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Vice Blog

The Brutality Report - The Vice Comments Section

This is a tricky subject to write about because I never read the comments on this site. I quit last year, cold turkey, after an anonymous commenter made fun of my dead cat. Zing!

So, if I'm being scientific about it, I have to entertain the possibility that 2011 VICE comments are a whole new deal. For all I know, this is the year of kinder, gentler VICE online feedback, full of interesting recipes and delightful quips. But if I'm being unscientific about it, my strong hunch is that the commentary here has actually grown more brutal, closer to the grunts exchanged between warring prison gangs than actual human sentences.

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Sometimes (not often) I quickly scroll down to the bottom of the page just to see how many comments there are and thus gauge the impact of my article. When I do this, my eye will sometimes catch random words in the blur of text:

fucking moron

dickless

stab you

die

I don't for a moment confuse VICE readers with VICE commenters. This magazine’s readers are salt of the Earth types. Straight shooters. I'd be proud to have any of you as my next-door neighbors. If I were to announce that my kidneys had failed at 3 PM, by 3:20 I'd have to start working on some weird contest or something because so many of you would have offered me one of yours. They'd be good kidneys, too, none of that weak shit. Probably better kidneys than I'd deserve. And then we'd find ourselves laying side by side on our pre-op gurneys and the attending surgeon would be all, "Damn, you sure?" And I'd look up to say something funny but then I'd realise he was talking to you, not me, and then I'd hear him further whisper (to you, not me), "for this guy? Really?"

VICE commenters, on the other hand, are not the best human beings. Actually, I'm not convinced they are human beings. It's becoming easier and easier to believe that the online VICE peanut gallery is manned entirely by errant software, by mutated viruses that have been left to roam the internet and insult freelance writers.

In 2006, after I'd posted my public email and subsequently allowed my public email to get overrun with spam, I got one letter with the subject header YOU ARE A BAD WRITER. Enraged, I clicked on the message and found naught but an offer for v 1 A G R A. But that was five years ago. In the foreshortened evolution of spambots, maybe the machines have finally figured out how to deliver full insults to us humans. It has to happen sooner or later.

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In Dick Gregory's autobiography, Nigger, he offers a weird defence against anonymous assailants. The night his son died, the phone rang:

It was a long distance call from Alabama, collect. I accepted the charges. It was a white woman.

"Mister Gregory?"

"Yes ma'am"

"I just heard on the radio your son died, and let me tell you it serves you right, I'm real glad that happened, you coming down here where you don't belong and stirring up all…"

"I'm glad, too. I had five million dollars' worth of insurance on him."

There was a long silence, and then she said: "I'm sorry, please forgive me."

It feels like there is a relevant lesson to this episode, but I'm unsure exactly what it is. Maybe "outflank your opponents with mockery." Or meta mockery. Or one-liners. Or psychic Jiu-Jitsu. Or good old-fashioned sarcasm.

What's your opinion? Leave me a comment and let me know!

SAM MCPHEETERS

Sam McPheeters on Twitter