Have you ever been bothered by something which might not exist but also probably does? Something that is out there, perhaps intangibly, but its inchoate presence is felt like a fear more than actually touched?
An asteroid drifting through space an AU away. Undoubtedly there, but maybe just never here?
I have a similar feel to the collective responses and comments across online forums, social media, and more or less any place with open comments.
This post is directly in response to a couple of crowdfunding campaigns I backed early last year which have this year run into delays largely due to variances in the whole global shipping market (especially for smaller creators). A fair percentage of the comments are relatively positive or positively constructive, maybe asking for a refund due to the delay.
Just, there are a lot that are oddly…passionate. I’m talking about, “This is your last warning, you will SEND ME MY BOOKS!,” type stuff. Sometimes across multiple paragraphs. This is the stuff publicly posted so I can only imagine the personal emails and such are worse. Saw a couple of exchanges where people went back a bit later to apologize for some of the things they said, but then there were newer comments where these delayed shippings were deeply emotional troubling to the commenter.
I get it, I really do, but delayed shipping due to 2025/2026 is not exactly a personal attack. Few things are. If there is one thing I need you to take away from this post, it is this:
The content creator most likely does not know you and despite the constant drive to content consumers towards parasocial relationships1, virtually (even absolutely) nothing the creators do is aimed at YOU personally. Fact is, one step towards happiness is realizing how few people actually even know you exist. Start with those people.
It is also just a broad response to why I can’t quite stand getting back into any social circle on the internet as a whole for long.
This is not a new phenomenon. “Don’t read the comments!,” has been internet wisdom longer than many current internet users have been alive. Back 10-20 years ago I had multiple scripts and style overrides in place to essentially hide every comment section on every site I regularly visited.
It just also feels worse. There’s a flavor there that I cannot fully place or identify. But it bothers me.
Years ago, maybe decades ago now, there was a comment/forum section for AL.com2 where posts were strangely deranged and strangely off-topic. A collection of ego-centric diatribes in which virtually any topic was an assault on their particular self and way of life. Museum having a new exhibition? Dozens of rants about how art erodes the community while eating up valuable taxpayer dollars and also their nephew saw a painting of a fish that was aesthetically unpleasing. Which might turn into a debate about best fishing spots and how BamaKid033 is mentally broken if he likes fishing on X River. New fried chicken restaurant? THEY are destroying property values in good Christian neighborhoods. Space and Rocket Museum getting a grant to help preserve some of their exhibits? I kid you not, the end of all goodness as we know it. This last one happened a few times.
It has been some time since those were in existence so I am just taking some broad swipes but, Space Pilgrims, I need you to understand they are only gently broad. I just dialed them up a tiny bit for effect (and also dialed down for palatability).3 These were regular commenters. Racist. Deeply political (especially, on AL.com, to the right-wing side). Paranoid. Snarky. You can tell they thought they were funny when posting it. Starting from an immediate stance of aggression and personal attacks. Simultaneously painting the commenter as both the victim and also the powerhouse of the known universe. “You will listen to me! I am tired of being used!”
Maybe now that I’m largely off social media and largely in my own sphere doing IRL projects it feels worse than it is, but it feels to me like the AL.com comment section has taken over the internet.
OR, to use a different but similarly timed example, remember how Rebecca Black and her mom paid money to make a fun video where it was just a bunch of kids having a blast being in a music video? And the internet decided that because they could see it that the video was somehow forced on them and people, including somewhat reputable musical journalists, felt the stupid need to comment on it? To attack children for a video that should have been seen by a few dozen people and be a fun, core memory?
The hatred towards Rebecca Black’s “Friday” should be studied as one of the dumbest moments in internet history and a lesson we absolutely did not learn.
I really don’t think the human race has caught up to the fact that the internet is by and large voluntary. I’m not sure, at this point, if we ever will.
I saw a video this past week where a person who posts regular videos-of-the-day to talk about fun topics — in other words, using Youtube kind of like it was first and for a long time used — just was discussing an odd thing he read on Reddit and there were multiple comments where people were angry about the existence of the video. It felt like the presence of that video in their subscription feed was an affront to them.
Find any article that is slightly negative — about veganism, Doctor Who, whatever, pick a topic — and then people coming out to comment in a kind of hateful, snarky tone is not precisely unexpected. Studies have shown how people are drawn to negativity in social media and online discourse. It is just the vibe feels… well, it’s a vibe.
Paranoid. Self-obsessed. Angry. Lacking thoughtfulness. Lacking respect. Personally wronged. Gleefully antagonistic. Raging against the dying of the light (which might not ever have existed, another fake fall from Eden). Victim and aggressor. And, perhaps most annoyingly, utterly convinced that a slightly humorous, snarky tone is the exact way to make them sound sane. Why is it always posted in a faux-humorous tone? Did Vine and X break us? That short form commentary must be cute and funny? Hell if I know.
To put it in another way, it is like we have regressed as a digital society. Because we are on our phones on our own couch, maybe we think the internet has come to our living rooms rather than us going to it? A generation of people being fed by food delivery drivers complaining about the decor of restaurants. A generation waiting for the AI bubble to pop and spending hours each day creating AI art to pass the time out of fear of boredom.
“We drove to the gym…” only it’s everything, everywhere. All at once, even.
You blend this with rampant positivity on the “other side” and it is maddening. Of course both being couched in various oft-repeated phrases that have been The Algorithm™ approved. Generally without personality.
Four blue hearts in a line or death threats with nothing in between. Where “mid” and “average” are active insults.
“Ahh gurl energy got me feeling some way…,” fucking indeed.
THEN, Space Pilgrims, then we add in the bots…
