Internet comments are the worst. If you so much as scroll below a Youtube video, you’re just asking to see a wasteland of homophobic slurs and verbal venom. It’d be nice to have some perspective on the people vomiting garbage out of their keyboards. For example, if I saw a 14-year-old kid call someone a faggot in real life, I would think it was sad, but I’d realize that he didn’t know better. I’d understand that he did not yet have a sense of empathy, and that he’d probably grow out of it. Most nasty Internet commenters are 14. If I knew that when looking at a page, I could dismiss them like I would in real life. If the commenter was 60, I’d know they were just a bitter, racist old person. If they were in there 20s, I’d know they were just an ignorant asshole. For some reason, that makes it all seem better. It’s the not knowing that makes it depressing. Seeing the age of commenters would make it possible to look at the Internet without feeling worse about the human race.

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