Just The Comments
"Don't read the bottom half of the internet" is a frequently repeated phrase as you travel on the web -- meaning, avoid the comments on a blog post or article whenever possible. In certain realms of the internet, it's basically a truism.
There's arguments out there both for and against it. Many bloggers have gone so far as to disable commenting entirely on their sites. Other bloggers find a lot of value in comments. But the notion of skipping out on a huge chunk of the internet really interested me.
It also raises an obvious question - instead of skipping it entirely, what if you only read the bottom half of the internet? Well, justthecomments.com is your chance to do that, all in one place, and totally removed from the context of pesky blog posts.
The site pulls comments from the all of the websites using the Disqus commenting system via their API in real time. You can read a bunch, then click the 'load more comments' button to see some more. There's essentially no context here. The comments come from all over the web, and have no relation to each other. I wanted to provide a link to the source content, but it's actually sort of involved with the Disqus API, and in hindsight, reading comments with no context whatsoever is kind of amazing. Here's some choice comments I saw over the course of a few minutes recently:
Yep! It is funny, I was required to read it Freshmen year of college... the Progressive professor tried to say that it was a roadmap to what Reagan was trying to impose upon the people... I could see that nothing in the book came close to Reagan's policies (but they did resemble what Carter had been saying and doing)... it only reinforced my belief that Democrats will lie about who and what they were. -- louisiana_mom
Um, no it isn't. -- BRAND NEWCROW
I mean, I've seen Hara. Especially when she was truly stripped down in those ChumChum Churi soju commercials. I'm not saying that she has to have the booty of Nicki Minaj/Kim Kardasian, but her body isn't something amazing and heaven-sent to me either. -- Nova_REMIX
Leftists are the most disgusting form of humanity that has been burped up by the oceans. To try to leverage and manipulate individuals under the guise of being in camp of the poor and unempowered is their great evil. But, as with everyone, I hope you have a long and meaningful life and that at some point you stop trying to foist the misanthropic political philosphy that exists at the core of the Left. There, how's that for positive. -- Alfa Spider
post a time and place, wear a purple shirt, and one of us will be glad to meat you face to face and DEBATE further -- A Z
YOU ARE HOPELESS ans long as you continue to BLAME the GOP or DEMOCRATS..you will NEVER understand what the problem is. you are a_MORON -- Buddy
Way to be classy. No valid point to make, namecall. -- Chiefpr
As you read the comments, it's clear that many of them would probably seem valid if you saw them in the context where they were written. But in isolation, they are sometimes incredibly offensive. It makes me think of moments of crowd silence where a crowd goes silent except for the one person who blurts out something incredibly inappropriate.
Some people like to be really immature, and sometimes very cruel, on the Internet. Here's an amazing story from someone who contacted a long-time troll on their website in order to learn more about him. They have an amazing conversation. And the troll is totally unlike his online persona.