The last column about the commenters (hopefully)

This year, as I entered my second year writing for the ‘Prince,’ I have noticed a lot of articles discussing and criticizing the comments section below our articles. I am talking about articles like Sarah Sakha’s “Just Keep Scrolling,” Newby Parton’s “Thoughts on Freshman Columnists,” and Will Rivitz’s “Snark’s Inefficacy.” The most recent of these was published just this month.

All the articles share a similar theme, a criticism of the harshness of the commenters. On the one hand, I can empathize with these writers, particularly because all of them are freshmen. I have received extremely harsh criticism from commenters as well. Some of the criticism was logical and earned; some of it was unfair. However, if we are to be an effective paper I believe we need to move on from dwelling on the commenters, because they are an unavoidable part of any online publication.

I understand this column may come across as slightly ironic; after all, I am contributing one more article to the recent deluge of columns discussing the topic of critical commentary in response to other articles. However, I believe it is important to make this criticism in this forum, because the other articles were published here as well.

I have written in other online publications before. Whatever the blog or newspaper, whatever the size or demographic of the intended audience, all online publications have one thing in common: at least a few snarky, uncomplicated comments. It is these that are most often complained about.

However, to complain about them is to miss the point. They are not intended to strike up complicated debates or even really critique the author’s argument. They are just meant to draw attention or show general displeasure with any aspect of the article. To highlight these by writing multiple articles about them is to put a hundred times more thought into them than the original commentator did. Discussing them can never have a fruitful ending because, again, they were never truly meant for discussion.

In fact, reactionary writing in response to the banal, intentionally inflammatory comments gives them attention and makes the authors look defensive. Both of these things only encourage further snarky comments. In “Snark’s Inefficacy,” Will Rivitz mentions that snarky comments are defined by the fact that it is impossible to respond well to them in an intelligent, meaningful, thoughtful manner. As such, I propose that we don’t respond to them —either in the comments or in long articles.

Comments are an important part of online debate. Many of them are intended to add on to the articles or to seriously critique them, bringing up things the author overlooked, ignored or misinterpreted. These comments are useful to read and engage with.

I don’t generally like to write about my own writing, or about the way writing works in the opinion section of the ‘Prince’. I believe the opinion page is best served if all of the opinion writers focus on larger issues of interest to the campus as a whole.

However, because the trend of articles complaining about commenters has continued, I think it is important to take a decisive stance in this venue. I hope that moving forward we choose to use this space in a more productive manner. This year’s freshmen will likely grow completely unaffected by comments soon —exposure makes you tough. But I hope next year’s new writers and those that come after them can skip that intermediary step. I hope they move straight to being as unaffected as possible by rude and unproductive comments.

Hopefully, in the upcoming semester, we can all decide to participate in meaningful and productive discussions, even in the comments sections of the ‘Prince’. Failing that, maybe we can at least learn to ignore such comments.

Zeena Mubarak is a sophomore from Fairfax, Va. She can be reached at zmubarak@princeton.edu.