Comment Rage: Posting Comments and the Will to Kill

"THINK ABOUT IT!!!!! before you go accusing everyone of being fools just for calling this revenue-raising, like Mike is (11/02/2011 11:55:58 AM)"

"I take it your parents didnt love you enough so you are taking it out on everyone? Never had consensual sex in your life? pull your head in and stick to the subject you sensationalist!"

"Go beat and abuse your children you neanderthal." 

"Who is this idiot? Clearly, you dont read much." 

"Could the moderator please explain what is wrong with my last 2 comments?"

"You seem to be doing your usual trick of attacking the small things while leaving the bulk of what I said alone."

"What I have to say to the rest of that comment wouldn’t get through the moderator and would be insulting to your mother but I’ll try to get my previous comment through point by point if that’s ok with you."

(Above: all comments extracted from separate websites)


What do public comment posting sections of websites reveal about human beings and society?

When reading the comments beneath news, current affairs websites and blogs, it's interesting to see how vicious people are to each other.

They'd never behave like that face-to-face.

More than simply making a "comment", many people respond to the response rather than the issue. And that would be fine, but often there is such a disdain for the commentor. More than is necessary, individuals are shot down for making allegedly stupid comments and when that fails to silence, shot down for personal failings.

Comment rage is often personal. Yet it is interesting to note that the person launching the attack would never say such a thing face-to-face (and here's a hint at why it's so popular).

As almost all conscious human behaviour is a facade used to hide the ugly truth, We wondered what was behind the vituperative invective of comment rage and post rage found in Comments Boxes across the cyber world. 

For those fond of studying social behaviour or group psychology, and within the context of modern-day social networking fora, go watch people attack, despise and denigrate each other in any website's public comment posting boxes.

In some cases, one poor devil gets picked on by a large group, the situation having snow-balled out of control from a handful of attackers enticed by the blood-lust human instinct craves at the sight of an overwhelmed weakling - just like in high school, or at the office!

What the hell is going on here? Why are average people transformed into cut-throats as soon as they start reading Comments?

Why? First, why not? Because it's anonymous. There's no repercussion. You can't get in trouble.

And Why? Because you have just satisfied the unsatisfiable. The oldest anti-social survivial instinct. The will to kill. The killer instinct.

The yearing to attack others is very deep within all of us. It is hard-wired into our lizard complex and is the reason we stayed alive the first million years.

Yet we hardly ever, mostly never, get to satisfy this primordial urge. Our imagination gives us relief through vivid fantasies of being that animal for just a minute: after our boss has reprimanded us, after that bully made us look stupid and feel helpless again, after the news report of that rapist, that drunk driver who killed those kids.

But that's as far as the ancient, raw and hideously true instinct gets. Why no further? Why do we not take the will to kill further than our imagination? Fear. Fear of being caught acting on it, fear of going to jail, of being vilified, being sacked, having all that we love taken from us. Fear of doing something wrong. It is wrong to attack someone, isn't it? Or does it depend? Do we want to risk all to find out? Doesn't there have to be a really good reason to attack someone?

We can't go around killing people, but we can attack them in other ways - if they deserve it. But the fear of repercussions from society's moral and governmental institutions stops us from even attacking, even just a little attack.

So we all sit quietly, utterly frustrated.

The price of satisfying the will to attack is too great. Or should I say "was" too great.

Now there's this thing called the Internet. You can hide in it (to a certain degree). You can anonymously join a comments section on a website, get angry at someone and attack them.

You can attack a person's intellect, their reasoning, their inexperience, their argument, their stupidity, their values, their morals. It's awesome!

Sometimes a frenzied horde will join in! Not because they agree with your comment, but because they get caught up in the chase, the hunt, the taunting, teasing and horribly playful game. The pack attacks the wounded weakling, not for food, but for something else. Something natural.

You see it in schools, you see it in the workplace and now you see it on the Internet.

Bruce Lee used to try and consciously summon his killer instinct in order to defeat his opponent. If he was alive today, he would simply use his iPhone to go online and then jettison his target through the air in an orgasm of instinct-satisfaction.

It's now almost completely safe to attack people on the Net. No one knows it's you! You got away with it. Even if they do know your username and generally where you live, they can't do anything about it, because you're never gonna meet.

Oh the freedom! Oh the satisfaction!

Oh how pathetic.

Is Anything Art? - An Analysis of the Mass Nude Idiots Phenomenon

Spencer Tunick takes photographs of naked people for a living. He calls it "Art". But is it?


In 2010, 5000 idiots stripped in front of the Sydney Opera House in the name of "art".

How fitting that such a freak event occur at such a freak of a building.

