My Comment Culture Experience

Two of the stories that I decided to comment on were off of espn.com and were called "They went a little overboard" and "We are Canada's worst nightmare". "They went a little overboard" was about the aftermath of the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. Two Swiss athletes decided that they were going to witdraw from the Olympic bobsled events due to the scary track conditions. I posted a comment about how I agreed with the decision they made and that they're life and health is more important than winning a medal. My comment didn't spark and further conversation and was completely ignored by every other commenter. So yes, it was a dead end street. "We are Canada's worst nightmare" is an article about how the USA is basically dominating these Winter Olympics and making ourselves right at home in Vancouver. I posted "when Canada can't even beat the USA at hockey you know you're having a bad Olympics. Pretty pathetic if you ask me. USA is just simply athletically superior than Canada." I posted this with the intent to spark debate and maybe even piss off some Canadians in the process hoping they would directly reply to my comment. Neither happened. My comment was once again ignored...completely. I think this happened because both stories received such a large volume of comments and that it is hard to just pinpoint one and write a rebuttle. ESPN.com is a high traffic website and the comments on those stories mostly didn't even have to do with the orginial topic. The other story I commented on was "Authorities arrest NYC bar owner in Teaneck double homicide". The title is self explanatory and the comment I made was, "I'm just puzzled why he left them in an SUV on a residential street. Like could he make it any easier for the cops to find the bodies?" I just found this part of the article to be striking because it seems like he put absolutely no effort into hiding the bodies. I feel like there has to be some explanation for this. Anyway, since NJ.com gets much less hits then espn. com I figured it would be a better place to post. Once again, I was wrong and my comment was glossed over. This time only 30 comments were made but mine was insignificant in everyone else's eyes.

On facebook I had a little better luck but not much. One day I posted a video I found to be very funny on my status and made a comment saying it's the funniest video I've seen in a while. Well, only 4 people seemed to agree with as that's all the feedback I received. I was expecting a lot more that. I got one "like" and three comments. Also, somebody posted on my wall and I made the simple comment "highly doubtful" and unexpectedly received two follow up comments. I really didn't think that simple statement would provoke any further commentary. The last comment I made was on my friends status. There were four previous comments before mine but none after mine. I guess people must think that what I have to say is pretty boring.

Overall my commenting experience didn't go well, it's safe to say I've seen better days. Commenting on facebook was much more spur of the moment for me while the online stories I struggled to find something I actually wanted to comment on. Facebook is much more personal so it's easier to comment on just about anything. News websites on the other hand aren't, and that's the main difference I see between my posting experiences.