Welcome To The Pit
by The Magical Sky Father
I spent my teen years in the early 90’s at small all ages clubs that catered to punk bands from around the nation. A few would know the band and come with their ever important, I saw them first t-shirt. Others came just to hear the music and be around the scene.
Personally, me and my friends went for a single reason: we wanted to hurt people.
In the punk and metal scenes the crowd of people directly in front of the stage becomes a battlefield. Like all battlefields it has its rules as well as a code of honor. You do not just punch people nor kick people, if you do, then them and their friends will likely swiftly do the same to you. You do not play to rough with females. How would you feel if that was your sister? If someone goes down, you help them up because you do not want to get your own brains stomped out, if everyone let you lay there as the jack boots stomped up and down in tension and anger releasing convulsions. Most importantly to me you are here to hurt and be hurt so let’s have fun.
The pits over the years have become more tame.
Gone are the days of the Pit Beast, a club’s pit champion that owned that circle of humanity and could cast you out or protect you according to his personal whim. Now it is mostly about jumping around with your fellow man and not being shy about bumping into one another at a bone crushing speed.
It is that extremity and sheer idiocy I adored about the pit. I could not tell you most of the bands that played behind me and my friends as we fought for our space but I could probably remember every face I met in the pit. I loved the music and I loved punk and metal then even more than I do now but I was not there for them, I was there to do battle.
Age mellows a persons hunger for battle or at least it tames it with the everyday battle to survive and make those needed payments on your enormous cell phone bill. As the pits calmed I went less. And as it became harder to make a living much of my energy went in that new direction.
Then, in 2000 I bought my very first magic box.
A computer is merely a computer, either you plug data into it or you play video games. At least I am pretty sure that is precisely what Charles Babbage envisioned, though Dungeons & Dragons had yet to be invented. He could not hide his internal hunger to play a Gnome Warrior on the latest MMORPG game from me because that is a hunger I understand too intimately. It involves a life time of saving the world from those idiots that keeping mucking things up, and the savior is of course me.
A magic box was a bit different from a personal computer. With a nice set of surround sound speakers and a large monitor and DVD player you could watch movies, listen to your now digital music collection, surf the Internet, plug in data, save the world and most importantly view a smorgasbord of porn that would make Larry Flint re-think indecency laws. I would sit for hours in front of its eye melting screen reading, playing and arguing with people I have not nor would ever meet all while listening to NPR and drinking peppermint tea.
Within a few short years sites like Wikipedia, TED and Slashdot changed the way I looked at my world, my self — and what I found to be my monumental ignorance on many topics.
I had grown up as a history geek and since news is history now I also in turn had a rabid interest in current events. The day I turned from my monitor screen to turn off the screaming talking heads on the television that had always basked me in their idiocy while I surfed the web is the day I realized that they knew even less than the people I had found myself debating in forums and comment strings.
I no longer needed their opinions and I had never wanted them in the first place.
After a few years the television moved to the trash can with the mountain of dust that it had accumulated.
I no longer watched, I interacted. I no longer listened, I debated.
That long dark night of watching the talking head that was closest to my viewpoint — hoping and praying they would say what the world ignored — was now over.
Now I would speak for myself, regardless of who would listen.
In the early days of Internet news they had comment strings. Though in the end many writers would find them to be the bane of their existence when they first began they were the electronic answer to the classic Letter to the Editor. Over the years I had pulled back from certain news programs because I found myself screaming at the screen. These people did not know their history, most of them seemed to know little more than what the guy before them said.
On the Internet though I had a chance to jump in the comment string and let them know precisely what I thought of them, their opinion, or their brilliance. Surrounded by the batcrud and just plain crazy I spouted my batcrud and crazy — and hit the post button and felt as if I had done something.
I knew I had not. I knew that if people actually read the strings that most of it looked like the graffiti of the asylum but I allowed my self indulgence to persist. Having the ability to respond made me more comfortable reading news regardless of the spin. I no longer got a migraine screaming “BUT WHAT ABOUT…”
Now I merely typed it.
I call myself a “balanced extremist” and if there is a truth about American politics it’s that it fears extremes. For that reason I did not fit into the left wing or right wing molds on the Internet. My views are complex and generally a balance of both sides’ extremes. Most of the sites I found myself on wanted me to label myself a Republican a Democrat or an Independent.
My answer to this conundrum was to create three separate personas: a Republican, a Democrat and an Independent. This allowed me to play devils advocate and ask nit picky questions to both sides — as well as allowing me to remain mentally flexible.
On these comment strings and forums we have a type of person we call a “troll.” A troll is someone that comments only to get a specific reaction. It is the Internet equivalent to race or reverse race baiting.
I had never met a troll in real life until I met a friend with many of the same interests and hobbies as me.
He also loved the debate and the pit like quality of the comment strings. He also had three different handles on every forum but he used them in a manner I had never considered. He was a Democrat. To be fair, I have met trolls of all political colors now but he was my first. What he would do is comment his actual views logged in as the Democrat and then switch to the independent at which point he would agree with himself or another poster that held his views. Then he would sign in as a Republican and spout some of the most offensive and harsh views that I have heard this side of the John Birch society.
I pondered his methods for a few days and during that time did not comment at all. What if others were all playing the same game, I wondered, and immediately realized that if he was doing it chances were good that many others were as well with many varying beliefs and affiliations.
