The irony of commenting on this piece… still, the number of comments is still pretty low 😉.
Your solution to the problem of deranged commenters is elegant but unfortunately commercially impracticable. When people comment they do not load a new page with new ad-consuming opportunities. But when they return to see how their comment has been received by others, they do. This is what drives the page views.
Consequently it becomes worthwhile to commission articles that many people simply cannot resist commenting on - such as the boomer one you mention. That’s the real source of the rot: the commercial imperative has infected the commissioning editor’s mindset. Rapid response, rather than reflection, is encouraged.
Perhaps this is obvious. But it was an unspoken but powerful motivation on the sites where I worked.
I was all ready to leave a comment about my friend who always reproaches me for reading the comments since they’re so often frustrating, stupid, or they kill the joy of the thing she shared with me, but then you mentioned the Telegraph blog and now I’m reliving my Telegraph blog miseries.
Here is my blog-based trauma, if you’re at all interested (and if not, at least I’ve had a chance to vent). I had a column on the Telegraph blog for a short while. I wrote any old bollocks that was on my mind and it was fun (albeit almost entirely bereft of comments). But when Shiny Media went under (about 6 months after I resigned and when I was 5 months pregnant), they asked me to write a column about it. The day after it went live (mostly to crickets) one of their other columnists put up a post slagging me off for what I’d said in my column and accusing the founders of sinking the company by spending too much on one roll of wallpaper for our video set. Of course his piece got a heap of comments and I felt like a massive nob. The most irritating bit was he accused me of not taking any blame, which suggested he hadn’t even read my column (which included a line about how I had to accept my part of the blame).
I emailed my editor (isn’t it terrible I can’t remember his name? But also, quite pleasing) and told him I quit. He sent me a reply along the lines of, ‘Oh, come on, Katie, don’t be like that. Why not write another one giving him what for.’ He clearly just wanted to get a fight going for traffic. I wrote back to say I “don’t engage in professional fuckwittery for clicks”. Years later I checked that column by the (now thankfully forgotten, but at the time very well known) journalist and realised two well known dickheads (who I won’t name because they’ll have google alerts set up and that’s the last thing I want or need) were both commenters.
Anyway, that year was a massively stressful time for me. Not only was my business no more, I was getting shit written about me online that often wasn’t true, I was moving house while very pregnant (I gave birth 8 days after we moved in) and suffering huge problems with my ligaments (including three torn ones in my ankle which necessitated a walking stick). My daughter was an extremely stressed and anxious baby (and still is in her teens). She likes to blame me for this due to the cortisol exposure she would have suffered. The second child came at a very relaxed stage in my life, a pound heavier and extremely unflappable. Of course, it’s hardly evidence, but it’s nice to blame the Telegraph for at least some of her deep-seated anxieties.
So there you go, a massive comment no one will read (I wouldn’t!) but at least you got ENGAGEMENT.
Well, I'm commenting here because almost nobody else does :-)
But from the perspective of someone with decades on the net, this article didn't seem to have that background, yet I know you have similar net-experience. Remember, many years ago, there was a whole effort by a group of social-media hustlers to sell media companies on "community" and "engagement", as part of the cure for declining revenue. The idea was that a company would create some sort of fan base, which allow them to better market to those passionate people (and not just by tawdry advertising impressions). It was very much complete bollocks, but worried corporate managers make good targets for that sort of pitch. And for a while, the grifters did pretty well for themselves. Of course after that collapsed (e.g. externalities as you discuss), those scammers moved on to something else.
The comments were never there to be of any value. They were to trick the suckers, err, community members, that they were valued for anything other than their money.
And that deception was what I detested most about the whole con. It was exploiting a deep human need to feel like one matters. It's a version of the old joke that everyone's a writer waiting to be discovered, just working a day job.
Remember, you've had a professional media career. You may not be at the very tip-top of the power-law curve, but you're at a vastly higher place compared to essentially any random member of the public. The world looks very different sometimes at different locations of that curve.
