Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a statement about a particular presence in the comment sections that most of you are surely familiar with. And a lot of people seem to agree! It comes from an anonymous account, but is signed by sumgai (and later confirmed with a logged in comment). Here it is:

To one and all;

I’m going to sound like a butt-hurt whinger, but hear me out, OK?

For the past two months or so, M. M. Bennett has been a constant thorn in our side, and I’ve let that ride. It’s Mike’s show, and I didn’t pay any piper, so I don’t have to dance, and all that jizz-jazz.

But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that no matter the topic, Bennett is able to drive the majority of readers (both members and AC’s) to distraction. And I don’t like it.

Over the past two weeks alone, Bennett has posted more than 300 times (I counted (yeah, I’ve got nothing better to do)), and has been flagged for absolutely every one of them. While that percentage of flagging would be a good thing, in a rational world, it’s not only not affecting him, it has dramatically increased his output… and that’s a bad thing.

Why? Because he inflames nearly everyone, me included, and we get to the point I’ve made repeatedly in the past, and others have made recently. To wit: The answer to speech in NOT more speech, it’s ostricism (an ancient Athenian principle of protecting the community). As with wild animals, if you feed them, they will continue to bedevil you. If you don’t feed them, they will seek more fruitful hunting grounds.

Because this place has developed the habit of feeding the trolls, I can no longer participate in any discussion wherein Bennett is to be found. To add insult to injury, I also counted the number rebuttals that he engendered while demonstrating his inability to recognize reality: nearly 3500 replies. Yes, I’m including some of his own material, but I counted everything from where he first posts – all replies thereto can be summed up to a staggering conclusion – Bennett is anathema to rational discussion on TechDirt.

Mike, I’m not asking for special favors here, and in fact I’m not asking for anything at all. I’m only stating that my remaining lifetime is too short to keep engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed child, for I will surely die before he grows up to become a contributing member of society.

To the rest of you, carry on, and I’ll continue to copy the mail, so to speak.

sumgai

Those are indeed some pretty striking numbers. And, as if to confirm the point, our second place winner on the insightful side is Toom1275 with a response to you-know-who:

Having to show proof is only considered a problem by those like Matthew who don’t have any.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we move away from that for a little while and start with a comment from That One Guy about Matt Taibbi interpreting the study of misinformation as evidence that of engaging in it:

Ah the wonders of confirmation bias.

‘The government paid groups to study misinformation and propaganda therefore those groups must have been the ones engaging in both at their behest’ is kinda like saying that if the government pays a group to study infectious diseases and how to combat them that group must be responsible for spreading diseases.

Next, it’s an anonymous comment about the attack on the Internet Archive:

What the studios, labels, and publisher are really fighting for is to reestablish their almost total control over what gets published. The Internet archive is one of the centers for self published works, and allows authors and other creators to attract fans who send them money without the publishers seeing the larger cut of that money. To that extent, the legacy industry needs to make significant changes to compete with free, such as selling editorial services without requiring copyright assignment.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner drags us right back to the topic we started on, with Thad replying to a joke about Matthew Bennet possibly being Matt Taibbi:

Nah.

Matt Taibbi is a competent writer.

In second place, it’s Thad again, this time with a comment about the Congressional Rep who discovered he has no legal remedy after the FBI illegally searched his info:

Well that’s unfortunate. If only he were part of some kind of body that had the power to change the law.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about news companies demanding link taxes on social media:

My family once owned a very profitable business making horse harness and related equipment. The arrival of the automobile largely destroyed that business. I want a tax on the sale of every automobile to reimburse my family for the lost income caused by automobiles.

Finally, it’s Cat_Daddy with (fittingly) a bit of a dad joke. I think it could use some work, but it’s a solid foundation:

Here’s a joke…

Why is DeSantis afraid of being disturbed in the middle of the night?

Because he’s afraid of being woke.

That’s all for this week, folks!