making the excuses for Cutler Hasnt anyone told you excuses are like Butt holes everyone has one
wildman2017 | 5 minutes ago
Is this it? I mean, is this it for us as a species? Are we about five to ten years away from jettisoning language altogether in favor of grunting and banging on rocks? Granted, this is not a good sample, as the average hardcore football fan is A) fat, B) an idiot, C) drunk, and D) a fat drunken idiot.
But every once in a while I have a moment at which I'm forced to step back and stare in abject horror at the way we communicate with one another.
The key to enjoying a hot dog is active denial. You know you're eating ground assholes. If you want to enjoy your hot dog, don't think about it. Internet comments outside of the self-selected community of political blogs I enjoy are the hot dog ingredients to me. I know how stupid most of this country is. I know. I realize that the guy next to me on the bus probably can't string a sentence together; that there are college students who can't spell or understand subject-verb agreement; that the vast majority of Americans' preferred form of addressing one another involves taunting, shouting, and words like "bitch" or "dawg"; that one in five of my fellow voting-aged citizens cannot read this paragraph.
I go to great lengths to enjoy portions of my day by putting all of this out of my mind.
Generally I succeed; even Glenn Reynolds' and Michelle Malkin's shit is in sentences and is comprehensible. But websites that draw in a broader cross-section of society burst my bubble. It scares me. And while we are wise to remain wary about idealizing the past, I steadfastly refuse to believe that, regardless of changes in medium, people communicated with one another like this fifty years ago.
I don't think we can maintain this rate of decline for another fifty years.
Daniel says:
Wat the fuk you talking about man!? HATYR!! I WILL NOW TYPE IN CAPS TO MAKE MY POINT! HERE IT IS! CUTLER CAN'T THROW! HE CAN'T. AND IF LOVIE DON'T LISTEN, FIRE HIM. RIGHT NOW.
The all-caps rant is essentially 60% of sports talk radio hosts and their general point of attack.
Jeff says:
But at the same time it's surprising to note that sports journalism (I'm particularly thinking of ESPN) usually maintains a high standard of integrity and professionalism. Even their shows that are commentary (PTI, Around the Horn, etc.), are some of the best off-the-cuff examples of proper, evidence-based argumentation one can find in the popular media.
Now that I'm thinking about it, Fox News is like if ESPN decided to be always pro Yankees all the time. It's a ridiculous thought. Yet the one influences political discourse with hyperbole, and the other only covers sports (but does it as journalists and commentators should). What a world.
CassieC says:
This phenomenon of overt idiocy and very middling literacy can actually be seen more optimistically: technology is widening the circle of participation in written discourse. We didn't read the idiots and barely literates (note, these are separate groups) because they didn't have access to printed media.
My hope is that as access is broadened, the level of literacy will also rise. The contrary would be dreadful.
Peggy says:
Come on, now, Ed. How can that be worse than YouTube comments? Nobody's even called anybody a fag yet!
dbsmall says:
I'm not drunk.
Johnnyboy says:
One can teach a chimp to eventually learn how to use a keyboard. It doesn't mean he'll turn into Shakespeare. Giving the over-breeding goons the ability to fume and holler online basically lowers the bar for humanity. Face it, there's more of them than there are of us. (is of us? am of us? be of us? oh lord, it's happening already.) Thanks to rap and other forms of street jargon, online commenting and language in general will continue to degrade. Look at texting/Twitter, for clues. Should manufacturers put a new key on a QWERTY to signify some sort of guttural animal noise? If so, I'm done.
CassieC says:
"over-breeding goons" ? "there’s more of them than there are of us" ? "Thanks to rap" ?
despite your overt and charming racism, Johnnyboy, most of the illiterates and certainly a large majority of the idiots online are white, just like you, because whites are still the majority of the US population. Minorities in this country tend to be less idiotic, not because of genetics, but because some level of smarts is not optional for minorities in a racist society.
Also, if one considers that income is still a barrier to access to the internet, and that it is much easier to be dumb as bricks and earn a living as a white idiot than as a black idiot, the white idiots are certainly more highly represented online. Just like you, Johnnyboy.
