You must never look
There's a sobering moment in Werner Herzog's documentary film Grizzly Man which is still one of the most haunting things I've seen on film. The director is listening to audio tape of environmentalist Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard being mauled to death by a bear. He is in a room with Treadwell's mother. Visibly shaken by what he has heard, Herzog simply says: "You must never listen to this tape. You must destroy it, and never listen to it."
We can only hope she did what he said. But in less serious matters it's hard to get across a message like that without piquing people's curiosity. How do you say, for example, "Don't look at the comments on anything on the internet ever" without making someone peep through their fingers to see what's so bad? How do you intensify the warning to a seasoned reader of internet stuff, to say "I know it's a cliche to say 'Don't look at the comments on anything on the internet ever' but I really mean it, especially when it's on a Comment is Free article about feminism"?
It's not easy. I tried with my own father when I first showed him a blogpost on his computer.
"What's this bit here?"
"Oh, those are the comments, don't worry about them, don't read them, you know, haha."
And he started reading them, of course. I had to leave the room as I saw the colour draining from his face. Short of pulling the plug out of the computer or frisbeeing his laptop into the back garden, I didn't know what to do. It was like watching someone you love be dragged through a steaming midden by a team of shire horses. It was awful. And this wasn't even one of the bad bloggers - one of those ones (you know the ones) who attracts a team of needle-dicked women-hating scumbag bastards who drool about how female writers "need a good seeing to" and other such delights; this was just an ordinary blogpost.
It's impossible not to look. You can try not to look, but you just end up looking, and giving yourself a sadface. It's the same when people haven't heard of the rum coves I sometimes mention on Twitter - happy-go-lucky Americans, for example, who have lived their lives without ever having to find out about Andy Coulson; or people who are fortunate enough to tweet me with "Who is this Nadine Dorries anyway?"; or, poignantly, those folk who say "Richard Littlejohn, who?"
Oh, the lucky, lucky, jammy bastards. How I wish I didn't know. And I always try to say the same thing to them. I try to be like Herzog in that poignant moment. Don't find out, I tell them. Don't Google them. Don't take a peep around the curtain. Don't look them up and don't read anything about them; and your life will continue as it is now, without a noticeable decline in happiness.
But they do, they always do. And then Pandora's Box is open. Just like your first exposure to the goatse man, you can't undo what's been done. Sure, you can carry on and pretend it never happened, but it happened, you know it happened, and you'll always be left with that mental image burnt onto your mind's eye. I feel so guilty sometimes, about being the first person to pop someone else's Nadine Dorries cherry, or bring them their first ever Littlejohn column. But what can I do? I'm curious too. And it always ends up getting the better of me.
You must never look, I say. But we always do.
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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January 21st, 2011 - 14:15
I almost feel sorry for the US, in having had Piers “Cunt” Morgan thrust upon them like a particularly virulent dose of the clap.
January 21st, 2011 - 20:56
Real life LOLing at that, I even did a “laughsnort” brilliant!
January 21st, 2011 - 14:21
I’d never heard of the goatse man. And now I do. Thanks for that.
January 21st, 2011 - 14:29
Must. Not. Google. Goatse Man…. Nnnygh…
January 21st, 2011 - 14:30
There’s a certain irony to replying to this in the Comments, but…
I couldn’t agree more. It’s something I have real problems with. The question that it raises is “are people really like this?” More to the point, are *most* people really like this?
Is the internet like Hitchikers’ Total Perspective Vortex, where you can see the whole hideous, stupid, baleful, teeth-grindingly irate, misogynist, racist world in one appalling go? Or is it a self-selecting selection of the sort of sneery, livid nutcase that bothers to comment? Does the safety of posting relatively anonymously liberate people to nastier comments than they would usually make, or is this really what goes on in the minds of what, terrifyingly, claims to be ‘the silent majority?’
That’s why I keep off Teh Internets for long periods, while my faith in humans being essentially decent renews itself.
