What’s the Worst/Dumbest Comment Anyone’s Ever Left You?
Warning: Because this post contains comments from Internet users, it contains some thinly veiled profanity and should not be read by anyone.
Not long ago, I wrote a post on this blog that got a lot of attention and quite a few comments, many of which were insightful even though they displayed a different point of view.
I also got a deluge of charming notes letting me know what a spectacular moron I was. When I say “deluge,” I mean I got at least one comment (or email!) every few minutes for three days. That’s a lot of negative backlash for one person to have to process, and most of it didn’t contain the most, shall we say, polite or reasonable sentiments.
Of course, we already know that people are stupid, haters gonna hate, they don’t pay your bills, and it doesn’t matter. But still. Come on, dude. A girl can only take so much haterade.
At some point during almost every day for the past several years, I’ve had to wade through the written sewage of the Internet in all its misspelled, badly punctuated, hilariously wrong and horrifyingly offensive glory. Here are a few gems from the posts I’ve written and the posts of my friends; I invite you to leave yours (without naming any names, of course) in the comments section.
Disclaimer: None of the comments below come from Mashable.
Let the catharsis begin.
1. …Of a Thousand Men
Back in the day, every woman on the Internet was a prostitute.
This may not seem likely to us now, but allow me to illustrate with Monty Python witch-burning logic how this is true:
What do prostitutes do? They do things at night in exchange for money. What do women bloggers who blog at night do? They do things at night in exchange for money. OMG! WOMEN BLOGGERS ARE ALL PROSTITUTES!
So naturally, when a woman wrote a blog post one did not agree with, one could simply dismiss the opinions expressed therein by branding them the ill-conceived ramblings of a diseased whore.
I’ve received many such comments in my time online, but my all-time favorites were 1) the comment that ennumerated the Google Search results for the phrase “Jolie O’Dell is a slut” (you gotta love the reach for real data!) and 2) the gorgeously poetic if incorrectly spelled comment,
Jolie odell has sucked the c*cks of a thousand men.
What grandeur in that turn of phrase! According to this guy, I’m practically the Laurence of Arabia of c*ck! And all I had to do was write a blog post about the Internet. Who knew?
2. Hipster Skank
If you’re a woman who blogs about Apple, you’re not just a whore; you’re a HIPSTER whore.
Via the amazingly smart Christina Warren:
Girl’s got a killer sense of humor. She even made a tribute site about it.
3. More Simple
Back before building web apps for a living boiled his poor little brain in genius juice, the bf used to blog a lot. He’d write huge, long, dense posts, drawing on his study of microeconomics, finance, mathematical models of consumerism and more and applying those principles to social media, virality, web design and, you know, stuff.
After one particular post (of 3,651 words, no less), in which Eston explored American pluralism and “the ruthless assimilation of a subcultural aesthetic,” he got a comment that pretty much epitomizes the “too long; didn’t read” mindset. The comment read, simply,
could you just make it more simple?
It’s like going to a Michelin-starred restaurant and ordering Spaghettios. Or dating Marilyn Monroe and looking at Doris Day porn. Or owning a brand new BMW 7 series and test driving a ’75 Nash Gremlin. The analogies abound, but this guy’s capacity for critical thinking does not.
4. Sucking C*ck for Women’s Equality
The lovely and talented artist Molly Crabapple once organized a burlesque event to benefit Planned Parenthood. I’m sure she got quite a few special emails about that, but she particularly recalls one missive suggesting she “suck a d*ck for feminism.”
Sucking c*ck for women’s equality pays a lot better and if you’re going to be whore for something you might as well make it as profitable as possible. Your art in print or tits in pasties ain’t worth sh*t next to the price of renting your mouth out for some hard d*ck facef*cking and you know it, so do your feminist duty and open wide for your sisters.
Yikes. I don’t know what’s scarier: The violent profanity or the tenuous logic. And as you can see, this whole women-on-the-Internet-are-whores thing has really stuck around for a while.
