Big Media And User Comments: The Onion Nails It
Michael Arrington
41 comments »
User feedback on blogs (or any Internet forum/community) is always fascinating to watch. Things start off great, but as the community gets larger basic human rules for interaction break down and, basically, everything goes to hell. The Onion, as usual, has a very funny look at how big media might interact with user feedback in the video above. The uselessness of trying to respond intelligently to the most outrageous comments is dead on and extremely funny.
Also check out the College Humor video that shows what a comment stream might look like in the form of an office meeting. Anyone who runs a blog will appreciate both of these.
FIRST
SECOND
Fourth!
Applesauce!
You are so gay.
’start of’ should be ’start off’ you poopy head!!!!!!!!!
This is boring and to be honest it sucks.
That’s a lot of fanciful video effects for a comedy video aiming to poke fun at user comments.
Hilarious, and so true.
By the way, Tech Crunch, F–k you, you racist.
Nobody I’m aware of is tracking ratings of user comments yet. The comments system I’m building displays your average comment score so people with big mouths aren’t flagged as community leaders just because they post a lot.
Man. I WISH they would have had a comment spam. That would have been awesome!!!
Kevin
I assume that any offensive comments in this thread are intended to be ironic!
it was funny..
Michael, this was a very interesting post. As a rewarding for you and your readers at Techs~crunch, I would like to offer you all free Apple i-Phones, reduced Mortgages, and the opportunity to help saving an innocent man in Nigeria. Please contact me for this much important task!
Hah.
MA: I get your post, but the video is terribly boring …. somebody wake me up when it is over
The quality level of user comments and the postponement of gratification to just say something because you can is, I believe, a reflection of the blog in question. I don’t think it’s simply a game of large numbers.
If your site goes from giving only high quality commentary which is well written, concise, critical, responsible, and professional, to giving in addition infortainment entries just because you can speak to a large audience, then your audience will adapt to this form of dialog, both in attitude and population.
I’m all for doing a fun piece once in a while in every serious and professional news source, but when it’s every other entry on a source then it defines the theme of the source as unprofessional, casual, loose, and fun–all great unless you’re aiming at being a professional trusted news source.
Example. In the last two days on TechCrunch we had:
* A rant about something eBay is doing with Jajah, before they had a chance to clear things up themselves, written by a self-proclaimed non-sympathetic-to-eBay guy. (”eBay deleting auctions with Jajah buttons”)
* A writeup about a precedent in court in favor of the music industry in the so-called first trial won by the industry. It’s not a precedent because trials were already won by defendants, and it’s certainly not a first win in a trial for the RIAA in similar cases. (”Court Victory For Music Labels Won’t Save Their Industry”)
* Shameless hyping of a new unproven service without an ounce of critical thought. (”Plaxo + LinkedIn + iPhone = Brilliant”)
* Reiteration of news that already appear all over the web without adding any information or commentary of value. (”China Blocking RSS Feeds”)
* Attention to a shill and even unintentional promotion. (”The Next Internet Millionaire: Inspired Programming Or Lame Sales Front”).
* Satires about comment streams. Again, all over the net already. (”Big Media And User Comments: The Onion Nails It”)
* Glitch report or “Oh look! I’ve got a wart on the back of my knee. I knew you’d be interested.” (”Feedburner Bug, Or We More Than Doubled Our RSS Subscribers”)
* Reiteration of Scoble without adding value. (”Loic Lemeur Building Video Twitter”)
* Personal recommendation or “Look, I’ve found something funny on the net. Also, there are boobs!” (”Is Philip DeFranco The Heir To The ZeFrank Crown?”)
* Reiteration of rumors originated from rumor sites who post anything even remotely possible about their subject matter. (”Facebook Music Rumors”)
It’s easy to get carried away with writing ludicrous stuff when you consider yourself an infortainment content producer. It’s hard and worthy to restrain when you consider yourself a professional trusted news source.
Which is it?
I appreciate you allowing comments on your blog. Sometimes I get more out of your article — and sometimes the comments.
Absolutely fantastic! Great find
LULZ XD
I love that video from College Humor.
@DanG, I agree that commenters are a reflection of the vibe of the news source/blog.
uhhh… I like potatoes
Sorry, I don’t find it funny at all…
Many professional workers don’t find funny at all. It kind like childish worker who can’t get accept to large companies like IBM, Intel, NBC, and all business companies.
24th!
CollegeHumor: Commenter Business Meeting 2 - http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1776175
I can see this happening
That was pretty funny.
Oh my god, I am literally rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. The Onion does it again! Classic!
yeah. what he said. yeah,yeah,yeah.
yeah…adding in comment spam would have been HILARIOUS lol those generic “very nice post, you should check out our new manhood enlargement tool” lol
Well - funny
but its so easy to prepare a clever mechanism.
A simple dividation system needs to be added.
Users with huger opinion > e.g. Zuckerberg, Loic and of course me - will get “premium” accounts.
If we write something - we get listed on the top. The rest is at least something like “you can also read those…” underneath our comments.
Users in a huge position or own company surely beware of writing stupid stuff around…
Idea for wordpress / blogger or selfmade tools for techcrunch.
Have fun
32nd
http://www.rajuthan.com/
33rd…those vids are hilarious
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
I have my likes and dislikes. Some is cool and the rest is not.
Keep up the cool stuff. such as College Humor because I attended College.
Keep It Smooth
I don’t get all of this Onion stuff.
…. i meant to add that I comment here, so you know it must be a good blog
@Phil - Currently I’m not interested in saving an innocent man in Nigeria or a reduced mortgage (don’t ask me why). I may be interested in a free iPhone only if it comes with free service for the life of the phone and has already been unlocked.
@Dan G - zzzz. huh? what?
@Artur Schlaht - huh? what?
@Business man - get a life and a funny bone.
@Steve Ballmer - Can you ask the emerging business team at Microsoft when they’ll get back to me on the things they promised they would get back to me on a couple of months ago?
@Michael Arrington - thanks for sharing this hilarious video…made me laugh. I needed a laugh because I just got some not funny news today…which I’ll post about soon and of course make it sound funny.
Thanks,
The entrepreMuse (a new Tech Crunch reader)
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ahhhh… Now I know why they call it Onion, phew!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Wow. This has nothing at all to do with http://dadtoday.blogspot.com/
Go figure.
I thought this one was a better depiction. some foul language.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1771556