[P.S.: "... any sort of algorithm that spots recurring commenters and highlights them on the basis of their useful contributions" - programmer-audience sites have tried this, to mixed results. A big issue is what might be called the "Elon Musk problem" - someone can be an expert contributor in one domain, but a lunatic in others (those even tend to go together!), and nobody has figured out how to deal with this yet.]
Your blanket attack on community and engagement seems a tad extreme. It ignores for example those media whose position was to champion the customer first. In my experience, they (I should say ‘us’ as that was part of my schtick) were seen as both a blessing and curse. Why? As one CEO correctly observed: trust is earned in droplets and lost in buckets.
I’d count B2B media amongst that — back when I was working in that, well-managed comments and forums were sources of contacts, story leads and genuine community spirit.
However, it’s much harder — if not impossible — to make that work at national newspaper scale. The FT manages it, but I’ve always maintained that it’s pretty much a large B2B masquerading as a national newspaper anyway.
The old line - “social media is full of people who don’t seem to know when they have nothing to say, but say it anyway” - seems also to apply to lots of BTL stuff
Very interesting Charles. When I had my own media thing (I’m thankfully retired) I both relished and replied to as many comments as possible. Like you, I tend to ‘feisty.’ In truth, I did so on the theory that engagement enriched the content and helped me better understand the subject matter. Today, I find comments informative, especially on sites run by disaffected academics involved in promoting right leaning ‘stuff.’ It helps me figure out how the wing nuts work and just how many of them are deranged. To your main point - that’s what I call a seriously #evilplan! Someone will monetise it for sure.
There is that. My best guess is fear fuelled disillusion by those who feel left behind, skilfully manipulated by propagandists playing into ‘othering’ as a weapon for diverting attention while also gathering allegiance. It’s a real, albeit malevolent skill.
The irony of commenting on this piece… still, the number of comments is still pretty low 😉.
Your solution to the problem of deranged commenters is elegant but unfortunately commercially impracticable. When people comment they do not load a new page with new ad-consuming opportunities. But when they return to see how their comment has been received by others, they do. This is what drives the page views.
Consequently it becomes worthwhile to commission articles that many people simply cannot resist commenting on - such as the boomer one you mention. That’s the real source of the rot: the commercial imperative has infected the commissioning editor’s mindset. Rapid response, rather than reflection, is encouraged.
Perhaps this is obvious. But it was an unspoken but powerful motivation on the sites where I worked.
I was all ready to leave a comment about my friend who always reproaches me for reading the comments since they’re so often frustrating, stupid, or they kill the joy of the thing she shared with me, but then you mentioned the Telegraph blog and now I’m reliving my Telegraph blog miseries.
Here is my blog-based trauma, if you’re at all interested (and if not, at least I’ve had a chance to vent). I had a column on the Telegraph blog for a short while. I wrote any old bollocks that was on my mind and it was fun (albeit almost entirely bereft of comments). But when Shiny Media went under (about 6 months after I resigned and when I was 5 months pregnant), they asked me to write a column about it. The day after it went live (mostly to crickets) one of their other columnists put up a post slagging me off for what I’d said in my column and accusing the founders of sinking the company by spending too much on one roll of wallpaper for our video set. Of course his piece got a heap of comments and I felt like a massive nob. The most irritating bit was he accused me of not taking any blame, which suggested he hadn’t even read my column (which included a line about how I had to accept my part of the blame).
I emailed my editor (isn’t it terrible I can’t remember his name? But also, quite pleasing) and told him I quit. He sent me a reply along the lines of, ‘Oh, come on, Katie, don’t be like that. Why not write another one giving him what for.’ He clearly just wanted to get a fight going for traffic. I wrote back to say I “don’t engage in professional fuckwittery for clicks”. Years later I checked that column by the (now thankfully forgotten, but at the time very well known) journalist and realised two well known dickheads (who I won’t name because they’ll have google alerts set up and that’s the last thing I want or need) were both commenters.