Parrotlover77 says:
I see this is less of a sign of overall decline of society and more of an increase in dumbasses in front of keyboards. Remember in the 80s and early 90s when being a nerd was uncool? These people are the cool crowd all grown up. They probably first learned to type on a phone for text messasing, which explains the overuse of chat acronyms. Eventually they got their first laptop, found out that the NFL has a way to trash talk other people online while drunk, and there you go!
J. Dryden says:
There's something to be said about 'speed' (velocity, not recreational pick-me-up) as a factor in the moronic nature of on-line discourse. In Ye Olden Tymes, one had to, in public, wait one's turn before speaking. No longer–everyone can babble at once, which means no one's being forced to listen to an opposing viewpoint before responding. And in the age of snail mail and printed media, the amount of time between input, response, and reception encouraged a slow, measured response. Or at least a grammatically correct one.
Type as fast as you can, and you're going to make spelling and grammar errors, and also fall into spoken idiom, which is what you're more instinctively inclined to communicate in/with.
In other words, put Betrand Russell on a bulletin board, get him hyped up about whatever the hell the subject is, and he'll find himself quickly devolving into someone who types in caps and uses "fag" as a rhetorical coup de grace. The fact that he will never be held accountable for his opinion, inasmuch as his online persona is "LogicalPositivistaBaby", only fuels this degeneration.
It's the media/mode as much as it is the inherent stupidity of many, many people. It's not that we inherently suck; it's that the venue encourages our suckiest behaviors.
None of which makes the outcome any more dire.
ben says:
I'm not convinced that things weren't just as bad fifty years ago…and 100 years ago. Even if we aren't Republicans, we still like to romanticize the past and pretend that the 1950's was just like it is in Back to the Future. People were just as stupid back then…it was just harder to show it. There were just as many illiterates, racists, and morons. They just didn't have the opportunity to broadcast it to the world.
j says:
agreed, JD! "We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us."
SeaTea says:
It's just as bad in other languages too. You should read the comments on French websites. Older French people are just as concerned about the degradation of their language as some of us are about ours. Texting seems to be an equal-opportunity grammar and spelling killer, no matter what the language.
P.S. Is "goon" really a racial term? Was not aware.
jazzbumpa says:
Cassie –
I really think you have imposed an interpretation on Johnnyboy's post that is different from what he intended. There is nothing overtly racist in anything he said in this comment.
Rap is very popular in the suburbs. Its commerical success is very largely due to white kids.
Did you not notice his mention of texting and twitter?
Racism is real and pervasive in our society. Choosing to see it where it doesn't exist doesn't move any dialog forward.
CassieC says:
@jazzbumpa: the trend of people, both white and black, to willfully pass over the blatant racism of their fellow citizens has me seriously worried. I think that this willful obliviousness might be even more dangerous than the racist secessionist wingnuts themselves. So in the spirit of trying to understand you: why can't you see it? Why do you refuse to see it? It's not even subtle!
– goon: insult used on black men, check
– over-breeding: refers to the brown unwashed masses, never used for white folks: check
– more of "them" than "us": who are them and us, pray tell? how can you interpret it any other way? and yes, it's factually wrong, but that doesn't seem to stop racists from using the argument of "we're not really a majority, we're oppressed too!" See: Germans vs. Jewish Germans in the 1930s. The argumentation of the Nazis was a giant whine about how powerful the Jewish minority was. Anyway, check.
– rap and street jargon: the context here, I think it's quite clear, is not the suburban streets of Winchester. Twitter is a place to look for clues of contamination, not the cause itself. Check.
Anyway, it must be nice to live in your world, jazzbumba, and many many Americans choose to do that. I'm just wondering if you think it's going to help when the crazies come for you too.
Ed says:
I'm sorry, Cassie, but I have to disagree completely. Fundamentalists, being pro life zealots and with their Quiverfull movements, are routinely mocked for their breeding habits. Uneducated people crap out more kids. They made a movie about it.
I have never once heard the term "goon" used racially. That said, my friend Dr. Urbandictionary does state that this is a derogatory term in some parts of the country. But you have to recognize that there are large segments of the population for which this usage is unfamiliar.
"Them" and "us" quite clearly refers to intelligent people vs. people of the kind referenced in my post, unless you choose to take it completely out of context. In that case, Them vs Us looks a lot more sinister.
Ed says:
Oh, and Peggy, there are TONS of gay accusations. The random screenshot I took just happened to not have any.