Like a massive flock of shaved sheep, the art-nudists were expertly steered, organised and positioned by Tunick's shepparding. His support staff providing nuanced direction from the side-lines, like sheep-dogs.

What? Not one boner?

 



A number of questions and thoughts enter the mind of the normal person who witnesses such events:








How do nudists, novice and seasoned, actually bring themselves to do it (especially the heinous, the ugly and the small-pricked)?

It appears that lurking amongst us, disguised in clothing, are thousands of people just bursting to strip in public. How do we explain this? Are they mental or normal? Do they have humility, feel shame?

How are they immune to the centuries-old guilt trip handed down to us over the ages by the Church that we should hide our private bits?



How do the blokes not get erections? Think about it: female naked bodies normally arouse males. It's a trillion dollar industry and necessary element for continuing the human race. Tunick's events should create a sea of woodies followed by a mexican wave of female disgust, slaps and walk-offs.

Does there need to be an artistic reason to support such an activity? There must be some considerable motivation behind this behaviour, as it is no simple task: to participate requires effort, time, transport and logistical arrangements, time off work, etc etc. There are many obstacles presented to the budding art-nudist. They must really mean what they do. Why?

If these people are not psychos, the rest of us normals must shiver a little at why we all don't feel such a need.

Queensland Inundated by Thin Young Girls

The horrific floods in Queensland have resulted in pointless death, misery and destruction whose effects will outlast those left mourning.

Walking amongst these tragedies - filming, dictating the human reaction, carelessly over-using hyperbole to secure a greater market of bug-eyed public for advertising business - is a remarkably inappropriate phenomenon. Standing in the fore-ground of all this abject horror is an army of extremely well-dressed, young, thin and good-looking girls.

This Aryan race of dainty princesses is called on to interpret, analyse, deconstruct the suffering and loss of whole communities with the vocabulary of an ATM.

One knows not which ugly fact to balk and then vomit at first.

If TV news reporters were recruited from the general public, why don't they look like the people they interview in their vox populi pieces? 

"So...yeah." The Wisdom of Sports Interviews

Why does the media interview sports people?

They don't say anything interesting or enlightening or even entertaining.

They just look to the side, stumble through a mental list of banal platitudes, pick one and blurt it out as quickly as possible.

What's even more ridiculous is accosting athletes away from the game, like at the airport. They're tired, grouchy, vulnerable and this on top of an existing inability to summarise the complexities of their athletic achievements.

Perhaps this painfully boring, painfully expected event is so shit to witness because these vessels of intellectual precision are only ever asked lame-arsed questions (or response prompts). Perhaps it's because sports people don't do interesting or enlightening on the fly. Perhaps sports people don't have any idea how they do what they do.

Whatever it is, please stop. Play the game and piss off. We don't need to hear that the game went very well/could've gone better and you'll do better next time, so...yeah.



It appears that using your brain to speak is a challenge beyond the reach of any training, physical fitness, competitive spirit and all that other machismo shit handed down from the stone age.

It appears from the pathetic pithy platitudes that are mumbled from panting athletes on the sidelines, spitting into a phallic microphone wielded by someone less interesting than the microphone, that answering the incisive questions of sports interviewers is just too much for your average sports-person.

But how can it be? How hard is it to anticipate the obvious and respond in kind?

Think about it. You've just won/lost a big game. Some heavily-made-up little girl dressed to go night-clubbing is waiting for you to wander over. She's very likely going to ask you a question along the lines of the "How was the game? What happened?" Simple yet direct.

What else could she ask? "So, how would the battle of Agincourt have gone without the addition of the longbow to the English arsenal?"

Here's a few examples of typical sports interviews:

- Interviewer "He had you five-three in the first set, what were you thinking at that point in the match?"

Rafael Nadal "Well, he was playing fine. I was probably playing a little shorter than usual. He was playing aggressively... just keep fighting and we'll see how we go... He was playing better than I was."


- Interviewer "Well, Sterling, a far more composed performance. You didn't have a lot of ball, but what you did have you did a lot with."

Sterling Mortlock "Yeah... I think it was ah... improvement from last week... pretty positive, ah.. looking at the bench at the end of the match, a fair few injuries, so... we'll have to see how we are for the next few weeks."

- Interviewer "Congratulations. A food first set, but tightened a little for you in the second."

Venus Williams "Yeah, um... I think, you know, she really played well, um... I have to give her credit for really... raising her game... really, ah, she played so well... such a deep ball, you can mix it up... I mean, she has great things in her... she just has to stay healthy."

Wow! Now I completely understand how they played well/badly and as a result won/lost.

Imagine if scientists and innovators were interviewed:

Interviewer "So, Einstein. Well done with Relativity - especially the specific theory. You've made Newtonian physics look sloppy and invalid."

