San Francisco Blog

By Matt Smith

Like magicians, opinion writers live under a special code that says practitioners may not reveal the profession's tricks lest audiences lose their sense of wonderment. This code also preserves commentators' valued role as American tribal society's social glue, without which the commonwealth would fall apart.

On Monday, Dec. 15, Scott Nichols of SoMa-based PC World violated that code. In so doing he set in motion a chain of events that may debase commentary, and even civilization itself.

In a piece titled "WSJ Accuses Google of Abandoning Net Neutrality," Nichols expressed outrage that the Wall Street Journal published an opinion column expressing sentiments different from his own. [Net neutrality is technical gobbledygook for something to do with routers and bandwidth; it's beside the point.]

"It upsets me that the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial," writes Nichols, "in an attempt to stir up controversy and attract attention."

He went on: "What saddens me the most though is that in order to debunk its claims I needed to reference the trumped up article, giving the Wall Street Journal more traffic and justification to print more articles that are controversial for the sake of controversy."

The SF Weekly remains a one-way conduit of corporate misinformation, owned by out of towners, and staffed by mercenaries - much like the Onion. All your base are belong to us. While we don't appreciate your two cents, we will spend them. This is Thursday Kings of Commenting. -David Downs, Web Editor

Recently we said, Heath Ledger's untimely death was like, sad and stuff. Ellis H Maupin, responded,

"Doctors prescribe tons of medications to the American public without ample warnings or without ensuring that we know what they are for or what the dangers are."

(Ellis, Ledger OD'd on oxycontin, xanax, and valium. Either he was a depressed, disabled construction worker with anxiety attacks, or he was a cliche.)

Recently we speculated that Ward Bushee Will Bring More McNews to Chronicle. And reader "buddy" came back with,

"that's funny, when i asked people, "what has benjamin wachs done in journalism?" ... funny, because no one knew about you, or you paper, benji. what do think that means?"

(I think it means even lowly Benji's has people beneath him, and they are called dickhead commenters.)

A while back we said something funny about Armenian Genocide and then last week we told a commenter on that post he was stupid because of his grammar.
Now, Paul says,

"3 months and 92 comments later and calling someone out for saying "blog" instead of "blog entry" is the snarkiest response you can come up with? What, no more advocating the murder of millions of people anymore? I expected more from you SFWeekly, or did you suddenly grow a conscience?

(For the record, no. We stand by our stated wish to Exterminate all of Mankind.)

Every day SFWeekly publishes stories with comments enabled, and every day you turds come by and shit on them. Why do we take it? Because it pays. Every time you comment, we get paid. "Online community"? You're a fucking sucker. Your two cents adds up to millions of dollars in aggregate for sites like YouTube, Yelp, SFist, and us. So now you know. This is Thursday's Kings of Commenting.

-By Web Editor, David Downs

Recently we said the Raiders suck and the Niners suck.
Naturally, Titan's suck dick replies:

you are a piece of shit

Thanks!

We also said soccer sluts need HPV vaccines, duh!:
annie says:

you're poking fun at the ridiculous right-winger hysteria, but in using words like slut, you're simply perpetuating the idea that it's OK to refer to girls this way.

Then we sent some self-actualized, self-proclaimed sluts to go kick Annie's PC ass.

By John Geluardi

O’Reilly’s on Green Street is probably one of the more popular and authentic Irish pubs in the city; good food, a wide selection of beer and lovely barmaids who speak with intoxicating brogues that summon lilting images of pastoral green fields, Aran-knit sweaters and peat-warmed crofters cottages.

But some customers and employees have complained that cell phone reception at the pub is bad and that’s why bartender Orla Niland was a caught off guard last Sunday.

Comment boards have changed journalism. Letters to the editor are down. The words "nigger," "kike," and "douchebag" are way up. It's the SF Weekly's policy that the comments on our site best reflect the reality of the Internet — a pitch-black, anonymous, and public room with a bunch of dickheads running around trying to punch other well-meaning people in the throat.

Enter at your own risk. This is Kings of Commenting. — David Downs

This week, we said the Internet is full of mean, mean bad people insensitive to the death of a regular joe.
And some regular joe said,

shit happens

We said the "One Less Bike" campaign is grammatically incorrect.
bob reminds us we can't use engrish either,

Quotations aren't "made," they are first "statements" or "remarks" and become quotations when repeated or attributed. In other words, it wasn't a "quotation" when Bush made it.

This week, we said Mark Morford = stupid.
And Dan reminded us of our own traffic,

Ben, I bet if you posted this over on the comment page for one of Morford's articles, more people would see it.

While [blank] said,

dude get a fucking life

We said, 'Hey, here's some holiday parties.'
Douchebag Jones said,

God you're a fucking idiot!

God, this job would be so great it weren't for you douchenob readers. We do our best to ignore you and your clown lives, but every now and then, one of your comments is so inane and misspelled that it crosses some line and we love it. Not you. We still hate you, but we love how stupid you are; like Islam.

This is Kings of Commenting, I'm your scourge, Web Editor David Downs

We quoted a stripper who said the Hustlers Club Toy Drive was crass.
A (different) Stripper says,

This reporter must have gone out of his way to find the dumbest girl in the entire club to talk to. I am also a stripper at the Hustler Club, and proud to support the SFFFU (love your acronym!) and shake my ass at the same time. We are not all money-grubbing "busty, slutty" Amy Winehouses, angry at underprivileged children for tapping into our holiday shopping funds--nor are we all on our way down a long slide to juice joints and drug addictions. We're largely decent girls who have fun doing what we do.

Hey, at least we actually found the dumbest girl in the strip club. It's harder than you think.

We covered Nude Aid and lamented all the dongs.
Lady Monster says,

Thanks Nathan for the review, and for attending Nude Aid. See you next year! P.S. You should have gone upstairs for your pussy peeking pleasures.

That's funny, because usually we satisfy our pussy-seeking pleasures "downstairs," unless we date someone with a vagina-face, which would be awesome.

We said some shit about exploding fruit.
Melanie Smith says,

Dear semi-literates, similar to the Onion, this publication is a one-way conduit for information, and we appreciate your lack of daily input. How'd you like it if we came down to your place of business and were all like, 'You need to relax your jaw more. Do it slower. Sexier. Eww, your nose is leaking onto my dong!'

See, it's not nice.
However, we occasionally amuse ourselves with your feedback on the rare chance it penetrates our calloused, evil media hearts. We collect our faves for the week in a special post called, Kings of Commenting. —David Downs

We said, Japanese food ads are red-iculous.
Keith, said:

i nearly peed my pants when i saw this video, and i'm pretty sure my children will have nightmares about dancing dogs forcing them to eat Japanese potato chips encoded into their DNA just from me having seen this, but it made laugh, and it's not just because i've been up all night. well maybe it is, but it was still funny. 'CONsoomay, CONsoomay, CONsoomay PunchEE'

gratuitous woot!

We said, tight pants are winning their war on tortured ball sacks.
brains said:

Re: tight pants war. Perhaps it's a good thing tight pants are coming back in the world of music, because let's be honest: Musicians are a tragically misguided and depraved group of people. I mean that in the best possible way, since I like to consider myself to be something of a soft musician, but let's be serious for a second. Do we really want these melody-tortured miscreants breeding? Probably not. (and I surely put myself in this category)
Luckily the tight pants will go a long way toward keeping said population from creating too many equally misguided children.
Who knew Darwin's natural selection would be delivered through mutations in fashion? I think he would be proud.

We said: