Readers Behaving Badly – Comment Rage

Many people online get upset over some topic and get offended on a personal level immediately. Instead of focusing on the issue, many people focus on their own self and start addressing an issue as if it was a personal attack on them.

Many reactionary comments and posts to different issues can be considered results of taking things too personally, while many critical and logical reactionary comments and posts about different issues can be labeled as being results of taking things too personally in order to degrade them.

Below I would like to talk about the definition of something called comment rage, a blog example where a form of comment rage flows in both directions, about whether or not comment rage can ever be justified, and some signs of comment rage.

What is comment rage?

Comment rage is simply a way to express comments written while one is emotional, angry, or taking things too personally, among a few other things. Comment rage can happen either directly via comments or readers posting their own blog posts as forms of comments. Not everyone reacts to the same thing in the exact same manner. Similarly, not all blog readers react to a certain topic in the same manner. Some people may congratulate you for writing a wonderful article, while others may feel personally attack you no matter what you write about. Such attacks can go from being using rude words to actually insulting someone with a lot of effort.

Some commentors taking things too personally on Spoken-for.org

One of the good examples of people taking things too personally is a 2005 post by Valerie titled “Why Geek Squad, Best Buy, and Compaq all suck” on Spoken-for.org. As you can guess from the title, Valerie in that post talked about her bad experience with Geek Squad. The post resulted in a lot of supporters and even more opposers, with many opponents personally attacking Valerie through insults.

Many of the comment responses she got were direct insulting attacks on her, simply because she had talked against those three companies. What is even more interesting is the reaction of some of the readers who responded by defending Valerie, and in turn attacked the very commentors, who were attacking Valerie, with one of the the most aggressive and offensive comment on that page.

I also commented on Valerie’s post, and it makes me wonder: Who was right? Who was wrong? Sure, topic wise, one can argue that the topic is right or wrong. But what about the reactions? Do some of the commentors have justification to attack Valerie because she attacked the reputation of some companies through her post? Do some of the commentors have the justification to defend Valerie by attacking those attackers?

Can comment rage ever be justified?

The answer to this question can be very alarming: relatively, yes, comment rage can be justified for many people. Imagine a situation where someone is blogging a post about the innocence of an accused murderer who is put on trial. The blogger may have reasons to think that the accused is innocent. A commentor may have reasons to beleive that the accused is guilty. Now, someone who hates murderers may comment on such a post and insult that blogger directly. To the blogger, being attacked personally may not be fair. To the commentor, attacking the blogger personally will be intentional and may be fair, as that commentor may consider their expression and disagreement to a blogger to be the same as taking action against a murderer.

Sure, the topic of the innocence of murderers has nothing to do with someone’s character, but in someone’s mind, supporting murderers in any manner can mean that someone is a #$%^& or a #$$%%&&^. If the blogger or another commentor sees such a comment with a personal attack, they can try to move the conversation away from the attacks and to the issue, if they wish. Avoiding putting the entire focus of a response comment to the question of why someone insulted the other person, without allowing the other person to explain themselves, can result in more hostility between the commentor and the blogger.

Sometimes people can use the idea of comment rage to quiet down people who disagree with them. I have myself questioned the monetary interests of some bloggers who try to tell their readers that something is good. Those bloggers feel personally offended, even though I never insult them, and I only ask questions and explain myself clearly. Does that classify me as someone who is taking things too personally? In the eyes of those bloggers, yes. How about in my view? I think my comments are perfect since they explain my reasoning and my feelings. The conclusion boils down to being relative in the eyes of many. For example, are Bes, Ronald and Simonne involved in comment rage when talking against John Chow in any manner? Not in my view. How about your view? Can the answer to this question be absolute?

Other signs of comment rage

There are many signs of comments where someone may be taking things too personally. Following are 5 of them. These are not clear identification tools; they are signs, which means there can be many times when such comments are simply disagreeing comments.

1. You talk about something non-personal and a commentor attacks you on a personal level.
2. A commentor focuses more on things in your personal life not relevant to the topic in question.
3. A commentor acting nice on some topics and bursting into anger, insults and disagreements over some specific topics.
4. You get criticized by someone, and someone else criticizes that critic on a completely new front without keeping any logic or reasoning in mind
5. Criticizing everyone else immediately without explaining anything a bit.

Conclusion

If you want to address the issue of comment rage, you have to be able to identify comments that exist solely to hurt you, and comments that exist because of taking something too personally and reacting with some kind of a virtual or non-virtual rage. Many times, the best way to get rid of comment rage is to lead the topic, and not the other person, towards the topic and away from both your and their personal feelings.

Comment rage exists in many forms online, with some very hostile comments because of people taking things too seriously when they should not, while at other times, people are labeled as being part of the comment rage crowd simply because they disagree or have something important to point out in things people do not want to be pointed out.

What do you think?

Other RA Project Articles

• Are Your Potential Readers Better Than Your Current Readers? (6)
• Blogger Anxiety – Posting (5)
• Please Don’t Give Readers Guilt Trips (6)
• Are readers obligated to appreciate bloggers? (6)
• To Follow, or Not to Follow – on Twitter (15)

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