I like to read internet message boards. It’s my trashy pleasure. I started out by reading money management boards. I learned how to use coupons effectively and reduce my grocery bill, but then I stopped reading those kinds of boards.Now I just read the ones that don’t have much redeeming value. I don’t watch television (Jonathan and I canceled the cable last month because we haven’t turned on our television in months) or read People magazine. I haven’t really followed much of the Michael Jackson death coverage. No, instead I like to unwind by reading about the opinions of total strangers.
I must be a very poor judge of websites, though, because it seems that every discussion that I follow is consumed by angry, bitter people. I find this most often when the message board post in question focuses on a story about the economy, financial struggles, or job searches. Duh, you’re probably thinking. Big surprise there. Well, what strikes me about some of the posters’ venom is that its directed at the struggling subject of the article.
Case in point: here are several recent online discussions that I found in which a large portion of the comments are antagonistic towards whichever poor vassal is down on his or her luck:
Getting Angry At People Who Have Faced Foreclosure
I have seen similar comments on other message boards directing acrimony to those who have lost their homes to foreclosure:
4 Families Rebuilding Finances Post-Foreclosure
Getting Angry At Unemployed Recent College Graduates
Geez, back in the 80′s when Thriller was a new hit and I was learning how to read, my teachers told me that education was good. Silly teachers! Filling my head with with their fancy airs and visions of book learnin’. We young punks should have just known our place:
Generation Y Job-Seekers Hit Hard
The Curse of the Class of 2009
Some Debt-Laden Graduates Wondered Why They Bothered With College (Seriously, read the comments at the end of this thing.)
Getting Angry At Overweight Job-Seekers
Little Sympathy for Overweight Workers
Getting Angry At A Starving Master of Fine Arts
A Modest Defense of the MFA
Getting Angry At Job-Seekers With MBA’s
Several trolls like to heckle the laid-off MBA job-seekers who blog on this Wall Street Journal board. Blogger Dawn Jordan appears to be blogger most open to ridicule on this board. Maybe because she used to be a Vice President in the mortgage industry? I am not certain. However, the bloggers over the age of 50 are also open to their share of criticism in the comments section:
Laid Off and Looking
Getting Angry At AIG Employees
This does not link to a specific blog. However, I thought that this was worth mentioning:
Employees Fear For Their Lives
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