Comments on: Why I quit posting on forums

By: JetMech72

JetMech72 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:05:55 +0000

I agree, our site is pretty decent. Especially compared to some of the larger sites that are more driven to quantity of members rather than quality of content. I was thinking about that topic as well and you’re right, on many sites that would have fallen into a death-spiral from all the know-nothing-know-it-alls adding their opinions.

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By: Rich

Rich — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:54:52 +0000

Yeah I know what you mean Jet, I have read many similar responses on news sites across the internet. Glad it is not just me who has noticed.

The forum we know each other from is actually fairly free of that kind of thing. One of the reasons I have been more active of late is it has become a haven where conversation can continue uninterrupted most of the time. For example the thread where we talked about the environment recently, I was expecting some comments there about “environmentalists” but none appeared. That was pretty nice to see for a change.

It seems the odds are stacked against the smarter people in the world, there are 1000 idiots per 1 intelligent person by my estimate. That is a lot of time wasted reading stupid posts.

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By: JetMech72

JetMech72 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:05:41 +0000

I feel your pain. There are only a few forums left that I check on regularly and a couple that I look at just because I’m bored. I try to avoid any discussions higher than small talk unless I feel that the person has the mental aptitude to do so. Sometimes that is difficult to see when their posts are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Some people are excellent writers but do not necessarily have the ability to reason or argue effectively, just as there are those that cannot spell but have the intellect to make a point and defend it with facts and logic. In either case, it doesn’t take too many posts to determine what side of the fence they lay.

As the saying goes, you can’t argue with an idiot, and the internet has allowed these idiots to come together collectively to dumb-down every conversation they can stick their keyboard into.

This makes me think of just about any news story I see on the CNN site that allows comments. Every idiot with a computer has to make sure their presence is known by submitting some form of comment to a story, usually in that “conservative” form you spoke of. Comment like “that person was killed because what he was doing was a sin according to God” or “this is president Obama’s fault that my car got a flat tire.” Even as far as commenting on a young woman’s body that was found in a dumpster outside a club by saying “that’s what she gets for going to a club by herself.” Unbelievable.

All I can suggest is that you filter out the garbage and focus on some of the worthwhile posts. Although this may mean you will not find anything worth your time for days on end, your frustration level will go down.

Hang in there. There are a few decent people out there with higher than room-temperature IQs. You just have to deal with a few idiots along the way…and I’m not just talking about on the internet.

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