This video of the hilarious Lindy West at the recent Back Fence, PDX—talking about her relationship to the internet and internet trolls—is wonderful:
WORKING FOR THE INTERNET IS WEIRD, DUDES. This piece is pretty great. I’ve never received one-hundredth the scrutiny Lindy has, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t handle it—even being called a cunt by a stranger once every few months or so freaks me out. (5, 4, 3…) I really like that she talks about how comments actually affect her, instead of just pretending she doesn’t read ’em like everyone else does. Good stuff.
I don’t even know why *I* read comments (here, AVClub and nowhere else, btw), so I have no idea why any of you who write on the internet for a living read them.
90%+ is obviously boring, repetitive garbage from sad people who think their opinions matter in any way to anyone. Usually the only lulz occur when they unwittingly reveal themselves as such.
I’ve only stuck around here because I know some of you personally, I like the cut of the paper’s jib, because you’re talking about hyperlocal things I’d like to know about, and most critically for the comments: because only an abnormally tiny percentage of you are complete and utter fucktards, compared to the internet commentariat at large.