Jason Calacanis - co-founder of Weblogs (Inc) which sold to AOL for $30million - has quit blogging. Or more specifically, he has decided to stop publicly blogging and instead to send out a kind of email/blog hybrid. What we used to call in the old days ‘an email newsletter’. This decision - we, the Internet, are told - is a Big Deal.

The fact that he addresses subscribers as members of ‘Team Jason’ or ‘The Jason Nation’ is just one reason why I won’t be subscribing. The second is that I never read one-subject email newsletters. But, while Team Jason doesn’t interest me, Calacanis’ reason for moving away from the medium that made him, relitively, rich does.

I quote…

“Why should we all build our homes and give residence to the trolls under them? Comments on blogs inevitably implode, and we all accept it under the belief that “open is better!” Open is not better. Running a blog is like letting a virtuoso play for 90 minutes are Carnegie Hall, and then seconds after their performance you run to the back Alley and grab the most inebriated homeless person drag them on stage and ask them what they think of the performance they overheard in the Alley. They then take a piss on the stage and say “F-you” to the people who just had a wonderful experience for 90 or 92 minutes. That’s openness for you… my how far we’ve come! We’ve put the wisdom of the deranged on the same level as the wisdom of the wise.”

I couldn’t agree more. But equally I think he’s dealt with the trolls in completely the wrong way. Like the virtuoso in his story skulking off the stage on being heckled, rather than calling security and having the hobo hurled out into the gutter where he belongs.

On my first ever proper blog post - back when this was still All Just Words - I wrote that I didn’t know how to feel about comments. In reality, I knew exactly how to feel - that there are two kinds of people who post on blogs: people who have chosen the wrong medium and irrelevant cowards.

Dealing with the first - a group I’ve fallen into a few times myself - a blog comment is never - ever - the correct medium for responding to a blog post. The correct way to respond to a blog post is with another blog post (with a trackback), or with a private message via email, Twitter or similar.

Contrary to popular belief, most bloggers don’t actually want their readers to respond to a post with a comment like “LOL! Brilliant post.” We know it was brilliant. We wouldn’t have posted it otherwise. Take it to Twitter, if you must say something so pithy and pointless. Likewise if you want to disagree passionately. Or, if you have more to say, set up a blog and let’s have a debate.

But it’s the second group that frightened poor Jason away and it’s the second group who every single high-profile blogger in the world deals with every single day of their lives. These are the cowards. The anonymous or  pseudonymous shit-eating ten year old trapped inside a grown man’s (usually a man’s) body commenters. The pathetic little jealousy-filled dullards who - to paraphrase a friend of mine who gets this a lot on her blog - are too frightened to send you an email saying they hate you, or to run up to you in the street wearing a ski mask and shout ‘fuck you’.

Because if they did that, you might - gasp - respond. And given that you have the balls to write under your own name, and people want to read what you have to say - they know you would win. Easily. To the point where it would be like a fight between a giant and a coffee cup full of shit.

And it’s this second group - these Losers Generating Content - who are killing blogging, the ones who are killing ‘BBC Have Your Say’ and who make sane people never want to write for the Guardian’s ‘Comment Is Free’.

When I was on that panel with Estelle Morris a while back, we talked afterwards about the Internet and how I thought more politicians should blog. Her response: she would love to do more online - but that it’s like the Wild West - anyone can say anything about anyone with zero comeback. Yes, I said, but these people are shit-eating cowards. Ignore them; everyone else does, apart from the small group of chums they email after posting to boast of their great (anonymous, irrelevant and totally ineffective) victory over The (Wo)Man. The Baroness remained unconvinced. A loss to Blogging. First her, now Jason and - judging by the growing hubbub of anti-commenter feeling amongst the A List is anything to go by - soon countless more.

But every time I think about this, or hear a friend bitch about it on their own site, or see someone quit blogging, or hear from a third party about some Loser who has commented about me in the comments of some blog or other (I long ago stopped reading what people said about me in comments, for the same reason that I wouldn’t scoop up someone else’s dog shit), I think the same thing.  Why don’t we all just disable the fucking comment buttons? Wouldn’t the world be a better e-place without them?

Yes - it would. And yet for some reason we don’t. I had lunch with a friend the other day who shut down her entire blog because she figured it was easier than taking the flack for turning off comments. Why? Perhaps, as Calacanis suggests, because we’ve all fallen for the bullshit mantra that openness is better - but maybe because we’ve fallen for an even more dangerous mantra - that everyone’s opinion is equally valid; everyone’s writing equally valuable.

It’s not - just like not everyone’s painting, or designing or carpentry or plumbing is equally skilled. I can’t rewire a room for shit; and that’s why you shouldn’t feel obliged to give me the same access to the wiring in your home as a qualified electrician. I’m not a doctor so keep me the fuck away from your unborn child.

It’s high time we admitted that comments are Satan’s own invention; a skeleton key that allows cowards and bores to wander into your house like they own the place and hurl shit up the walls. A glitch in the media matrix. People who post anonymous comments - whether they’re trolls or just wimps - have no business defacing the work of others. They give absolutely nothing and they threaten to deprive us of the people - and I happily include Jason Calacanis in this - who make the blogosphere a richer, more entertaining place.

Well enough is enough. Blogging should not be a conversation. It should be a whole lot of one way monologues that occasionally meet in the middle. Bloggers - all bloggers - should switch off comments. Tell these wannabe hack cowards to fuck off; force them to get their own platforms where they’ll have to attract their own traffic for their own dull rantings. Which they won’t. They never do. No one wants to read hate online; it’s boring.

It’s time to raise the level of debate and to lock the doors against those too dumb and scared and pointless to sit at the grown up table. I’ll start… If you’ve got something to say to me, and you want to say it in public, I’m @paulcarr on Twitter and I take all comers - I’ve also added a column to the right hand side of every page of the site that shows the latest @replies. I also welcome your trackbacks. But as for comments; the twenty month experiment ends now.

Here’s to a return to the true art of debate. A conversation between grown ups and not a ski mask in sight. Nothing less than the future of the Internet depends on it.

Who’s with me?

What?

Oh, that’s right - I can’t hear you. Not here. Not like this.

…

Trackbacks…

No Comment - David Cruickshank responds in exactly the appropriate format.

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