Jane, You Ignorant Slut by Jennifer L. Knox

I’m reticent to write for blogs because of Comment Field Bullies (CFBs). If you’ve ever written for one, or had your own, the odds are that they’ve made your life miserable for a few days.

I don’t even read blogs anymore, really—because when I finish a post that someone took the time to write  (maybe it’s not brilliant—maybe it’s too brilliant and I don’t understand a word of it) up pop the CFBs, trashing the joint like rednecks at a state park: Carving their names into trees, kicking empty beer bottles in the lake, tossing Aquanet cans in the camp fire, and hollering loud enough to scare the animals away.  They’re exactly the kind of Yahoos I want to avoid when I have a moment to catch up on the news in Poetryland.

And, like rednecks, you can’t reason with CFBs. “Excuse me, the park’s here for all of us. Could you guys could keep it down…or maybe just pick up your trash?”

“You don’t like it?! What are you gonna do, little baby? I read your last book!! It was for babies!!! Aw, is the little baby cry now?  Hmmm?!?” They throw lit fire crackers at your feet as you flee.

I’ll borrow my definition for a CFB from “The Six Types of Blog Commentors” by marketing website Itty Biz.

You got your Selfless Emoters and Self-Centered Emoters, Worshipping Starf*kers and Upwardly Mobile Starf*kers (which sound like a yoga poses), Genuine Dissenters and…Asshole Dissenters.

 “The Asshole Dissenter is commenting to either make himself look good or you look dumb. He’s disagreeing because it makes him feel cooler or smarter than you, or because he’s defending himself against a real or perceived attack. This type of commentor can often be found ripping apart what you said and referring to you as ‘my friend’ somewhere in the comment text.”

 CFBs are Asshole Dissenters.

Their “comments” inevitably get personal—if not towards the writer, towards other commentors: “You would say that, Todd, because you’re a moron,” or “Jane, you ignorant slut.” Like Self-Centered Emoters , they feel very strongly about things—mostly about how wrong everybody else is. To quote Stevens, they are “the wind that lashes everything at once.”

They’re so emphatic, you may wonder, “Is this person right? Am I ‘selfishly diluting the sanctity of American vernacular’ ? ”

If a stranger walks into my apartment raving about a blatantly stupid thing I've done, my first reaction is to believe that I’ve done something wrong.  If I find out this person did the same thing to everyone in my building, I think, “What a friggin' whackjob.”

When the Harriet blog first started on the The Poetry Foundation's website, I was impressed with the manners of the commentors. I went away, and when  I came back, about a year later, the CFBs had totally trashed the place.

Then Harriet posted this.

A year later, Harriet mothballed their comment fields entirely (and yes, I do read it more now).

I asked editor Cathy Halley if they scrapped the comment fields because CFBs. “Our decision to evolve Harriet was based on the fact that so many vibrant conversations are happening on poets' personal blogs, on Facebook, etc. Rather than trying to host those conversations, we felt it was important to acknowledge them and send folks to where they naturally occur.”

Isn’t that a nice way to phrase it? Seriously.

Many blogs no longer automatically post comments—they must be approved first. No doubt by someone very sick of CFBs.

My favorite poetry blog is written by a hilariously brilliant dude who makes me feel smarter every time I visit. He gets a good deal of traffic, so of course, they love taking dumps in his comment field. “Why do you let these yo-yos on your blog?” I asked him. “I basically see comment boxes as like a party where invited and uninvited guests come in and start shit and sometimes you've just got to go in there and turn the firehose on everyone.”

Do other niche bloggers suffer this blight of Asshole Dissenters? My friend’s a jewelry designer. The kind of comments she gets on her blog could not be less dissenting. “Way to go!” and “Gorgeous!” and “It reminds me of Paris!”

So why are poets besieged by CFBs? I heard once that the more marginalized a population is, the more propensity individuals in that population have to marginalize each other. Animal Farm.

When I asked my friends (none of them would allow me to mention them by name) for their thoughts on CFBs, this was my favorite.

