Confessions of a former comment nazi

Nazis Not Welcome
Originally uploaded by bdunnette.

Hey guys, thanks for the comments on commenting. It's very ironic that in my "heyday" I was like a comment nazi--my feeling was, as Jack's Shack said, that if someone took the time to comment, responding was the least I could do. In the past, I sometimes found myself feeling "jilted" if someone didn't respond to my comment. It felt like I'd initiated a conversation and the other person just gave me a blank stare and walked away.

In fact, I got so obsessed with the issue that I remember doing a number of posts on it with names like "A final comment on commenters's comments on comments" or something like that. In fact, things go so out of hand that I wrote a comment to a blogger who seemed to be ignoring "legitimate" comments (like mine, of course) in favor of endlessly bantering back and forth with one of her pals in IM fashion.

The result of this comment of mine was an apology post from her on her blog. Coincidentally, the commenter pal (Satan) decided to go on vacation right after this and not tell anyone. Instead, he just (literally) said "fuck you" to his loyal readers and went his merry way for several weeks--his idea of a grand joke, I guess. As a result, some of his regular fans thought I'd alienated him. The result was a comment flame war with Squid--one of Satan's ardent fans--claiming that I "broke Satan."

We bantered back and forth here, exchanging insult for insult, and to tell you the truth it was the most fun I could have had with my clothes on. Here's one representative comment from Squid, who lovingly nicknamed me "Elvirus":

"But alas, my dear I've vested too much time into you and your tunnel-visionist mindset. Your pathetic attempts to bag on my lack of comments on my blog does not hurt me, for I am not a stat whore unlike you. I REALLY could care less if anyone visits my blog. Anytime you want, you can suck a fart out of my ass."

And you know something? He was right. In those days I was trying like hell to get more traffic to my site, and became a self-admitted "blog pimp" and "comment whore" to boot. But it did make for good blogging material--I really milked the shit out of it for awhile.

Most likely, it was my raging hypomania speaking, but I couldn't seem to leave the comment issue alone during September of '05, writing post after post about it. When people are in a manic state, they tend to be full of themselves, self-righeous, opinionated, and generally asshole-ish.

Well, my karma caught up with me, and the result is that I eventually turned into one of those bloggers I criticized so vehemently before. Squid and I came to a truce. And Satan abandoned his blog many moons ago.

In any case, I truly believe that receiving and responding to comments can greatly enhance a post. I guess the prob is that I'm just now crawling out of my shell and don't quite have the energy I had back in the day.

But if I really want to get back into the true Shithouse spirit, I should try to get back into the fray if I can. I truly do enjoy it. But I don't want to be like the bad old Elvira who somehow didn't seem to be able to "live and let live."

Anyway, thanks guys! And Ice--you are, as always, one of a kind.

My next post will not be about comments.