Welcome to the inaugural issue of Commenting Comment, the only print magazine dedicated to Internet comments and their creators. Our staff, many of whom arrived from the now defunct Letters to the Editor Monthly, is excited to bring you the most in-depth coverage of Internet comments around.
First up, a tl;dr (for new subscribers: “too long; didn’t read”) synopsis of this month’s content:
- We travelled far and wide to find six of the country’s most prolific Internet commenters and investigated: Do they have jobs, or do they just speed-read hundreds of articles all day and comment on them? Why do they feel the urge to write so many things in a small box at the bottom or on the side of a screen? When’s the last time they laughed, but not in a creepy, malevolent way?
- The vertiginous rise and precipitous fall of Donald Steadman, the Internet’s first commenter
- How early is too early to teach your kids to comment?
- Blind item! Which celebrity is commenting all around the Web about how he's a combination of Steve Jobs and Versace, under the handle CantyayEast77?
- Pending approval: a behind-the-scenes look at how comment-section curators do their job
- Commenting via Twitter: Passing fad or paradigm shift?
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- • Subcommenting trends to watch for in 2015
- When to play the “As an [X] who [Y]s” card
- WHY COMMENTING IN ALL CAPS WILL GRAB ATTENTION: A DEEP DIVE
- The most effective single-word put-down: “no” or “meh”? We ask the experts
- How to troll in seven easy steps
- Sarcasm vs. snark: the finest of lines
- Our predictions for this year’s Commenties Awards—and what to expect from ban-worthy host funnyguy64
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Commenting on the Internet is an important, God-given right. (Bet we’re going to get a lot of blowback for using “God-given”!) It’s crucial to our democracy to give everyone a voice, especially those who use the handle PatriotEagle1776 and maintain that 9/11 was an inside job coördinated by Al Gore. Without such shadowy figures in libraries, their parents’ basements, and that same Starbucks table for the past nine hours to offer cogent opinions that respond to previous comments with decorum and grace, we might never have learned that Barack Obama is a Kansan socialite; that anyone who identifies as Christian is clearly a “right-wing nut job”; and that all journalists are whiny hacks or obese sluts.
Only these courageous, anonymous souls who comment on a publication religiously (whoops again!) have the authority to let its employees know that it has not only become a flagrantly disreputable outlet, but has, in fact, sunk lower than its less respected rival, which they literally did not think was possible.
We look forward to bringing you news and analysis on everything venomous, affronted, and fractionally informed, and hope you’ll consider subscribing to the Commenting Comment Premium Digital Edition, for which comments are disabled.
Your an idiot,
The Curator-in-Chief