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Let’s Chat about Chatting in comments [1]

['Nanny Ogg', 'Thom Hartmann', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Chitown Kev']

Date: 2026-08-04  

This is about how I chat online, whether it be in the comments here or other social media. See I witnessed the birth of chat apps, icq, yahoo, aol, etc, and back then mostly everyone used their real names and it was just like talking on the phone or some such. Most of us have kept that up.

As social media became a thing so did security issues, because bad folks lurk everywhere, so after a few incidents of murders and rape, usernames became a thing and that killed something in the friendly social engagements, that has never been recaptured.

Folks who have met me either offline or on zoom often say “oh you’re really like that or talk like that” it’s because I’m just like that. So, when I chat in the comments, in my mind I’m just chatting with acquaintances and possible friends.

I say “are you freaking kidding me?” “Dude are you for real?” whatever I type is often a dialogue in real time in my head, I’m not writing, I’m talking. That’s what lots of people don’t understand about me in the comments. I take myself as an example cause I don’t like putting people on the spot by using them. It’s another thing folks don’t realize. I know me and why I say this or that, or have that opinion or train of thought, so I use me as an example or my life, cause that’s the only one I can be sure not to misrepresent.

More and more I’ve noticed that folks chat in the comments as if they were debating not other users like them, but politicians or candidates or worse in some cases like enemies. There’s no leeway that this is just a chat, exchange of opinions and ideas, some may be good, some may be bad, most fall in between.

This is supposed to be a community, but how many really view it as such? Being a community means getting to know your neighbors, yet how many take the time to do so? On this blog we are all supposedly against fascism and the current administration, isn’t that enough to unite us?

And yes I’m going to keep harping on this, because one of the first things I was constantly told when I first joined here is “we’re a community” “get to know folks on here”… it’s good advice, but that works both ways if newcomers are expected to get to know the community, shouldn’t the community get to know them too?

So let’s chat, I view this as getting to know folks, as chatting in the sense of chatting, but alas fewer and fewer folks see online exchanges in that light. I personally mourn the passages of real chatting.

#TheAmericanHaitianPoet Muriel Vieux – Aug 4th, 2026 – ©All rights reserved

Paypal.me/murielvieux

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/4/800079626/community/lets-chat-about-chatting-in-comments/

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