I don’t know about you but it doesn’t seem to take much to start con­tro­versy on the Inter­net. Yes, my friends, the Inter­net can be a ugly place to visit. As a reader I was rather baf­fled by all the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing an Ama­zon review. I’m not link­ing to it. It just goes to show you that the small­est things can turn into the biggest con­tro­ver­sies… There must be a secret to start­ing controversy.

Just what is the secret recipe for cre­at­ing controversy? I thought that they ini­tially started with peo­ple who had noth­ing else bet­ter to do like me. Hell, I don’t know but it usu­ally starts like this:

  • Have an opinion—-on anything 
  • Share that opin­ion with everybody
  • Pick a topic or review from any­where and high­light the impor­tant parts
  • Impor­tant to have links in your post oth­er­wise we’d have to search for it and every­body knows that is a no-no
  • Send out a wolf call to all rabid fans and have them post like crazy
  • Doesn’t hurt to email about a mil­lion bud­dies about the alleged incident
  • Knowl­edge about the inci­dent is not nec­es­sary to join the dis­cus­sion (nada, noth­ing, just jump right in like I do)

I am guilty on that last one and some­times, I can’t help myself. Alas, lately it hasn’t been worth my time to read over every scan­dal that crops up. Some­times it is enter­tain­ing stuff but other times–not.  I should start leav­ing com­ments like “big deal” and “free speech” and “first amend­ment rights” all over the place just for fun.

Every­body has an opin­ion and I usu­ally don’t agree with over half of them. Espe­cially on the famous speech that starts with the “My mama taught me that if I can’t say any­thing nice.…”  Want my opin­ion on that? You can stuff that quote up your arse. What peo­ple have to say isn’t always nice but some­times it can be helpful. I agree that it doesn’t have to be hateful. I found noth­ing wrong with the review in ques­tion (and no I’m not link­ing to it). The author’s response to it was amus­ing and it should have been left at that.

Tip for posters: humor, sar­casm, all the usual non-verbal com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are sig­nif­i­cant when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with peo­ple face to face? This is obvi­ously miss­ing on the Inter­net and thus your post maybe mis­con­strued, mis­un­der­stood and com­pletely insult­ing with­out your knowl­edge or intention.

Just sayin…