Don’t read the comments. This is a common phrase bandied amongst people who spend time on the Internet. It refers to the unpleasant and futile experience that you can experience if you read the comments on news and articles.
As someone who writes articles and publishes them on the Internet, I personally have a love-hate relationship with comment sections. This mostly skews towards the ‘hate’ part of the balance, as they can be places where anonymous people unleash their darkest and most offensive thoughts. They can be places where people bring their own agenda, completely unrelated to the topic that was written about, willfully ignoring the point of what was written, and attempt to score points instead. And they can be filled with name-calling and threats, especially if you are a woman.
But contrary to popular belief, some comment sections are filled with knowledgeable and thoughtful people who will engage with what you have written and provide feedback and constructive criticism.
My favourite kind of commenter, however, resides in the ‘who cares’ group.
In this particular moment in history, normal plebs like you and me have never-before-seen unfettered access to celebrities and celebrity culture. Actors, musicians, athletes, and comedians – they are covered by magazines, talk shows, reality shows, entertainment journalists, TMZ, and the paparazzi. Celebrities are engaged with fans on social media on a level we have never seen before. For whatever reason, people cannot get enough.
That means that a lot of content is generated around these stories. It is totally understandable that some people who are not interested in celebrity culture (or who think it is a low point for humanity) would be annoyed by this phenomenon. It’s totally understandable that these people might not care about the topic, just as people who aren’t interested in sport might not click on stories about sport.
To try and feel intellectually superior to people who enjoy reading fluff stories by pretending not to know who incredibly famous people are?
But I will never understand the people who complain that the celebrity stories exist, and display this annoyance by clicking on a story about the Kardashians, for example, and leaving an insightful and intelligent comment such as “Who cares?” or “Who is this Kim Kardashian anyway?”
Please, Mr Commenter. You know who Kim Kardashian is. And you know that plenty of people care. You may disagree that people should care, but that is an entirely different argument.
What the members of this group are essentially doing is taking time out of whatever important things they are doing in their day, finding a story about a topic they apparently don’t care about, clicking on the link and leaving a comment (sometimes having to sign into the site to do so). That seems counterproductive, at best.
That is far more effort than most people who do care about the topic go to. And all for what purpose? To try and feel intellectually superior to people who enjoy reading fluff stories by pretending not to know who incredibly famous people are? That isn’t impressive. That’s the ‘I don’t even own a TV’ of the Internet. Or perhaps it’s to try and make others feel bad for enjoying light entertainment. Apologies ‘EinsteinMan69’, your anonymous and random attempt to shame strangers into not enjoying a thing they enjoy has failed once again.
Whatever the case, what these kinds of commenters are definitely doing is helping to drive up traffic for the very stories they wish didn’t exist. When organisations look at how many clicks and comments a story got, they don’t care if you clicked on the story because you want to know what is going on with Kanye (something awesome probably), or if you are clicking on it to feel a brief moment of satisfaction that you would never be interested in reading about celebrities. As you (of course) then go on to read about celebrities and leave a comment. All they know is that you drove up traffic for them.
So go ahead, please feel free to comment ‘who cares’ on this, I’ll take it as a compliment.