5. The Old Fafebook
You know, you try to have faith that all the people out there on the Internet are just like you: Intelligent, discerning, having opposable thumbs. Then someone, somewhere moves a rock, and people themselves emerge to prove you wrong.
One day, through some accidental SEO magic and some really spectacular displays of human stupidity, ReadWriteWeb’s Facebook Connect commenting feature became a source of agony and delight for thousands. I think the comment thread on the above-linked post got well over 100,000 pageviews. Basically, “confused” users somehow thought the red-and-white tech blog was Facebook. There was NOTHING we could do to convince these people that ReadWriteWeb was not Facebook. And they were enraged.
The staff favorite stands as follows:
I WANT THE OLD FAFEBOOK BACK THIS SHIT IS WACK!!!!!
We couldn’t agree with you more, dear.
You Know You Wanna Share
Without naming any names, you should definitely let us know what your favorite bad comments are, from trollism to hurr-ism and beyond.
I have a post about how to reset your Facebook password. Just like the RWW post, I get people in my comments section asking “Well, were do I reset the password?”.
I’ve noticed website owners across the board complaining about what’s going on in their comments sections this past year. Engadget had to shut their comment section down for a few weeks it was so bad. I think this is happening inline with more “average folk” joining the web and just now learning how to leave a comment on a page.
Many people who don’t even know how to turn on a computer are learning how to use the web finally. They were ignorant in figuring out they should finally figure out what this Internet thing is about, so they naturally are the ones bombarding people with ignorant comments.
Gee, it’s hard to pick the best worst comment. But this recent spam comment on my blog was pretty awesome:
“HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia and being forced to post spam comments on blogs! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. They’re coming back now. Please send help!”
tl;dr
Dying laughing. Now I wish I’d saved some of my more scathing ones from my tech blogger days at Profy, Blorge and Mashable… especially when I wrote about games now and then. Because Girls Don’t Game And If They Do They Deserve As Much Vitriol As Basement Dwellers Can Dish as a mentality is alive and well.
It’s hard to pick the worst or the dumbest, but the most useless is when someone says “I totally agree with you.” Like picking #3 on a scale of 1-5.
My favourite was:
hope youre whole family gets reborn as seals and you see you’re mother being culled like the bitch she brought you up to be. I curse your whole family just cause you believe seal hunting is just. You will also continue to be poor and freezing in that beautiful ice plate you call home. So yeah, continue earning a living off fur, and blubber. You people are so mentally and emotionally wasted and a redundancy to this planet. You should kill each other and sell your meat and fat to your relatives. It’s a pity you have to live off fish you’re whole life, rednecks. Maybe then the world would be truly be rid of the last remaining savages when youre corpses are 7 feet below ice.
When I got this, I immediately e-mailed it to as many people as possible. You don’t light a candle and hide it under a bushel. It’s my favourite e-mail of all time.
Dude, you win. I bow to the utter insanity of your readership.
Yeah, it just HAS to be shared. I live in the Canadian Arctic, and the cultural and geographic insults were a nice touch. This person really took his time with it.
The comment most redundant of any intellectual spark most certainly has to be this gem…
“I like to lick the fudge from the rim of girls and then gently but ever so firmly grasp their sweet sweet fruit of love and squeeze all the lushious juice onto my face, in my mouth and around my tounge.”.
Lovely.
Hi i hate getting spam comments on my blog really piss me off
Over the 4 years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve had some lovely comments dropped in my inbox. I’ve had everything from “You’re fat” to “Your photos suck” to “Why do you even bother?” to ” “I want that 30 seconds of my life back” to my favourite, “Just quit on life”.
I’ve learned to ignore, delete or spam the troll comments from my blog and just move on. You can’t rationalize with the crazies and fighting them only fuels their negativity. After a while, they all go away, skulking back to the dark corners in which they dwell.
Perhaps all they need is a Troll Anon support group and a large box of donuts.
“Hi, my name is Jeremy and I am an internet troll.”