It was at that moment that I killed all three of my handles on the sites I commented on and after a long discussion about ethics ended that friendship as well.
I had to ask myself if my hobby was about winning, debating or making the world a better place by actually listening to what one another were saying and then trying to find ideas that all sides could agree upon.
For me debate was amusing but if it did not result in making the world better or at least an attempt then it was pointless.
Winning for the sake of winning is a hollow victory that you will usually find backfires in the end. I desired common ground, I desired bridging the gap and finding consensus — and therefore I would have to act like it.
I call comment strings and and forums “the pit” because that is where the action is.
That is where your ideas and links are challenged and if you are honest you sometimes have to change your mind about views you have held your entire life.
That is where political operatives with varying goals mix with average citizens and trolls to test political talking points and destroy one another.
We like to think the threads don’t matter. Many say that no one reads them and nobody cares but I would remind them that Obama and the Tea Party are children of those forums and comment strings.
Without the comment strings under articles about Obama, the distortions and attempted “other” smearing would have likely been a good deal more successful since they didnt need to worry about that pesky thing called truth.
Without the comment strings and forums the Ron Paul revolution would have been ignored instead of morphing into the Tea Party where it rose like a phoenix stronger than it had ever been.
Many that would say “they do not matter” do not understand how much power they have already shown. They have also not seen what those of us that have made them a hobby have. We have seen the difference in comments a year, six months and a few weeks away from an election. We have seen the Pentagon and IDF sponsored propaganda campaigns directed at them not to mention the Democratic and Republican noise machines that do the same in much larger numbers. If they didn’t matter it would be pointless to throw money at the problem for these organizations.
As someone that watched much of this unfold and as someone that worked the forums and comment strings for my favored candidate in the 2008 election I assure you that they matter.
I would search the Internet for negative stories that were coming from the land of fantasy and begin posting links to Wikipedia and Snopes. I would fight unfounded allegations and conspiracy theory with facts, data, tables and investigation and in the end we got a President that I was stunned was able to make it through the meat grinder that has become American politics and the only explanation I have is the power of the Internet and those pesky comment strings.
It was there that the information that US media refused to cover in the Bush era began to seep back into the US.
It was through that uncontrolled conduit that more and more Americans became aware that the Iraq war was not what had been sold and it was also through that conduit that some American’s became aware of the impending economic crises that befell us.
If you ask me why our nations leaders and reporters missed the crises until it was at our doorstep my answer is that they should have been reading the comment strings because many who did saw it coming for five years or more.
These were not comments from people that would loose money by saying one thing or another: they had no dog in the race except the fiscal health of their nation.
The “experts” on the other hand had reputations, careers and money to loose — so why we find it a mystery they missed it baffles me.
The power of the comment string is not in the words but the links. It is not in being able to ask questions but having the ability to verify them. It is not in talking points but documented evidence. It is not in opinion but in proof.
It is for those reasons that I think the power of the comment string is just beginning because more and more people are also realizing the same thing.
Many that do not comment read the strings. And, like those that watched the pit in my youth from the sidelines, they may not yet have the confidence to jump in. They may their view voiced but not feel a burning need to jump in with a “ditto.”
Personally, I rarely or ever read articles without a comment string or forum because I have no way to verify its accuracy without doing all of the homework myself. With a comment string I can see what is and what is not debunked or I can work with others to see if the facts are actually myths or assumptions.
One could argue that this shows a general distrust in our fellow man but in reality as American’s we all tend to have a problem with authority and have an ingrained distrust of anyone that claims it. When writing or reporting you are acting as an authority since you are giving a person information that they will have to choose whether or not to use to form their reality. With a long history of yellow journalism and biased and partisan news we have learned to not trust you, not because we think you are a liar, but because we do not trust anyone that needs to feed and clothe themselves and their children. Those pressures — alone ignoring bias and ideology — are enough to call peoples “facts” into question until they are verified.
I found myself spending even holidays in the comment strings and forums. At first it upset me but then I realized why and with a single response I let my views be known to the other commenter’s.
“I would rather spend the rest of my life debating people with views I utterly despise than spend an hour surrounded by people that either don’t care or do not even think about the future of their nation or their world.”
It is a harsh statement but I think it captures one of the untold rules of the Internet pit.
I may put on my gauntlets to do battle with you and I may desire your blood — but I do so out of respect because you care enough about your nation and your world to come out and fight and in that we have something in common. Something I dare say that is rather powerful.
When our nation was founded, a few men that truly cared about their nation, its future, and the future of the world wrote passionately and struggled with both philosophy and human nature. Over two hundred years later, I find I have a preference for surrounding myself with this generation’s men of letters — and you find many of them in the comment strings and forums all over the Internet.
It is you who speak truth to power, even if that truth is only in your mind. It is you that give voice to the voiceless, even if you have merely missed where their words were documented.
It is you, the unwashed masses, that stand unafraid of your own words and views — and it is you that truly care about our worlds future. For that I thank you all, regardless of your opinions and regardless of your views.
Welcome to the Pit: I have come to do battle so break out the gauntlets.
The Magical Sky Father often comments in TMV’s District TMV and is known as one of its most prolific and thoughtful commenters.