Albert Einstein "Ja, vell, zee sing to remember is zat every sing is relatif. Zere iss no "shloppy", only "shloppier" or "less shloppy".

Actually, how would King Henry's interview gone?



















"Well, Your Highness. Congratulations."
"Thanks, Nicole."
"So, it was looking dicey there when the first left flanking attack failed to split the French main effort. But the longbows had a field day with the French cavalry, when they got bogged down. How did you feel the battle went and what were your key learning points?"
"Well, Nicole, those French bastards sure know how to eat cheese, but their over-reliance on mounted troops was their undoing...


Conclusion: The modern-day sports interview is just dumb. Dumb questions, dumb sports persons, dumb responses. Guys, just play the fucking sport and we'll guess what you would have said... concluding, of course, with "so... yeah."

Fevola - Is This the Arse-End of Australia's Bogan Role Models?

Brendan Fevola:

"Proof that bogans can also reach the dizzying heights of success without having to think about stuff or talk proper." 

Australia's dumbest looking idiot footballer spent New Year's the same way all bogans dream of: threatening the pigs and being a drunk tit - like you did when you were 16.

Vox populi seem to have had enough of the paradox of "inspiring bogans". The people's thoughts captured on Internet media discussion commentary reflects an Australian public that grows weary of its loveable larakins. The older generations honoured and praised their Bogan Heroes - Warick Capper, Paul Hogan, ACDC etc, and even elected one Prime Minister in the 80s. They used to be cute, now they're at best embarrassing and at worst criminal.

Is the tide turning?

The first bogan role-model to inspire doubt into the infallible ancient tenet of bogan-worship was Russell Crowe. Whether the critical mass of betrayal was due to the phone-throwing incident or the fact that bogans don't write poetry is for the academics to debate. But what we do know is that since then Aussies have started slapping a critical eye on the utility of having bogans as role-models for their little shits.

But who else is there to role-model Jayden, Hayden and Kayden, little Maddison, Briyannah and Taylah? Who else is able to fill such a void? ...What?.... Us parents?...

Fuck off!

Foreign Language Tattoos

Do asians have English adages tattooed to their arms, back and wrists?

Do they stain themselves with our ancient British wisdom?

You also want to make sure the symbols mean what the tattooist said they meant.

Tattoo reads "At the end of the day, this boy is ugly"

Fortunately for them, English script is widely understood by most of the world's population with the money to afford a tattoo. Only English-speaking westerners read nothing but English.

Only the Poor Die Forgotten

If the young of the impoverished and lower middle classes were given the same means and opportunities to excel in all the great disciplines (sport, art, innovation, science) as the young of the spoilt, inheritant, rich and upper middle-classes, we would be living in a world saturated by greatness and excellence, instead of the minority of eltist achievement seen hitherto.















Think about all the greats of history and you'll see that most of this minority of individuals were aristocratic, rich and dripping with the sickly sap of inheritence:

Aristotle - son of the King's personal physician
Plato - descendent of the King of Athens
Wittgenstein - son of the wealthiest industrialist in Austro-Hungary
Bertrand Russell - 3rd Earl Russell, grandson of a British Prime Minister
Einstein - son of a business entrepreneur
Da Vinci - son of a wealthy Florentine lawyer
Charles Darwin - son of a wealthy society doctor and financier
Ludwig von Beethoven - German Aristocrat
Bill Gates - father a prominent lawyer, mother a banker, grandfather president of a national bank
Richard Branson - son of a Barrister, grandfather was a High Court Judge and Privy Councillor

It is obvious why greatness (individual and societal) mostly derives from wealth: changing the world costs time and money, and requires power and influence (also ultimately derived from money). Money and power provide the means necessary to fund ideas and actions, and provide the opportunities to develop such where none existed before. Those without wealth will struggle and fight against time and resource-based obstacles to achieve the same result as the wealthy.

This doesn't mean if there is no money, there is no opportunity. It doesn't mean all opportunities cost money. It means that you get many more, and more tailored, opportunities if you have money and power: with money and power you can create (read "buy") opportunities. This is because of the sad but true empirically verifiable fact that money talks: people to listen to the wealthy, people respect those who make money and people are in awe of those who are powerful. That's why everyone is trying to gain more wealth than funds their subsistence.

People who need to work two jobs to pay the bills and support their family, don't have the time or money to explore and develop the elements that lead to their or their children's greatness. They're too busy. Their kids' genius will incite merely curiosity in school and annoyance out of school. Any potential greatness in the poor will wither and die from lack of light, nourishment and care.

It is sickening but necessary that greatness is almost always the product of inherited money and power. Success and achievement are the result of mummy and daddy's wealth being poured onto the education and extra-curricular activities of their spoilt brattish children, like too much maple syrup on pancakes.

