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DON’T FEED THE TROLLS
Over at Caveh Zahedi’s blog, the director of I Am a Sex Addict ponders the downside of posting one’s daily thoughts as a way of promoting a film:
One of the interesting things about having a blog is that anyone can attack you anytime and can do so anonymously. At least with film critics, their names are on their reviews. But with a blog, anyone can post a hostile comment, without any kind of accountability. In short, a blog, like a personal film, can serve as a lightning-rod for free-floating cyberspace aggression.
I’m not sure what to do with these anonymous hostile comments. Should I delete them or is it better to leave them up? I’m not sure what the protocol is, or if people would rather see them than not. I personally find them to be bad vibes, and I am tempted to delete them. But I’m curious to hear what other people think.
In the comments section, a poster named “Chatty Cathy” comes up with some advice and in the process describes a ficticious movie that I’d like to see:
It’s a natural and inevitable byproduct of increasing discorporealization, and unfortunately it can’t be “deleted.” Imagine a Bresson film about blogging. There would be a righteously innocent young girl who blogged righteously and innocently, and the world would anonymously abuse and terrorize her until she died from some blog-related complication.
And then she ends with a book recommendation:
I would recommend reading Thomas de Zengotita’s book Mediated, which investigates the cultural imperative that begat the blog. The central thesis concerns the Flattered Self and the ways in which the Flattered Self needs to see itself reflected. In summary it sounds like New Age hooey, but the book is intellectually rigorous and surprisingly pragmatic.)
