Just one more thing

I'm going to allow anonymous comments again, with word verification still disabled. I'm doing this again because I really do want people to feel like they can speak their minds freely and easily here if they want to.

I'm also going to moderate all comments before they're allowed to be displayed on the blog, because I'd like to pretend I'm the president of Egypt or something for a while. We'll see how it goes.

Just ranting about the dangerous invisible man (or woman)

As I alluded to earlier, there is a reason that I worry about letting people speak their mind without having to show their face.

Just giving up on anonymous comments

Well, I think it's time for the open comment experiment to end. In the time since it began, I've had an unending stream of spam comments. Most of them are caught by the spam filter and don't get published, but a few slip through. Besides, whether they are published or not, I'm still bothered by their being there because I get comment moderation notifications every day now. I could just turn those off, but then I'd never be notified even when my input is actually needed, and that would defeat the purpose.

Anyway, I'm going to require a log in again for commenting. If you have a Google account or something similar already then this should be no problem for you. I still won't include a word verification, though, since everybody seems to hate those. I've never minded them, but then again, I was fine with the idea of getting a full body scan at the airport, so I'm hardly the right person to ask about that.

Really, even if spammers weren't an issue at all, there is a tremendous risk in offering people the ability to comment anonymously. The reassurance of an anonymous platform leads people to believe (often accurately) that what they say online will have no consequences for them, and frees a darker part of their psyche to express itself without censorship or reason. I could easily write a whole post about this phenomena. In fact, I think I'll do just that, but not right now. I need to go get something to eat.

So, in summary, while I do still want you to feel free to say anything you want about my purposeless ramblings here, I'd like it if I could know who you are while you're doing it. My real identity is clearly visible to you, after all. If it weren't, it might seem like I have something to be ashamed of...

Well, that's all for now. Peace and love to you, sons and daughters of Readerland.

Just a bit of irony

A little while ago, I decided to change the comment settings on this blog. Rather than requiring a log-in, it would allow anyone to leave a comment anonymously if they wanted to. The intention was to make this place a little friendlier. The actual result was my having to deal with a barrage of spam comments, which has made me feel decidedly less friendly.

Anyway, I may leave it as-is a bit longer, but if this continues, I may just have to switch it back to requiring an account or word verification. I realize that could be a bit of a pain for actual readers, but it's a much bigger pain for me to moderate all the spam comments coming in each day.

So, to any new readers who may happen upon this little blog of mine, if I come across as unfriendly to you, that's just because my mood has been so soured by the parasitic scum of the Internet that my overall opinion of the human race has necessarily been impacted. There comes a point when I simply don't care that much what you have to say anymore. Even so, there are a few people out there who still give me hope. I should be thanking them every day for that, and I probably would if it didn't seem like such an odd thing to bring up in conversation. "Good friend, I just wanted to say thank you for helping me believe that human society may not actually rip itself apart with greed and apathy. At least not this week."

To those of you who are reading this now, thank you. If you ever wanted to leave a comment but felt it was inconvenient, I apologize, but let's face it: on my blog, what I have to say is more important anyway.

I guess that's all. Peace and love, all you reader people.

Just a bit on why we need more gun control

I find that the fun of reading an article online is easily spoiled by people who have not done so, but feel the need to leave their self-important gripes in the comment section anyway.

I hate all the hyperbole associated with it anyway. The loudest gun control advocates live in some kind of fantasy land where violent psychopaths somehow can't circumvent the law to hurt people, and the loudest gun control opponents have the kind of unresolved rage issues that make me unwilling to trust them with lethal firearms. If I ever want to talk about gun control, it'll be with the quiet reasonable people that never get the attention of lawmakers.

In truth, though, this post has nothing to do with gun control. I don't even want more gun control legislation in this country, I just wanted to see how many people would fire off a comment as soon as they caught the title. That's what this rant is actually about: paying attention.

What actually sparked this post was an article on Kotaku about a game in development on Facebook. I don't care about the game much, but I found the subject matter kind of interesting. Then I got to the comments section and was reminded that I share my gaming passion with a lot of really immature people.*

*: As obnoxious as most of the anti-Facebook comments were, there is certainly an argument to be made for why game developers should not turn to Facebook as a gaming platform. That argument was not being made effectively by any of those people, but that's besides the point. At least their thoughtless complaints were relevant.

