My Thoughts on Comments

This post is going to contain my feelings about comments provided from The New York Times, discussing the same Planned Parenthood debate that I described in the "My Controversy" portion of my blog. I have organized the comments that I am going to analyze into two categories: Credible and Lacking Credibility

Credible:

Flowerpower is definitely expressing his or her wish that Planned Parenthood be put to a stop. I can tell this based off of his or her powerful proclamation of "Defund Defund Defund!!!". This commenter seems to have strong belief system, because when he or she has strong feelings about a topic and wants something done... he or she really wants it done. Although Flowerpower has strong opinions, he or she still seems quite trustworthy to me based on his or her ability to see all of the other services that Planned Parenthood provides to its patients, despite his or her opposing view about Planned Parenthood. Also, Flowerpower appears to be a credible source because he or she wants to rid the world of Planned Parenthood, but realizes that this change can and will not happen overnight. This foresight makes me think that Flowerpower is a logical thinker, who puts thought into the things he or she feels strongly about, and I have more trust in him or her because of that.

Casey Burgess seems to have anxiety in the way in which our society neglects to acknowledge the presence of certain issues, until those topics are forcibly thrown back into the minuscule attention span of the human mind. Casey's reference to the Confederate flag is, for example, is a valid depiction of he or she feels about the typical lackadaisical American approach most moral issues. Casey seems to have a realistic belief system, as exemplified by his or her ability to realize that people only now care about the "legality" of abortion because fetuses have recently been humanized in their minds. I consider Casey Burgess to be quite credible, because of his or her ability to compare two modern day controversies and share his or her views in a thoughtful and sophisticated manner.

Lacking Credibility:

Dane is expressing his of her fear and utter hatred towards abortion. Based on his or her use of caps and plentiful exclamation points, it is evident that Dane is solely using this comment feed to aggressively voice his or her very strong conservative values and opinions against abortion. This commenter seems to totally lack credibility, due to his or her inability to sympathize whatsoever with people's beliefs who are pro-abortion. Dane's opinions are delivered in such an unnecessarily demanding fashion. And for that reason, I find it hard to take anything he or she says seriously. Also, having faith in Dane is quite hard because the article has nothing to do with whether or not abortion should be allowed or practiced. Instead, the article brings attention to the specific actions of Planned Parenthood and whether or not it as an organization should lose its funding, which is never addressed in Dane's argument whatsoever.

In this comment R.P. is expressing his or her wish that Planned Parenthood be looked at in a simplistic fashion, as most of the other big controversies in America. I think that this commenter believes that Planned Parenthood should still exist, because it benefits low-income individuals, and since "progressives" generally choose to side with "poor people", or at least that is the case from R.P.'s perspective. I wouldn't really trust R.P. and his or her thoughts based off of the way that he or she makes vast generalizations about individuals and important issues in our country. Also, I lost faith in R.P. because of the frantic and erratic writing style which he or she utilizes. However, not all of the ideas that R.P. presented are totally invalid. If he or she took some more time to organize and develop the thoughts that he or she placed in the comment, his or her argument probably would have been a lot more effective.

Reflection:
After reading Katherine's and Ann Emilie's "My Thoughts on Comments" posts, I solidified a lot of my prior opinions about online commenters.

Katherine, Ann Emilie, and myself all chose vastly different controversies to analyze, however there are still many similarities amongst our views on the credibility of the commenters on our issues. I have learned that what truly makes a commenter appear to have credibility is his or her ability to express his or her feelings and beliefs in a coherent fashion, while not being too aggressive about his or her thoughts and still allowing some room for discussion. Conversely, the individuals who typically don't appear credible are the ones who make comments that are at times demanding, totally off topic, or plagued with sweeping generalizations. I agree with every decision that Katherine and Ann Emilie made in classifying their commenters, and I think they both did really great jobs. One thing that especially interested me about Katherine's post was that the commenters on her controversy had to link their comments to their Facebook profiles, which no longer allows individuals to hide under an anonymous shield. Therefore, the people who commented on Katherine's controversy were willing to have their ideas, ignorant or not, be freely associated with their identities, which provides some trustworthiness right off the bat.