GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The devolution of comments on a website

We have all seen or experienced when something controversial is posted on a website, anywhere in the world, and its comments section devolves into chaos.

At a final glance, the conversation below the original story or opinion has become so mangled and detached from the starting point that it bears no resemblance to it at all. It is just some sprawling exercise in free association, typically infused with malice and vindictiveness, and certainly incoherence.

It needn’t be a formal website either. It happens everywhere, from Twitter to Facebook, to blogs to news sites. At some point or other, we all would have played our part too. It is true, given the degree to which formal websites have clamped down on comments sections, this kind of thing is more prevalent on social media these days. Nevertheless, the impulse towards it seems unrestrained, even as it lacks an outlet.

But is it as chaotic as it first appears? Is there not hidden among all the intellectual decay some structure? A kind of perverse logic?

It would be an exercise in futility to try to definitively categorise the patterns at play. There is simply too much randomness at work. But it is possible to identify some broad characteristics; at the very least, some of the personalities that a controversial opinion brings to the fore.

Here follows an attempt to do just that. It might not be definitive (different platforms and different readerships respond differently), or describe accurately every such personality, but hopefully it is accurate enough to offer some insight into the general nature of the collective Id that drives these sorts of social media feeding frenzies.

Two final points to consider: First, I have used South African examples to make the piece easier to relate to, but they are universal. Second, what follows has some chronological logic to it, but that need not always be the case.

The story of a comments section

1. The first comment is generally from your Everyman. Although not insightful, it is one of the more helpful ones as it usually acts as a general indication of how the piece will be received. Really, it is just an expression of gratitude or disagreement. While it can set the tone for what follows, it tends to speak only to sentiment, as opposed to argument.

Examples: "This is a very nice article about an important subject" or "This is nonsense and irrelevant".

1.1. The more controversial or strongly held the original opinion, the more intense the first response: "Very nice" can become "Brilliant!!" just as easily as "Nonsense" can become "Utter rubbish!!". The more intense, the greater the use of explanation marks. Nevertheless, this comment will remain driven by sentiment.

2. Next up, the absolutist will appear. Short and to the point they will declare your piece either the worst or the greatest thing ever written. One and two may well be entirely unrelated and often are. Indeed, whatever sentiment is expressed in the first comment, it is usually countered in the second. The absolutist will imply some argument underpins their view, but they will never make it explicit.

Example: "This is complete garbage. I can’t believe they allowed this to be published, everyone knows this not how the ANC works."

2.1. Many absolutists are political zealots. They seek out criticism of their chosen political party and, whatever the argument, they denounce it regardless. It is for them a matter of belief. They believe their party to be infallible and so wish merely to express their faith in that personally held truth. In some cases, to signal to other zealots of a similar disposition that this is the line to take.

2.2. Because political parties equip their supporters with standard lines of defence — an appeal to race or corruption, say — you might also find evidence of this manifesting in their response.

2.3. At this point, one path the comments section could follow is simply an all-out war between political rivals, as each uses the platform and whatever comment followed immediately above, to defend their heroes and damn their mortal enemies.

2.4. The worst are political zealots who have attached themselves to a particular personality, as opposed to a cause. In much the same way that fans become attached to a celebrity, they attach themselves to a political leader. The conduct of their chosen idol is beyond reproach, they are inherently virtuous. They don’t just admire them but actually seem to have developed an emotional attachment to them. They literally experience criticism as pain.

3. Should that path not be followed, slightly further down and your first extremist will appear. They have latched onto a sentence or word and it has triggered their paranoia or prejudice. Thus, a mad tangential rant follows, usually accompanied by a lot of punctuation and capitalisation.

Example: "What do you mean the ANC is ‘largely’ corrupt????? The ANC is COMPLETELY corrupt!! Have you forgotten NKANDLA??"?

3.1. The extremist commentator will accept nothing less than total condemnation or praise. They live in a world defined absolutely by good and evil. There are no shades of grey. Any attempt at perspective or measured critique is met by pure, unadulterated hostility in the opposite direction. They are completely governed by emotion, and anger is usually the most prevalent.

4. This usually triggers other extremists and an exchange entirely unrelated to the subject to unfold. Its defining characteristic is inevitably abuse. This is to be differentiated from the first potential path down which the comments section could go in that absolutely no attempt is made even to respond to preceding comments. These are basically just rants, personal and vindictive, and any platform will do.

Example: "That comment is typical of your idiocy. You are the problem. You probably supported Hitler."

5. This is fertile ground for the bigot, who then raises his or her head.

Example: "This message has been removed because it violates our editorial policy."

5.1. There are many different kinds of bigots, who specialise in a wide variety of hate. Usually the advent of one brings out others. And while they sometimes feed off each other’s prejudices, usually it is just a "Lord of the Flies" mentality that brings them out in the open. In other words, they have done an assessment that any pretense at rationality or reason, never mind congeniality, has now gone and the rules no longer apply.

5.2. This represents yet another path the comments section could now follow: a hate fest, which lays bare the callous indifference and contempt with which so many seem to regard their fellow human beings.