One comment really jumped out at me. In addition to refusing to play any game on Facebook for poorly defined reasons, the person said they're not interested in playing that type of game on a keyboard (which is a valid concern), and then the question that made me furrow my brow in disappointment  They asked whether the game will be available elsewhere.

You may justly wonder why that disappointed me. If you didn't read the article (much as this person didn't), you are likely unaware that the writer of the article specifically said "It'll eventually be on Android and iOS."

You know what will always make you look bad? Asking a question that was answered moments before you asked it.

The writer of the article also mentioned that the game was made with Flash 11, "which should one day support an Xbox-style controller." So, while the commenter's point about preferring to play such a game with a controller is a valid one, it likely won't be for long.

Really, I can't comprehend how people take part in behavior like this without even realizing it. Consider this: if you were talking to me in real life, and I decided to ignore the key points of what you were saying, because I was just waiting for you to take a breath and allow me to express the opinion I already had in mind, would you value my input? You'd probably just think I was a rude, egocentric person and you'd stop talking to me.

This is just one of those things about the human condition that always baffles me. It's like when professionals stress that their employees should display "active listening" skills. Active listening is not a skill, it's a basic component of human communication. It's what separates the beautiful art and science of human discussion from, say, the instinctive guttural bleating of sheep.

I guess it's to be expected somewhat. I've heard of studies about how people on average have much shorter attention spans these days. I mean, I've heard bits of them; I never bothered to follow through and hear the whole thing. I think that in itself may legitimize the findings, though.

This is part of the reason only a select few of you are still reading these words right now. I would applaud you for sticking with me, but I kind of thought the act of reading words for any length of time stopped being an impressive feat sometime after the Dark Ages.

At any rate, I thank you for your attention, and I hope you appreciate the point of this post. The act of commenting should not be a one-way process. You're meant to take in information as well as expel your own thoughts. So, the next time somebody tries to talk to you, but makes it clear that they don't care enough to pay attention to you, let them know in no uncertain terms:

If you can't actively listen in a discussion, then nobody is going to listen to you either.
If you don't care what I think, why the hell would I care what you think?

That's all for now. Peace and love, my wonderful readerkin.

Just confirmed something, and learned other things

Apparently, even the least offensive man I can think of off-hand can offend someone from time to time without even trying. Yet I can write intentionally controversial things and hardly get any backlash. It's a matter of readership volume, I guess. People being insulted is clearly the mark of success, because it proves that somebody was paying attention to you in the first place.

Also, my friend John nicely proved two things. First, that everybody responds to their critics sometimes. Second, that it's possible to do so without reducing the quality of your prose. Playful irony and sarcasm go a long way. Bravo, sir.

To All Blog Comment Spammers

Stop commenting on my blog. I'm getting really tired of having to delete your shit day after day. I opened this blog to anonymous comments because I wanted to be inviting to the random wanderer, but if this shit continues I may have to disable commenting for anonymous users, if not disable comments altogether. I don't want that to happen, but I'm sick of having to keep deleting your digital garbage all the time.

Besides, what are you hoping to accomplish, anyway? Do you know how few people read this? And they definitely aren't going back and reading the old posts, which are always the posts you comment on for some reason. You're not helping your respective e-businesses by doing this, you're just pissing me off.

So, if you happen to be a spammer and are reading this, for God's sake just grow a brain stem and stop spamming here. Idiots.

This shit is hilarious to me

Anyone else read Last Blood? What about the comments? Oh, you must. They're a riot. And not just when Jon Pander is being himself.

A discussion emerged today so ridiculous, it bears sharing with others. Here's what you need to know: Jon explains how Mac (the character in the comic) will probably smack the zombie in the head with a golf ball so hard that it explodes. Systemz chooses to explain why this is impossible. Several WTF moments ensue. Start reading here:
http://lastblood.keenspot.com/main/2009/02/26/page-14-fore/#comment-93482

I never can understand why trollish types online always ignore my feeble attempts at being the voice of reason. Well, whatever.

This is the Best News Ever

I got my absentee ballot in the mail today. I voted for Bob Barr. No, that's not the news, but I thought I'd mention it.

No, the big news is this: YouTube has officially added audio previews for comments. Yes! This has been suggested many times in many forms by many different people, but I never thought I'd see the day that it gets implemented. This is fantastic. Now, when people go posting comments on my videos, they'll first click audio preview, and something like this will happen:



(Congrats go to Randall Munroe. He called it)