“Hi Jeremy!”
Hi Jolie, I know we had this discussion on Twitter, and I see you turned it into a post. I just had to comment with my all-time favorite troll creation:
“You’re a fucking homo, get a real life and stop pretending like internet journalism will ever get you anywhere in life.”
Ummm hi hi there! First of all, I am not a journalist. I blog about how social media affects business. Second of all, that wasn’t even a business post – it was a reflection on life. And thirdly, I get *paid* to do social media, which includes a boatload of blogging, by a large-ish global company. Sucka!
Oh and there was a troll (different guy) who was posting insults to everything I said in high-traffic blogs like Mashable and RWW, then came over and trolled our blog, and then posted a denigrating comment on yet another site, making it look like I did it. That’s when me and my little troll had a chat (oh I knew who it was! – the subtleties of written voice
. I told him that it was identity theft, which could get him in a lot of trouble. All the trolling stopped immediately. If I didn’t know who it was, and didn’t deal with it, all of this could’ve actually impacted my career. Oh, and the best thing.. Ready for the kicker? He called me a troll in some of his trolly comments. Ummm I discuss actual issues vs. dishing out pointless vitriol, and I use my real name, thankyouverymuch.
People can be straight up evil. However, most are still really awesome. That is my certified professional opinion.
Maria Ogneva
@themaria
I’ve learned what threats are serious and those that are not.
My internet hate became real when people began following me around, calling my work and throwing things at my downtown SF window. I received real death threats (ones that resulted in FBI crime unit getting involved and arresting people who made the threats).
this crap sucks but thank goodness each one of these people remain anonymous in their homes without being in your face about it in real life.
Negative comments turned into complete 4chan conversations about me to pinpointing all of my personal info and soon my parents were being phone and people calling work asking why they employ me (a pedophile) and being spit on by strangers on the street and having notes on my apartment door when I came home that said, “we’re coming back at 10PM to kill you and your girlfriend.”
Yes this completely sucks but I don’t think I could ever get used to the real life threats. It messed things up for me just a tad because I have gone from someone who easily ignores the trolls to someone who kind of has to take them seriously just in case it’s someone who cares enough to show up at my door. Sigh.
Anyway. Thanks for posting this, Jolie. Mean people suck but haters gonna hate. It’s awesome to see you fighting this head on instead of letting it get to you or simply ignoring it like the rest of us do. but please be careful. Take threats seriously. If someone DOES threaten you, report the commenter and IP to FBI cyber crimes. http://www.fbi.gov/cyberinvest/cyberhome.htm. Just in case that person makes those threats real, you have record and a case number for it. I learned the hard way that police think internet bullying reports are a total joke but when people actually showed up at my house, all of the sudden, police said, “why the heck didn’t you file a police report?” where one week earlier, a walk into the police station had them laughing at me saying, “ha. some kid threatened you on the internet? so?”
I respect what you’re doing here and love your posts here and on mashable. Keep up the great work!
I haven’t had any comments to match these, but Jenny the Bloggess has some great advice, and commiseration cards.
Stuff like this:
WHEN U R READING THIS DONT STOP OR SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN! {SORRY ABOUT THIS} THIS GIRL’S NAME IS SUMMER SHE’S 15 YEARS OLD & has BLONDE HAIR ,MANY SCARS no NOSE OR EARS.. SHE IS DEAD. IF U DONT COPY THIS JUST LIKE FROM THE RING, COPY N POST THIS ON 5 MORE SITES.. OR.. SUMMER WILL APPEAR ONE DARK QUIET NIGHT WHEN UR NOT ExPECTING IT BY YOUR BED WITH A KNIFE AND KILL U. THIS IS NO JOKE SOMETHING GOOD WILL HAPPEN TO U IF YOU POST THIS ON 5 MORE PAGES
Yeah…makes a lot of sense
T.E. Lawrence’s nickname is “Lawrence of Arabia”, not “Laurence”.