6. If the section does not follow that path, it is about now a pedantic technocratic will appear on the scene. They either have a problem with a minor fact, which is ironic because they never comment on the comments themselves, which are often catastrophically incoherent. Or they avoid the actual argument, but seem to imply, through their lamenting tone, it is entirely illegitimate on the basis of the solitary error they have found.

Example: "You say 57% but actually the article you cite misquoted the original source material. The accurate figure is 56.4% which rounds down to 56% not 57%. I wish people would get facts right."

7. In much the same fashion, perhaps to try to lighten the mood, a humorist will supply a pun or joke. Usually these are related to the headline and the argument it alludes to. They haven’t actually read the article or opinion in question. It is a joke about convention, for which the general issue at play provides enough basis, they believe, to offer up their insight. A great favourite for this kind of thing are abbreviations or acronyms.

Examples: "DA = Desperate Alliance" or "Thuli MADonsela".

8. Things are now so bad a general despair holds sway. This is encouragement enough for the pessimist to emerge. They have given up on hope and see only a future defined by darkness and destruction. The original story or opinion is enough evidence to confirm their view and so they use it as an opportunity to describe the pain and suffering they are experiencing.

Example: "I really despair about the country. Nothing works. We are headed the way of Zimbabwe."

8.1. It is quite possible for the pessimist to have this response to an entirely positive story or opinion, too. In that case, all it does is confirm to them, through its scarcity, that all hope is lost anyway.

9. This triggers the optimists, who then rally against all the doom and gloom. Only they have so little compelling evidence in support of their view, for it is usually the result more of a general disposition than any thorough analysis, they can offer up only sentiment in response. Typically this will revolve around an appeal to compassion and goodwill.

Example: "We need good people to save us. South Africa can be great again!"

9.1. Pessimists and optimists might then have a showdown, like political zealots do. This potentially opens another conversational path.

9.2. Many pessimists and optimists operate on little more than cliché. Platitudes thus tend to define their contribution.

10. Behold the fool. They wait for the general tone to be established and then present their view. Only it profoundly misunderstand the primary argument, to the extent that their view suggests the very opposite case was being made. And they do not lack for conviction. They are wholly convinced everything is fundamentally wrong. It just so happens they have got the premise, glaring in how straightforward it is, back to front.

11. Somewhere in and between all this, the conspiracy theorist will emerge. For them, everything is linked to something else, and only they can see the link. But they are utterly and totally convinced by it. Nothing is what it seems. No human being has any individual agency. An event is absolute confirmation of some other force or malevolent interest, directly or indirectly.

They seem to operate entirely through questions and, in support of their view, they offer no end of links to other stories, each so vague or disreputable they say nothing and everything.

Example: "Why is Zuma meeting Mugabe? That is the question. According to this website (link to conspiratorial website) Mugabe has shares in Zuma’s son’s company. This is all about the next Zimbabwean election."

11.1. Conspiracy theorists tend to trigger technocrats, who then try to dispute whatever theory they have put forward in great detail, replete with many links of their own. A mighty battle ensues, offering yet another potential path for the comments section to go down. The great mistake the technocrat makes is to assume evidence and reason count for something, and that they can actually convince the conspiracy theorist otherwise. They cannot. What they don’t understand is that just by taking issue with a claim they have confirmed they are enmeshed in that unseen universe and an agent of darkness.

12. Occasionally, amid all the mayhem, you might actually stumble across an actual, meaningful contribution. Let us call him or her a rationalist. This is no more than a statistical inevitability, albeit a welcome one.

Example: "While I agree with the general thrust of this argument, it doesn’t seem to apply to this particular situation (illustration). Maybe that’s because these factors differ (evidence in support)."

12.1. The rationalists, because they care about ideas, are generally helpful. Their purpose is to further discussion, and to pursue the truth. And so their comments are generally directed to this end, devoid of any agenda or malice. Thus they exude a certain calm, embrace perspective and can detach from how they experience an article emotionally, without being blind to its emotional effect.

12.2. Everyone, the extremist, the absolutist, the political zealot, the conspiracy theorist, the pessimist and optimist, all inevitably turn on the rationalist, for they all have an issue to take with reason and evidence.

13. Occasionally you will find an absurdist, who posits a view entirely unrelated to anything being discussed, whatever its nature. If its nuclear power, they will offer a view on what is happening in the Limpopo legislature. There views are not necessarily incoherent, only completely irrelevant. Why they have offered them up at all is a mystery.

13.1. Absurdists are sometimes just pretentious and, rather than an irrelevant observation, they wish to suggest a knowledge far greater and more in-depth than anything thus far on display. And so they offer up a quote, cut and pasted from some intellectual giant or political icon, not necessarily relevant to what’s being discussed but in the ballpark. As if to say, "Have you thought about this?" without ever saying what this is.

14. Scattered throughout all of this is your average commentator. They generally have three characteristics: bad grammar, bad spelling and bad argument. They are well meaning and have made some attempt to grapple with the argument but are there primarily just to offer their two cents worth and thus form the bulk of the response.?

Example: "Korruption is a prob. But it’s not quit as bad as ethics, which are SO bad right now in our leaders everywhere. We need to teach peeple!"