Jamilah Lemieux is the senior editor at Ebony magazine. She is on Twitter (@JamilahLemieux).

I began my writing career as a blogger nearly a decade ago and were it not for MySpace, Blogger and the communities that developed in the comment sections of those websites, I would not be the senior editor of a national magazine today.

But I stopped reading the comments on my own stories over a year ago, and only check them on other folks’ work when I am prompted to do so — a rare request, because most of my writing pals have taken the same stance about comment sections: Burn them down.

It is in comment sections that trolls get a static space with a built-in audience, at which they can hurl shocking vitriol and bigotry most wouldn't dare express offline.

With the exception of just a few webpages and blogs — like Very Smart Brothas and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s space on the website of the Atlantic magazine — comment sections seem to be little more than a microphone for the Internet’s most despicable, cowardly and hateful personalities. It is in comment sections that trolls get a static space with a built-in audience, at which they can hurl the kind of shocking vitriol and bigotry most wouldn't dare express offline.

As most of my writing deals with subjects of race, gender and sexuality, there is a large built-in base ready to attack. I thank them for giving our site (which they claim to hate) daily web clicks, but I will not reward them with engagement. Once a fantastic space for a meeting of minds scattered across the globe, comment sections have become rest havens for racists, sexists and homophobes.

Unfortunately, this behavior isn’t limited to sites that deal with polarizing subjects like “Why Black People Have the Right to Exist” or “Women: Humans, Too!” Even beauty and mommy blogs and movie review websites are littered with the scourge of the earth, desperately seeking attention.

Those sites with resources devoted to comment moderation may not seem as overrun with vulgarity, but the act of sorting through obscenity can take a heavy toll on moderators, especially when image sharing is enabled.

Comments sections have devolved into places where anonymous strangers can punch up at those they despise, admire, envy — or perhaps all of the above. Once upon a time, I’d lose hours debating with them. Now, I try to pretend they don’t exist: a challenge, because many just migrate to my Twitter feed to hound me there.



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