So is the sky in fact falling, or are comment sections just so full of stupid that smart people (obviously, I'm not smart) just ignore them?

That all said--teppy, your thing with queer made me smile remembering a convo had with a friend re another friend who is a transguy, dating a girl who IDs as straight. And we were all "yes, not to invalidate his male identity, but there's something fairly queer about being willing to date a trans guy".

Heh. Yeah, I totally get that. There's so many gradations of trans*, though, that dating a crossdresser (actually, he identifies as genderqueer) makes me "feel" less queer than if I were dating someone trans* who was living fulltime as their gender. (Mine is more of a date one, get one free kind of dealie.)

I mostly ignore comments sections, unless I actively want to see what the crazy-flavor of the day is. Sometimes the attempts to argue with the crazies is educational.

Plus, it helps for writing research when you can't get your mind around people who are really that stupid.

Also, I see this more and more: "Everyone has a right to their opinion."

Oh, that one! Grrrr.

They left out a word: everyone has a right to their INFORMED opinion. Big difference, one which is (very unfortunately) lost on many, many people.

Allyson, "Never read the comments section" is the only safe and wise policy. Maybe read the NYT comments section, sometimes (the stupid is still present, but it's usually outnumbered), but other than that AVOID AVOID AVOID.

Also, completely OT, but there has never been one single time that I've read your tagline without feeling a thrill of pure ridiculous joy.

everyone has a right to their INFORMED opinion.

Oh, I disagree. Everyone does have a right to their opinion. I would say they have a responsibility to have an informed opinion, and it's a responsibility a lot of people don't live up to.

In other words, if I see one more "so much for global warming" comment on FB, I will lose my shit.

I feel like the serious issues facing us humans (global warming, pollution, resource depletion, etc.) are simply beyond our collective ability to properly address.

I really hope I'm wrong, though.

"Never read the comments section" is the only safe and wise policy.

Totally agreed. Even with the most benign stories, the comments are just completely whacked. I'm left wondering, 'who ARE these people?' and pleading, 'please God, don't ever let me run into them.' So far, I've been pretty lucky.

Hee. The Flick Filosopher has recently been doing a daily "Female Gazing at..." post of a gorgeous actor. Guess who it is today?

Colin Ferguson!!

I feel like the serious issues facing us humans (global warming, pollution, resource depletion, etc.) are simply beyond our collective ability to properly address.

I think the difficulty is that these issues are up against short-term economic gain and let's face it, that's no contest. The same reason why next to nothing will be done after the Deepwater Horizon disaster to prevent the next incident.