During the Monday Night game, the first comment I saw was "I bet you like to play hide the sausage with your butt." It wasn't spelled or punctuated properly, but I think I've conveyed its basic theme.
Ed says:
In a piece of follow-up unscientific research, a google image search for "goon" turns up nothing but the (white) comic book character and the occasional hockey player, as "goon" is the traditional term for a player with no skills other than fighting.
The comic book character "The Goon" is a square-jawed, hulking man who isn't too bright. That is the usage of the term that is familiar to me.
beau says:
Cassie, “over-breeding goons” ? “there’s more of them than there are of us” ?
Sounds like he's talking about FoxNews fans to me. Read together with the chimp thing and the rap thing I see where you're coming from. But I still think you're reaching.
Dryden, I was gonna say something about you sucking all the fun out of this thread. Then I got to “LogicalPositivistaBaby”. Nice.
beau says:
Damn it. Will I never learn to hit refresh before posting a comment?
Bob Hopeless says:
Coincidentally, I was just pondering this degradation after looking at a feature in my local Metro paper where they print athletes' Twitters. Not to pick on pro athletes (most of whom have received some form of a college "education") but I don't really read any other Twitters. Twittering, if it lasts, is going to be the end of us. I'm 51 years old and already feel like I can't figure out what the hell people are talking about.
kiki says:
If you really want to be frightened, just take a look at the comments on ANY story on the AOL home page. Really, pick a story, any story, doesn't matter what the subject is. That is all. I can't explain further. Go there and you will see…..
Johnnyboy says:
Thanks to everyone that came to my defense re: Cassie's racial rant. I find it wholly ironic if not somewhat humorous that Cassie thinks I'm a racist as I have African-American and Indian members in my family via marriage and in my extended family via friendships.
My only knowledge of the word goon is Alice the Goon from the Popeye cartoon and the fact that it's used for Mafia bouncer-types that are used for muscle jobs (i.e. "Get one of your goons to go dump this body"). I've never known to be used as a racist comment, more a body/mental type. Just out of curiosity, what part of the country is that used as a racist insult?
Rap is not an ethnic-only thing these days at all. Most of the kids in my area are white and listen to it more than rock. It's a strange world out there, but I didn't create that phenom. My comment was more about the slang terminology and short-cut phrasing/bad english it uses and how that can pervade speech patterns of young, impressionable teens. Of any race.
As far as the "more of them than us" comment… well, it's basically true, but not racist. There are far more illiterate and uneducated people – of all races – than there are of literate, well-spoken people here in the U.S. Actually, when I was writing it, my mental image was one of hordes of over-breeding, mouth-breathing white people which one can commonly find in many 7-eleven's and Walmarts on a given night. I only know this because I often go to Walmart for the kick-ass pizza you can get in the deli, which I eat while I watch… you guessed it: Football.
Daniel says:
Goon is not racial. When I think "goon," I think about Popeye's arch-enemy Bluto. I think Bluto is a goon because he kidnaps Olive Oil on a regualr basis much to the chagrin of our hero Popeye. No one I know uses goon racially.
Daniel says:
*Olive Oyl.
Robert says:
When I read 'more of them than there are of us" I thought "The Marching Morons" by Kornbluth, which I greatly enjoyed being horrified by reading. That story was also (AFAIK) the inspiration for "Idiocracy", which I have not seen, and cannot comment on. The original story is quite bleak.
Also, my husband and both our adopted sons are black. We do not listen to rap – closest is my twelve year old son's Linkin Park CDs. Both of them (the sons) get corrected when they use improper language. As parents, our standards are sufficiently high that using 'stupid' as a derogatory term counts as improper, much less actual obscenities. Our goal is to get them to adulthood in such shape that they will be standing head, shoulders, trunk and groin above most of their peers in literacy, basic knowledge and overall social responsibility. They may come to appreciate this in time.
I don't tweet, but when I send text messages I spell everything out and use punctuation. Of course, I _am_ forty-eight.
And Cassie – as a white man married for fourteen years to a black man, and father to two adopted black sons – you're not part of the solution.
takethatcassie says:
Whabam!
Johnnyboy says:
The goon looks pretty white to me, but she also looks a bit like a tranny or cross dresser. Not that there's anything wrong with that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs16kGWWqt8