On Comments

I'm a comment whore.

There, I admitted it.

Not in the way that you might think. I'm not whoring for comments on my blog. I think it's nice and all, and I'm always pleasantly surprised at the number of people reading this drivel. No, I'm more of a comment whore when it comes to other people's blogs. In fact, I don't even think I would have this blog if I didn't enjoy commenting on all of your posts, but then I would be the crazy guy who nobody really knows but shows up all the time with a sarcastic comment.

See, commenting for me is a way for me to release all of my sarcastic fervor onto the world without getting punched in the face every day. And in the comment box, I can let the world know that I was only being sarcastic by ending my comment with a simple smiley face. ;) See how he winks at you? That means that its okay when I say that I wanted to bang your mother or something equally offensive.

With all that being said, there are a couple of things that bother me about being a comment whore. Some of them are aesthetic, some are personal preferences, most are stupid. Please don't take this as my way of trying to get y'all to change the way you do things. No. This is just me railing away blindly at bloggy windmills. Let me repeat what I said earlier: THIS IS NOT A PLEA TO GET YOU TO CHANGE YOUR BLOG. It's YOUR blog...do what you want.

Pop-up comment boxes
I'm all for 'em. I like being able to reference the original post when I'm commenting because I'm stupid and my memory ain't so good. I know that some bloggy programs (like Blogger) allow you to look at a text version of the original post in the comment box, but its just not the same. Plus most of my daily blog reading is from my blogroll, so another web page opening up is just another web page for me to back out of to get back to my blog. Stupid, right? Yet here I sit typing it.

Word Verification
I know that some of you have had issues with spam, but I just haven't seen it on my blog all that often. I was hit one day about two months ago by the same spam 10 times over a half-hour period. It was about rubbing something on my penis to make it larger. Rubbing it alone without the stuff they were hawking usually does the trick, but who am I to argue. I guess it's an evil necessity, but I would love for these sites to figure out another way to block spam because I really hate typing wxczrtezqq if I don't have to.

Comment Moderation
Here's another one that I don't really like. I totally understand the reason for it, especially if you have some trolls you are trying to block, but it also takes away something from the spontaneity of commenting...at least it does for this comment whore. I like to post a comment then immediately go back and read it to double check on the hilarity of it. See? It's a sickness. And I wonder if someone out there (not you folks) is using the comment moderation feature to ensure that only comments that they approve of are posted on their site, even from their regular readers. There is something slightly fascist about that, so I'm against it. But don't go changin'...to try to please me. Or some other Billy Joel song.

Comment Editor
Why can't all comment editors have all the same format options as the site's post editor box? Why do I need to learn html to put a link in a Blogger comment box? Why can't it be as easy as hitting a link button? Why am I so fucking lazy? These are all good questions.

Editing Comments
See what I did there with these last two items? Clever, eh? But seriously, alot of these sites give registered users the option of editing their comments after they have posted them. Blogger and a few other sites don't give you this option. So, you can go back and delete it...then post what you want, but "clunky" is the word that comes to mind for that. It's just silly, and they need to fix it. Only so that I can fix a comment in which I say I want to bang your mother, when clearly it was your grandmother that I was thinking about. Clearly.

Comment Love
Ah, here's the one that bothers a bunch of you. I know because I've seen you mention it on your sites. Comment love, or specifically the lack thereof. You go to someone's blog, post a great comment or question and they never answer. Or worse, for some of you, they never come to your blog to return the comment love. This one doesn't bother me all that much. There are plenty of bloggers on my blogroll where I am a daily commenter who don't comment on my blog regularly or at all. Why should that bother me? I'M THE COMMENT WHORE...NOT YOU! Like I said before, I'm doing this mostly for my own entertainment anyway. On my own blog, I try to answer every single comment. That's one of the reasons I added the "recent comment" widget on my sidebar, so I don't miss anything. But that's my personal choice and certainly its not mandatory blog protocol. The only real reason I stop reading a blog is if it no longer interests me. That's it.

OK, so remember when I said I would never whore for comments on my own blog? Well, here is where I ask you what you think, and since there is no way for me to know what's in your mind without a hammer, chisel and scalpel you are going to have to leave a comment. Hah!