Grateful for blog comments

Comments are my favourite part of a blog. Don’t ask me why — I know they’re awful. I fully expect them to be a frustrating disaster. I pay attention to them for the same reason we all slow down and gawk at a car accident.

I realized recently that call-in radio shows are the old-media equivalent of blog comments. I think I’m one of the only people under the age of 60 who enjoys listening to the CBC radio’s Cross Country Checkup with Rex Murphy. (Dani hates it.)

Here in Montreal there’s an afternoon call-in show on one of the french stations. One day the show’s topic was the national lottery. 4 callers in a row complained about there being more winners from outside of the province (population: 27 million) than inside Quebec (population: 8 million).

Blog comments can sometimes get into flame-war territory. That’s pretty fun. I’ve seen some good battles materialize in the comments section of Greater Fool, Garth Turner’s real-estate blog. Some realtors get really angry when people discuss grounded economic principles.

Of course, Facebook has raised the game of blog comments to the next level. Basically there are a billion+ blogs now, and we’re all steadily commenting. Mostly it’s boring, but once in a while something juicy happens, like when two people are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, or somebody is a god person and someone else is an teenage aestheist, or best of all a thread between two moms who disagree about whether or not to vaccinate their kids. You can’t pay for better entertainment.