“1. By definition, identifying as an Important Professional Poet (IPP) requires pervasive grandiose thinking, which is a sign of clinical narcissism; many (if not all) self-described IPPs are narcissists.

2. Like all narcissists, IPPs have no inner sense of value or selfhood, so they need constant external proof that they are valuable and alive.

3. IPPs read the entire internet, from cover to cover, every few hours, posting squibs here and there, just to make sure they still exist as IPPs. They fantasize that everyone is talking about them everywhere, all the time.

4. When IPPs can't drum up enough external proof of their greatness, they become terrified and enraged, because to them, without continual external validation, they would cease to exist.”

And with that, below is an virgin comment field in which my infantile effigy should burn as brightly and long as a wheelbarrow full of whale blubber.

 

Comments

[Pete Roberts]

Jen, you ignore and slough

any rude comments!

[Jason Schneiderman]

Well said!!

[shanna]

What she said

[Michael Smith]

Funny and sad and true and altogether entertaining.

[Lemon Hound]

What she said.

With emotislaps.

[Stacey]

First, the guy in the picture is HOT!

I didn't know Harriet disabled its comments altogether. After a while it seemed as if two or three of the same people were just screaming at each other. I often wonder about the ideal mix of comments. I wish we had more here but I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about that. I had to ban one guy who would hijack the space with his long unintelligible screeds - he would shout down everyone in the room like a baby with a full diaper. On the other hand, do you want 150 comments that just say, "ooooh, yum, that sound delicious. When I make it I'm going to substitute brown sugar for the white and use pecans!" That's what I see on the food blogs and it's bor-ing.

[Jennifer L. Knox]

Hey Stacey, I can't figure out how to reply on a comment through the Typepad interface, so I'll do this until I figure it out.

I agree 100% about the agree-ers (though I do like knowing that demerara sugar makes for a better sauce than white). I think genuine dissenters make for the best commentors, or people who can open an aperture on a discussion. Those people are equally rare as online commentors and in the real world.
Most people don't know how to disagree in a way in an inclusive way that keeps the discussion open.

[shanna]

Of course simple agreement/disagreement is kinda boring (though actually sometimes the "right ons" are kinda empowering or at least fun). But what we're missing is the actual give-take discussion, exploration of or expansion of the topic, uh, kinda like we're doing here.

When one of Them enters and mucks up the place, people "leave the room"...just like in real life.

[Nin Andrews]

I love this entry. It reminds me of how as a kid, my father once said, just wait until the rednecks feel their power politically. It's bound to happen. You'll see. Then you'll wonder what to make of our country. Then he would tell me I wasn't allowed to repeat what he said. I wasn't allowed to call anyone a redneck. I had to take it, whatever rednecks said, not dish it back. But I grew up on a farm, listened to country music, hunted groundhogs (ate them too), and yeah, helped on the farm with the cows, and had my earful of racist, sexist slurs. One day, after my oldest sister left the barn, I heard more than I could take about what they would do with her, how and when. I did a classic farm girl trick--took the burger out of the rednecks' sandwiched and filled them with cow manure. It's something I took a whipping for, but I never regretted . . .

[kristy bowen]

yes.

[shanna]

ha ha, that's an awesome story, NA. i was also reared among the rednecks and that undercurrent of violence is not always so under, if you know what i mean (and you do).

[Becca]

Awesome post! Reminds me of Paris!

For real -- thanks for writing this.

[Oh Puhleez]

I think this post reveals that the mindset of the average online adult luvvie at the start of the 21C, is one which demands everything done for it, like a child.

To try and demonise text on a screen as being written by 'bullies', upwardly mobile 'starfuckers' and 'assholes', reminds me of the blogger Michael Robbins who likes to swear at key points in his argument, just so you know he is 'fucking' serious, yeah?

You are obviously starved of sincere poetic material to write about, it seems. Maybe youi should write about your favourite taco or burger restaurant.

[Oh Puhleez]

It's very simple. You do not have to read the comments you think are rubbish. It's like moaning about ads in the newspaper, you need to view a comment stream for what it is, a democratic dumping ground where it is possible to get a post written by the worst, most facile foul-mouthed idiot, appear right beside a post written by the most eloquent poet alive.

