Fighting in the Comments Thread: Commenting and Comunication
The following is based on the Winsor's Article What Counts as Writing. In my round about way I talking about how I don't like to post comments, because they are too short and then talk about my history with comments.
What is writing? I'm not really sure right now. I've been a storyteller for most of my life. Most of my writing has been long, stories and assignments. I have been required by many of my classes to comment on things written online by my other classmates. I've never really cared enough to actually do it. I mean really. I've never written comments that were longer than a few sentences. Anymore and I feel that I should create a separate entry to respond to it. I've also never felt that compelled to read what my fellow classmates have written. They only time I have ever actually read something written by a classmate was when they were personally asking my opinion on it. In those cases I read it but otherwise I find that I am too busy. Commenting is a drag. Entering into a comment thread is entering into a conversation. I when I talk with people I usually wait for an opening to make a comment. Whatever I said usually gets ignored and then feel that I have wasted the time that I spent thinking up something interesting to say because no one took notice and when they do it always sparks and argument. I don't like to argue. So either I come up with something that I wouldn’t mind people reading and no one ends up reading it, or I do and then I have to respond and argue again. It has kept me up at night. The worst was when I took a picture I found on Tumblr, and posted it to a political Facebook page I follow. It has at this moment received 305 shares and over 200 comments. Half of that was in the first few hours. My phone is set to make a noise when I get a notification. I posted the picture at 3 am. It wasn't fun. At one point I had to argue about the authenticity of the picture because it had been zoomed in and the result was pixilated, and people kept reading the date stamp on the picture as 2013. I linked them to the original site that the picture was a screen cap of. And some of them still couldn't be bothered to check the link. Worse yet the picture was about the often talked about "War on Christmas," so it started a flame war. I have no doubt that commenting is a form of writing. I just think at some points it might just be the most aggravating form of conversation. Because I can leave a verbal conversation but an online argument can find you long after you thought it was dead.
Winsor, D. (1992). What Counts as Writing? An Argument from Engineers’ Practice. JAC12.2