January 21st, 2011 - 14:52
I don’t know who any of these people are and I’m going to go back to burying my head in the sand. *sticks fingers in ears* la la la, I can’t hear you
January 21st, 2011 - 15:00
“I almost feel sorry for the US, in having had Piers “Cunt” Morgan thrust upon them like a particularly virulent dose of the clap.”
They’d have been better off with a daily hour of goatse on the telly, really.
January 21st, 2011 - 15:17
Check out Pamela Stephenson Connolly’s advice column on the Guardian. The comments are about 76% more useful, not to mention 1000% more entertaining, than the actual ‘advice’ she gives.
January 21st, 2011 - 15:20
NoName – I am currently resisting looking it up. Don’t tempt me!
January 21st, 2011 - 15:41
The thing is, it’s nothing new. Surely, hundreds of years ago, there would be people who had never seen a traitor’s head on a spike. And then, one day, they’d have heard that a petty thief was to be hanged and, instead of keeping away, they’d have gone along out of a morbid curiosity. And they’d have seen a terrified young man being hauled to the gallows in front of a baying crowd, thinking about the mother who carried him and suckled him, and a moment later his body would be dangling from a piece of rope.
We pretend we’re so much more civilised nowadays, now that we’ve banned corporal punishment in schools, and given paid time off work for parents. But, as you describe above, we’re not: the physical brutality may be gone, but the morbid curiosity at what we know will be shocking is always there.
January 21st, 2011 - 15:44
NoName- there’s several more “classics” along those lines that I want to ask whether you’ve seen, but I’m not sure I can bring myself to. I’ve a bad feeling just by saying this that I’ve snapped off the brake on the rickety minecart of doom and despair, and we’re now both hurtling towards the chasm, me cackling as I know what lies at the bottom. I feel dirty. Sorry.
January 21st, 2011 - 16:04
I like how the ethics of civilized society contrast with those of comments boxes. An example: on a U.S. blog I sometimes frequent someone mildly voiced the opinion that the only good policeman is a deceased one. So, I made a vaguely jokey “oh, they’re not so bad” comment before realising that if someone had claimed that in real life I’d probably start edging them away from the knife block. I think one expects people to treat them as Pete Cook and Dudley Moore did Derek and Clive. (Here’s a scary thought, though: what if James Delingpole’s commenters behave that way in real life?)
January 21st, 2011 - 16:11
Excellent. At the risk of delving into speculation and extrapolation – ah, what the hell – I would imagine Delingpole’s commenters are rather shuffling, shambolic people in real life, bless them.
January 21st, 2011 - 16:50
Now you’ve gone and piqued my curiosity… Is this in response to some specific outbreak of CiF idiocy, or just a general observation?
January 21st, 2011 - 17:20
Just a general thing really…
January 21st, 2011 - 21:37
This is what is is like to be a “watcher on the threshold.” You see these things, and you get used to them – and you also know what will happen when those you love get into the world you live in.
Now you also know why you find it so hard to sleep some nights.
Sorry, wrong pronoun. Why I find it so hard to sleep at nights. Despite all that you see, all the crap these people produce, may all your nights be long and filled with peaceful, worry-free slumber.
Leave the worrying to people like me. We’re oddly used to it.
January 22nd, 2011 - 10:42
I am not going to lie.
My new year’s resolution was to stop reading deranged comments sections wether on blogs or news sites or wherever (by the way, as much as I love istyosty I hope they never figure out how to get the DM’s comments sections fully readable)…and I caved in at round about 11am on January 1st. It’s a sickness.
January 22nd, 2011 - 16:29
Well whatever you do then, do not, under any circumstances, Google “Roissy”.
He makes Littlejohn look pleasant.
January 24th, 2011 - 19:54
And whatever you do, don’t look at the comments under his posts. They’re full of horribly depressing opinions from men and women alike…
January 25th, 2011 - 10:46
Just a heads up lads, DEFINITELY don’t look at Meatspin, Tubgirl, Lemonparty or Mr Hands.
Don’t look.
No.
Don’t.