Facebook/Comment Culture

Commenting on stories online is a whole different animal than making comments on Facebook. Or so that’s what this assignment has taught me about the online comment culture. Commenting on Facebook is generally an easy thing to do. When Facebook first introduced the comment feature I thought it was one of the worst ideas ever. However now that it’s been established for a decent amount of time I’ve come to realize that many of the comments left are actually useful.

For example, my buddy changed his status on Facebook asking a question about what he should do involving classes. The comment thread that ensued included a bunch of classes people had taken that could he could take that would help him with his major requirements. Other times on Facebook people will post a status about something humorous and it is these statuses that seem to gather the most comments.

Another one of my friends put up a status about how he bombed an exam (stated in a humorous manner) and the comment thread already had 20 posts at the time I left my comment. The best part about comical statuses (from what I’ve noticed) is that the original poster will often times leave comments in the comment thread as well, making the interactions that much more personal.

The main difference between commenting on Facebook and commenting on public forums is that most of the time you don’t know the other people who are leaving comments before or after you. I would assume that because of this often times people have self-censored what they wanted to say because they were worried about what fellow commenters would say about them. It’s completely different leaving a comment about one of your close friends compared to leaving a comment about a nationally-known columnist’s article on ESPN.

My experience involving public forums was quite different from my experience leaving comments on Facebook. I noticed that the three webpages I left comments on kind of did their own thing with no interaction involving the comments I left. From my own experience and from what I’ve noticed people don’t particularly care all that much about what others are saying and generally just care about getting their opinions heard.

Very rarely were people leaving comments about prior comments. This was very different from Facebook where more often than not people were leaving comments about something someone other than the original poster had said. It was really an interesting thing to see. Much of the time people had many of the same opinions as those who had commented before them. But instead of saying something like “…much like ______ said…” they just went on and said what they wanted seemingly oblivious to what other people had said to them.

Regardless of which media is being used, comment culture has become a huge part of the online community and is something that aspiring writers will have to become accustomed to.