(Originally posted this in the News Sources thread, but decided, with gritted teeth, that it makes more sense in this one. Please don't make me regret necroing this thread.)
...So mostly I'm just reading whatever's on Google News right now.
It recently prompted me for my zip so I could get local news. On the plus side, I am now slightly more up on local events than I was before; on the minus side, I fucking hate both major local papers.
Case in point, an excerpt I read on the Google News page a little bit ago:
Bordow: Fans’ hatred making ASU-UA rivalry ugly
East Valley Tribune - 4 hours ago
Somewhere between Tempe and Tucson, in a ditch alongside Interstate 10, lie two corpses. They died an ugly death, victims of a gang mentality prevalent in living rooms, stadiums and on message boards.
I was fucking horrified. So I clicked on the article. Only to find that the next sentence was:
Their names: Civility and decency.
Now, it's not the author's fault that Google News clipped his article at two sentences. But it IS his fault that he wrote a horrifically misleading, melodramatic lede, and that he is an out-of-touch schmuck writing about how people say mean things on the Internet as if it qualifies as news.
My comment, for those who don't want to bother to click the link:
So you know, Scott, the Google News link to your article only excerpts the first two sentences. I thought you were telling me people actually died over this. Instead, you're just revealing that people on public Internet forums say offensive things. Well, stop the presses.
Name any subject -- any subject at all -- and there are people having really vicious and offensive arguments about it. Wii or Xbox? DC or Marvel? And that's BEFORE you get into legitimate hate speech, as on race or sexual orientation.
Nobody's dead. People on the Internet are just acting like people on the Internet. (A Webcomic called Penny Arcade summed it up in a 2004 strip, http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ -- salty language warning.) Stop being melodramatic. I read enough news about corpses that belong to actual human beings.
PS: Go Jacks.
(The Lumberjack is the mascot of Arizona's third university, Northern Arizona U, which is of course my own alma mater.)
Perhaps the most amazing thing of all is that my comment originally contained the phrase "you melodramatic jerk" but the Trib refused to post it.
That's right, this guy is freaking out over things he read on a comments section with a filter so strict IT WON'T ALLOW THE WORD "JERK".
