Comments, Criticisms, Wisecracks

At the urging of people (well, at least one peep) that I respect, I've enabled comments, but to be honest, I've done it with a certain trepidation. Partly it's a trust thing. I don't want people to say mean things that will make me cry and cry.

But partly it's looking at the comments in YouTube with the morbid fascination I'd feel looking at an example of the two-foot salamanders they call "mudpuppies" or "hellbenders." You know what I mean, of course. Comments like "You suck" or "wtf?" and so forth. It's just appalling how many dumb people there are—you want to look away, but you can't. I'm not accusing anyone in the room here, you understand—I love my readers, who I figure must be like-minded folks for the most part, just basically nice people who are interested in a wide variety of things and enjoy talking about them with their guard about halfway down. So don't bum the rest of us out, haters! You don't like it, read someone else's blog!

Some people would say criticism, even moronic criticism, is a good and healthy thing. It's a point of view, I suppose. But the moronic aspect—frankly, it makes me wonder. I mean, if you read about hellbenders, you'll see that having hellbenders in a stream is a sign of its excellent health. But they bite, and they're a little bit toxic, and frankly they're not the most attractive animal in the world. So why can't we take one step further and have an equally healthy stream, just without hellbenders? And comments sections without rampant buttheadism? See what I'm saying?