If you read a comment by an idiot, you know it is not worth reading within the first few lines, and just detach your eye and scan further down.

To try and present the fact that anyone can publish online, as being about some heavily ironized 'us' and 'them' debate, which shows your coolness by peppering the language with asshole and starfucker, proves only that you are as bad as the people you're trying to set yourself up against in relief, in the attempt to paint yourself as some intellectual to their oafishness.

You need to look at this as an adult, not a child whining about the horrid trolls. How old are you? If you don't like it, do not read it. It isn't rocket science.

[shanna]

Oops, Jen, you forgot the part about how people actually interested in discussion like to sign their comments, while CFBs generally go anonymous or make up "clever" handles.

[Cati Porter]

Dear Oh Puhleez --

You are exactly the kind of bully this post is railing about. Taking digs at the author of this post is childish and completely uncalled for. There's a difference between having a respectful conversation and deliberately inciting an argument just to make yourself feel superior.

Take your own advice: If you don't like, do not read it.

[Oh Puhleez]

Dear Cati?

Grow up you child. You know Franz Wright fulfills your description of an internet bully. Hell, if it were a crime to write what you feel using fuck and shit, Franz would be doing life. That could happen with identikit 'poets' who know zilch about poetry and mistake the act of being a sucky bore, with that of doing poetry.

Wright is a fould mouthed ranter, who has written the most poetic raging response to the Gulf end-of-world scenario going on right now as you moan, whateveryournameis. Your poetry, twine toes and ladeez here being oh soo lovely, I know through reading it, is gonna be forgotten pretty much straight away.

You are not poets, you are prissy little office-dwelling robots.

[Jennifer L. Knox]

This is really funny. Lest some of you out there think I'm paying "Oh Puhleez" just to prove my point, I'm honestly not. But maybe he's pulling our legs?

[Oh Puhleez]

You see what I mean, has to be a 'he' even tho there's absolutely zero proof of this claim.

You ladies should start a puppies and kittens self-hug group, and then after some amazing small talk, one of you can become top bitch in a whingy voice moaning about all the bastards who just don't understand how tough it is being a professional poet having to put up with the riff raff, speaking up for the victims of this world in your professional capacity, always with an eye on the disaster to latch onto and say how terrible it all is, write a bit of doggerel about it, make the world a better place - and if the lesser cats in your pack don't go girl enough, lack the supporting genes, well, ooh ah innit fab, being a souljah in the AmPo army, doing doing it for me me me.

[Jennifer L. Knox]

Uh, I can see your email address: [email protected]

[Steve]

Fuck you, "Oh Puhleez".

[Cati Porter]

That is just too funny, Mr. Oh Puhleez. Why don't you come out from where you're hiding behind your "generic male" pseudonym? Don't want to show your face, eh? What do you have to hide?

[OhPlez]

Steve, grow up. Just write poetry and forget pretending to be the sheriff.

What I have to hide Cati is nothing whatsoever. You call yourself a poet, aren't they supposed to be people who ventriliquize through a mask?

Take no notice of this voice, it is just an act. The internet is a dumping ground and what I find interesting is how the really popular, sensible people all agreeing how civilized and poetic they are, often write the rubbishest poems.

I think there's two seperate things going on online, the poetry and the social networking. Does it really matter if we are comment field bullies, starfuckers and assholes, as long as we write good poetry?

Or should you be a really nice lovely person who writes doggerel?

[Cati Porter]

Maybe so, Oh Puhleez, but I'm not writing poetry here, and neither are you. And this isn't about poetry or po-biz, this is about good, old-fashioned manners. If this voice is just an act then give it up. It serves no purpose other than to give you something to hide behind.

[puppies and kittens]

umm, all i wanted to say was, this is gorgeous. reminds of paris!
signed:
[email protected]

and i really liked the narcissist part but you forgot to write about IPP's constant opining for attention on facebbook (not you of course).

but i digress...can i get oh puleeze's digits? he-she's comments are getting me awesome.