(News)paper Maché

If you're savvy (or have spent too long in a media environment), it's impossible to read a newspaper without thinking about the values of each paper's typical audience.

There's something narcissistic, reflective, and revelatory about newspapers. You search, mirror-like, for yourself on the newsagent's stand (or covertly behind a screen) and revel in likemindedness.

Some papers shamelessly prey on the paranoia of middle-aged suburbia, jingoistically contributing to its cult-of-self. 

Other papers quench the male lecherer's thirst, encourage women (and men?) to obsess over body image, letting their readership revel vicariously in the range of sensational transgressions and tragedies which are splashed from cover to cover.

However, when my friend tried to claim that Guardian reader's comments online are some of the most bigoted, I thought he must be confused. The Guardian! That bastion of centre-left academic debate! That blessed grail of righteousness!

Yet I had to admit: I'd never studied comments at the end of Guardian articles. It would probably hurt too much. (I usually save my schadenfreude for people trolling the DM's head feline, Liz Jones).

So I had a gander. On 22 August, Caroline Lucas wrote a piece for the Guardian's Comment is free on renationalising the railway. 

Do not be fooled, günstiger Leser, into thinking I'm going to wax lyrical about nationalistion. I liked Caroline's article; I hope she becomes the next Angela Merkel; (hey, why not infiltrate DB to reach the same ends in both cases?). But my focus this time is the world of trolls and commentary.

'Dickthetag' agrees with Caroline and suggests the Robin Hood approach:

The thread of this one, engaged in casual political curse-throwing, is lost on me:

And there are those engaged in meta-debate (which makes this article meta-squared or something):

I read comments under an article on HS2, too. 

One man disparagingly dismissed the scheme as some 'Horrible EU thing from Brussels to spread railways across Europe'. God forbid!* 

(Yet I'm sure the same person decries Westminster directives, saying 'Londoners, what do they know?' - or County Council initiatives, saying 'They come over here from County Hall thinking they own the place').

The world of comment is a grand melting pot of opinions. Battles of words are fought along the hazy frontline constructed by authors' articles. Reason fights reason, often leading to heated (increasingly nonsensical) debates.

Maybe that's the great thing about Comment is free and its open forum, though. It excites debate, drives us to reason and react, and keeps us on our toes.

But so much of the time comments are simply pot-shots into the abyss.** A congratulatory or recriminatory honk, unanswered and impotent in the vacuum of cyberspace.

P.s. feel free to comment at the end of this post.

*Is HS2 an unnecessary waste of money?

**This may be a good thing.