Prose To Darkness

When I noticed some blogs with comments moderation enabled I wondered why, in the interest of free expression, one'd need to do that. I recognised the fact, then and now, that out there are some who cannot employ temperate language when they feel strongly about something, when angered or when they take an issue personally, as we all tend to do from time to time. I also know that some comments left may be totally inappropriate, way too personal for this medium or may even border on blackmail.

With the above in mind and even though I totally validate the reasons why some will moderate their comments - there are too many unhinged people out there and, believe me, I've seen and met my share - I resolved never to moderate comments on this blog. I can literally see a couple of my friends in blogshere raising their eyebrows and saying: you wait, you'll eat your words and I think I agree with you because, as I write, I feel it in my water that you're right.

What has influenced my thinking is the knowledge, acquired over the past two years or so, that we have less to fear from those people I described in the first paragraph than those who are hidden from us, (some of whom smile at us in reality and are our best friends at work and at play, and who we share our stories with and they know most things about us, the ones who really understand us, them), those with really ulterior hang-ups, total dead-beats with sinister chips on their narrow shoulders fermenting evil machinations and wallowing in the stench of their murkiness.

I have broadly divided visitors to various blogs into separate categories below:

1. The Curious – they just ‘surf’ (how I hate that word) and look around various blogs. Like reading a newspaper, they do not leave comments.

2. The Passive – this category mostly wander unto your site by linking to comments you leave at other sites. Some leave comments, some do not. Some come back, others stay away. Some want to come back later to blogs they find interesting but cannot find the path with which they navigated to the blog, as has happened to me. Some ‘stalk’ your blog in a not unpleasant way.

3. The Active – some who know you only on blogshere, virtual friends with whom we develop friendships and affections for their writing styles and ideas, others know your person. At other times, we meet virtually and become friends in reality. Mostly, they leave comments, sometimes they cannot be bothered.

4. The Baddies – this group have some things in common apart from the love of darkness. They generally think they’re clever; they monitor your blog so closely they could be your shadow. They’re around so often they could be stuck on with super glue. They never leave comments but follow your ‘trail’, seeing what you’ve been up to and trying to determine your next move. They are always there, rabid little heretics who may actually be deaconesses in church; greedy dead-enders slinking around in darkness. If you listen closely, you can hear them clicking on to your site. I can see you! Oh yes! Every time you come to my site I smell you, you leave a rancid bovine smell when you log off, much like your paraphernalia of jazz you thought you were hiding from me. You, daughter of darkness, the daughter of an abomination of a mother who knows both husband and boyfriend, killer of Abel and his first son, importer of jazz, the bad fruit does not fall far from the rotten tree. I smell you. Every time you come on, you leave a nasty taste in my mouth.