Yahoo! Commenters [heart] Hitler

I am a creature of habit.  Once I get into a routine it is extremely difficult for me to get out.  For example, despite the fact that neither of us seem to care for it all that much any more, I have been sleeping in a bed with the same woman for the better part of 16 years.  I just started doing it off an on in the fall of 1995.  Then I did it with increased frequency in 1996-1999 and by the time the new millennium hit the habit was firmly in place.

Just this morning the woman explained  to me that she was doing dishes at 4am because she “fucking gave up on sleep” due to the fact that every time she would move even a little bit I would “roll over a bunch of times and bounce the whole fucking bed.” And then, “Whenever I would move to lay on my right side, you would roll onto your left side and breath in my fucking face.  It’s like you have some sort of fucking annoying sleeper ESP that knows when I am going to try and switch sides!”

This is a king sized bed.  If we could somehow keep on our respective sides, we could sleep comfortably with a Volkswagen between us.  Instead it seems like something in my self-conscious enjoys messing with her…or she’s paranoid…what the hell do I know?  I am unconscious.  The point is that, for a lot of us, it is easier to continue habits that are largely unpleasant because it is too scary to change.

Ever since I can remember, I have been going to Yahoo! to read the news off the wire. This is one of those unpleasant habits I just can’t seem to abandon. They have a nice collection of stories from AP, Reuters and others that have been carefully selected to sell advertising to shitty online schools and credit score checking companies.  They also create their own really bad commentary on stories that have been carefully selected to sell advertising to shitty online schools and credit score checking companies. Worst of all, Yahoo! hosts what I believe to be the single largest pool of ignorant, racist, vindictive, hateful and just plain stupid commenters that the world has ever seen.  It’s like the anti-Mensa…except they somehow manage to be know-it-all-high-and-mighty dickbags just like the real Mensa.

Every news story posted on Yahoo! is guaranteed to have the following:

1) Within the first ten comments, no matter what the story is about, you will find a comment that insults the President of the United States and is either tacitly or overtly racist.  I won’t talk politics here, but the dichotomy between the stupidness of the comment and the cleverness with which the commenter manages to comment on the president’s performance  after a story on yogurt is enough to make me sit with my head in my hands for a minute.

2) Within the first 15 comments someone will brag about their re-fi and provide a link.

3) Within the first twenty-five comments someone will tell a story that can be debunked on snopes with less than 30 seconds of searching.  Shut up Grandpa.  Chef Boyardee was a real guy.  He was not the creation of three guys named Boyd, Art and Dennis…and what does that have to do with this story about Donald Trump’s announcement that he no longer wants to be president?

4) Generally speaking, race relations there are in a state similar to those found in southern Kentucky in 1837.  Check this out:

You can find the story here http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110518/us_yblog_thelookout/loud-cell-phone-talker-removed-from-quiet-car-by-police .  If it qualified as an actual news story, it would be about a woman who was in an Amtrak quiet car who loudly talked on a cell phone for 16 hours.  There is nothing wrong with verbally attacking this most mockable woman.  It is perfectly acceptable to applaud her arrest. It is not cool to make it a race issue and hand out slurs with serious intent.

This is all they could get out before Yahoo! closed comments (notice how they left them up?).  If you were to expand the 6 replies on the “monkeys” bit, you would see that the comments are almost all in support of Dan…one individual even offers up the “observation” that “yahoo won’t let me give mrmike a thumbs up. the cell phone yacker is a monkey. you can’t teach a ghetto trash manners.”  Evidently you can’t teach a racist how to use the shift key.  That shit is ugly.  The thing that is even uglier is that 60% agreed enough with the first racist comment to give it a thumbs up and almost 47% agreed with the monkey comment.

More than once I have read a Yahoo! commenter’s suggestion that we “send them all back to Africa.”  I have no response to that comment due to its multi-leveled profound stupidity, but it did give me an idea.  Maybe Yahoo! could throw some sort of annual conference for their commenters and give them a free trip to Sunnyvale.  Once they’re all gathered in some hotel ballroom, we can lock the doors and let them live happily with their own kind.

Oh, yeah…that is kind of hypocritical.  It probably would make me as bad as them…I still have to wonder if such an action wouldn’t make the world an all-around better place though.  Huh…I guess all I can do is ask Jeebus to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. If you need me, I will be finding someplace else to get my news…and then going to bed on the couch.

Intelligence insulting questions meant to generate more comments:

Where should I go for a similar mix without the Ku Klux Klan?  What kind of stuff do you find at Yahoo! that might be better or worse? Have you ever been someplace where a significant percentage of people give the “thumbs up” to such distasteful behavior?