Saturday, November 5, 2011

Comment trolls should be laughed at, not unmasked

Nasty anonymous commenters can be annoying (although usually they're just sad). And I think they lack cohones for not using their own names. But this push by Labor MP Andrew Waddell to demand that they publicly identify themselves strikes me as petty and pointless. It's also pretty authoritarian.

By writing their puerile and vindictive comments all they do is reveal their own sad emotional state. Sure, the fact that there are so many people like this out there is a bit of a worry. It's a phenomenon that needs to be studied, if anything. So we shouldn't outlaw the evidence.

And if people get upset by troll comments they should just learn to shrug them off. These people have nothing worthwhile to add, so why be bothered by their hatred? That old schoolyard saying about "sticks and stones" is certainly worth remembering here.

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