This disgusting practice occurs at the expense of the vast majority of commoners and their children, who if given half a chance and a little funding, could blow society away.

The poor are by necessity hardy, resourceful, innovative, gutsy and resilient. They have thus wrought their own genius, chiselled talent and wrung out skill in order to survive and also to live comfortably and entertained within their means.

The poor draw inspiration to greatness, creativity and expression from living a hard life. The poorer sections of society are therefore steeped in untapped genius and talent. Yet, instead of humanity benefitting from a massive source of greatness, diluting the efforts of the rich to nothing, the great of the poor grow old, unheard, and die forgotten.

What a waste.

Sweet and Sour

Life is all about balance. There's good shit and bad shit. It's the balance that you have to manage.


Career promotion when your superiors opposed you.
Sweet.

Colleague promoted when they don't do shit.
Sour.

Paid the same for working less than your colleague. 
Sweet.

Paid the same for working above your level.
Sour.

Finding an extra potato cake in your fish 'n chips order.
Sweet.

McDonalds drive thru forgot your nuggets again.
Sour.

You still look good in jeans.
Sweet.

What you think doesn't matter.
Sour.


Drank all night, no hangover.
Sweet.

Drank all night, no hangover, no idea where you are.
Sour.

What Ever Happened to Poets?

Ever wondered why the field of Poetry disappeared from the main-stream of culture, only reappearing as an abstruse whimper in the fringes of the left-wing's Pretentious Pseudo-Art Department?

Who is the Byron of today? Where can I hear a post-post-neo-modern Shelley? Whose rhapsodic lyric will I mumble to myself in the winter of my discontent? Where can I find counsel from a highly-tuned and sensitive conveyance to reconcile the darkest emotions with the need to carry on? Who will give voice to my despair, my hopes, my failings, my concerns?

Poets have not stopped being born. Poetry has not perished nor faded.

Poets and Poems thrive. You are surrounded by them. In fact, they are more popular today than they have ever been. You just haven't noticed them in their new clothing.

Think about it. What group of talented, artistic visionaries are out their today, have been for decades, who write about the passions and want us to hear their words?

Musicians.

Authentic musicians who write their own lyrics are today's Poets.

Get hold of some song lyrics from your favourite classics and read aloud. Then read a Keats, a Thomas, a Blake. They are the same.

As Robert Frost (above) explained:

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words."

Freddie could have said the very same.

You Lucky Old Bastards

Old people.





Take a good long look at old people.



Keep looking right into their eyes and you'll start seeing what I mean.



Sooner or later, the eye will give away the soul and you will glimpse a contentment far beyond your own reach.

Old people are the luckiest and happiest people on earth...

...compared to you.

Compare 2010 to 1960:

You left school having competed, sweated and battled over complex societal issues, philosophical debates and abstract concepts with the smartest and the best, locally and even internationally, for just good grades.
They left school with the most basic skills and a naive view of the world, having expended very little intellectual effort in doing so.

You are paying HECS at around $50 average per week for about ten years.
Their higher education was free.

You need a degree or higher qualification for the basist of jobs.
They didn't need degrees. They only needed to know someone.

You started looking for employment when unemployment was around 4-6%.
They looked for work when no-one was unemployed, by choice: 0%.

You struggled to gain entrance into the work-force, through pain-staking application processes, difficult interviews and selection processes, just to gain the bottom pay-scale in your industry.
They knew the boss.

You compete with the whole country just to get promoted, and only after applying for the position, even if you've been acting in the job.
Their boss promoted them with a phone call.

You will be lucky if you can get into the housing market at all, with the average home and land purchase costing seven and a half years average salary and only after saving 75% of your salary just for the deposit.
They bought houses that cost one and a half years salary. Their parents gave them the 3 months salary for the deposit.

You'll be paying the bank interest and principle for at least 25 years.
They bought their house easily in under 10 years - with one income.

You will need both yours and your partner's full-time salary to pay all your bills. 30% of this income will go to your mortgage.
They paid 15% of their income to their mortgage. And Mum didn't work.

Mum has to work now, so babies/kids have to go to day-care, costing $3-400 per week on average.
Their mums stayed at home and palmed the kids off to family to go shopping.

You have an endless host of lethal and debilitating illnesses, health risks and environmental hazards just waiting to knock you down at any moment. Many of these striking you in youth or middle age.
They're still alive.

You are bomarded by media reports of how fragile your life and life-style are.
They didn't have a clue.

You don't have a GP. You go to medical centres where you see a different indifferent foreigner every time.
They knew their GP.

You need insurance, security plans, alarms and locks for everything you own.
They didn't.

You may not live to be old.
They bet you to it.