Comments policy
I just want to post a brief note about the comments policy on this blog. Earlier today I received a visitor, Dusty Johnson, who decided to post the following few words on an old post of mine: “you fucking fag you suck”. Now, I try to approve all comments that are not obvious spam, so I thought long and hard about whether or not to approve this one (well, I considered the issue for a minute or so… which is roughly as long as it merited). Ultimately I decided to trash the comment for two reasons.
Firstly, the internet is already full of banal insults published by morons with the emotional maturity of a 13 year old, and “you fucking fag you suck” doesn’t really add anything my blog… or to the world in general. In fact, I feel that the less morons posting “you fucking fag you suck” on the web, the better.
Secondly, if I approve the comment, then my spam filter will consider anything else posted by Dusty Johnson to be legitimate. And frankly I’m not sure Dusty is the kind of person to whom I want to provide a platform.
Therefore I suggest that anyone who decides to insult me in the comments do so in a clever or amusing manner. Dusty won’t get a second chance, though, as anything clever posted using that name or email address will clearly be plagiarism. Swearing is fine (I don’t have any vocabulary hang-ups) and insults, while not exactly encouraged, are perfectly acceptable. But I’ve got to maintain some standards here, and “you fucking fag you suck” really doesn’t meet them.
Poor old Dusty’s wasted here. There are plenty of ultra-right-wing American blogs where his style of comment would be considered intellectual.
April 12th, 2010 | 5:12pm
by R J Adams
Yeah. As I said, RJ, it wasn’t that Dusty was insulting, it was the lack of effort and imagination that was put into it. I get the impression that there were a few “Must try harder”s in Dusty’s school report cards.
April 12th, 2010 | 7:49pm
by Jim Bliss