Anyway, that year was a massively stressful time for me. Not only was my business no more, I was getting shit written about me online that often wasn’t true, I was moving house while very pregnant (I gave birth 8 days after we moved in) and suffering huge problems with my ligaments (including three torn ones in my ankle which necessitated a walking stick). My daughter was an extremely stressed and anxious baby (and still is in her teens). She likes to blame me for this due to the cortisol exposure she would have suffered. The second child came at a very relaxed stage in my life, a pound heavier and extremely unflappable. Of course, it’s hardly evidence, but it’s nice to blame the Telegraph for at least some of her deep-seated anxieties.
So there you go, a massive comment no one will read (I wouldn’t!) but at least you got ENGAGEMENT.
Preach, Katie!!
Well, I'm commenting here because almost nobody else does :-)
But from the perspective of someone with decades on the net, this article didn't seem to have that background, yet I know you have similar net-experience. Remember, many years ago, there was a whole effort by a group of social-media hustlers to sell media companies on "community" and "engagement", as part of the cure for declining revenue. The idea was that a company would create some sort of fan base, which allow them to better market to those passionate people (and not just by tawdry advertising impressions). It was very much complete bollocks, but worried corporate managers make good targets for that sort of pitch. And for a while, the grifters did pretty well for themselves. Of course after that collapsed (e.g. externalities as you discuss), those scammers moved on to something else.
The comments were never there to be of any value. They were to trick the suckers, err, community members, that they were valued for anything other than their money.
And that deception was what I detested most about the whole con. It was exploiting a deep human need to feel like one matters. It's a version of the old joke that everyone's a writer waiting to be discovered, just working a day job.
Remember, you've had a professional media career. You may not be at the very tip-top of the power-law curve, but you're at a vastly higher place compared to essentially any random member of the public. The world looks very different sometimes at different locations of that curve.
[P.S.: "... any sort of algorithm that spots recurring commenters and highlights them on the basis of their useful contributions" - programmer-audience sites have tried this, to mixed results. A big issue is what might be called the "Elon Musk problem" - someone can be an expert contributor in one domain, but a lunatic in others (those even tend to go together!), and nobody has figured out how to deal with this yet.]
Your blanket attack on community and engagement seems a tad extreme. It ignores for example those media whose position was to champion the customer first. In my experience, they (I should say ‘us’ as that was part of my schtick) were seen as both a blessing and curse. Why? As one CEO correctly observed: trust is earned in droplets and lost in buckets.
I’d count B2B media amongst that — back when I was working in that, well-managed comments and forums were sources of contacts, story leads and genuine community spirit.
However, it’s much harder — if not impossible — to make that work at national newspaper scale. The FT manages it, but I’ve always maintained that it’s pretty much a large B2B masquerading as a national newspaper anyway.
The old line - “social media is full of people who don’t seem to know when they have nothing to say, but say it anyway” - seems also to apply to lots of BTL stuff
But not to comments on blogs, obvs
Of course not 😂 I’d never heard that saying before, but it’s good. Doesn’t apply to me or the people I follow, or who follow me, of COURSE.
Very interesting Charles. When I had my own media thing (I’m thankfully retired) I both relished and replied to as many comments as possible. Like you, I tend to ‘feisty.’ In truth, I did so on the theory that engagement enriched the content and helped me better understand the subject matter. Today, I find comments informative, especially on sites run by disaffected academics involved in promoting right leaning ‘stuff.’ It helps me figure out how the wing nuts work and just how many of them are deranged. To your main point - that’s what I call a seriously #evilplan! Someone will monetise it for sure.
Yes, I follow your methodology there, but figuring out how a mind reaches the position of saying those things still escapes me.
There is that. My best guess is fear fuelled disillusion by those who feel left behind, skilfully manipulated by propagandists playing into ‘othering’ as a weapon for diverting attention while also gathering allegiance. It’s a real, albeit malevolent skill.