The "what is to be done about out-of-control commenters in the wild world of Web 2.0" article has been written again, this time by Time. We're only mentioning it because the articles notes that while yes, commenters are mean and out of hand, at least ours are witty! (YouTube's commenters can't even graciously accept a cute video of a gerbil.) Gawker comments, Lev Grossman writes, are "often funnier and cleverer than the posts they comment on." Hey!!

"A random example: on June 11, a user called way21337 uploaded a video to YouTube. It's titled "My new gerbil," and it shows, in fact, a black-and-white gerbil snuffling around cutely in somebody's hand. It is 11 seconds long. By press time, it had acquired 102 comments. Let's take a look! They begin with NewTyhuss, who writes, "sweet!" Things start going south with comment No. 4: "id hit it." (Good one, ZRace67!) After a week, we're down to eldergod: "why dont u shove that gerbil up yur ass and quit posting stupid videos." bwalhof writes, "kill yourself. fast." And so on."

"Comments aren't always that idiotic. The comments on Gawker, a Manhattan-based media and gossip blog that I will probably (no, definitely) be made to regret mentioning, can be incredibly mean, but they're also often funnier and cleverer than the posts they comment on. Last August Gawker ran an item about the rapper Foxy Brown, who was accused of hitting a neighbor with her BlackBerry. The commenters spontaneously generated an entire mini-subculture consisting of variations on this single item: "This is like the time Spinderella stabbed me with her Treo." "MC Lite [sic] beat me about the head and upper shoulder with a stack of faxes." By October, the Foxy Brown post had 10,000 comments, at which point Gawker—presumably fearing the arrival of the Rapture—shut it down."

Whatevr. Why dont u shove those comments str8 up yr ass!!

Post Apocalypse [Time]