19 1 / 2017

I’m sad to have found this site, but also happy because of the disillusionment of CB as it stands. I am a longtime poster, back when K was a commenter, I saw her rise to a writer and amazing writers like Jaybird drop off. The site was always fun for me, and in the past few years that I’ve been commenting, I’ve always felt very pro CB. I knew a lot of the users, the users knew me, and I delightfully engaged in convos I don’t normally have in person. I deeply appreciate having a forum to discuss things like this openly, and engaged. For the most part I found there were some emphatic people depending on which crazy was being posted about (Leann/Eddie-Cumberbatch-Angelina/Jennifer etc) but I found other comments to postings to be insightful, educational and fun.

I’ve never been blocked, and I have only had a handful of comments deleted. I’ve always been in moderation from my first post, so I think when I started posting (I only read for a good 5 years before ever posting) the rules had changed and everyone went straight into moderation. I didn’t necessarily think anything of it, since every comment went through.

I’ve always had a problem with K and her style. At times I found it immature, other times unoriginal and other times I found it combative, aggressive and coming from a wounded place. This would at times annoy the hell out of me, and other times, as I grew to know some of the commenters, it annoyed me less because I was more interested in the content and couldn’t care less about K.

For the most part, I find the site, and it’s commenters to be normal. I think it’s gotten better with tonality, with having more women of POC being stood up for during this election season, which certainly isn’t any praise for the writers, but I was glad to see it. Of course if you like Trump, that wasn’t the place for you, but that’s the case on a lot of liberal websites, so I won’t place the blame game there. The hive mentality can also occur anywhere where posting comments is allowed, so that I don’t care about either. I’ve never had the hive go against me, but I have had some commenters not like things I’ve posted. That part doesn’t bother me and can lead to some good debate.

Recently, I’ve seen a few things. The first thing I noticed was K lifting/plagarizing commenters. That struck me and raised notice. I remember thinking a particular comment was incredibly funny and unique and then saw K post the idea of the comment almost exactly. I wish there had been a way for me to ask that commenter if they noticed, but obvisouly I couldn’t. I think that was my first sign that something bigger was going on.Then, I noticed that a few of my comments got deleted. One was when I said I thought that Lainey posted like a 15 year old, and another was a reply to an Angelina stan. Neither were remarkable, I’m a polite poster even when I disagree. But both comments were deleted twice, even when I made each comment as vanilla as possible. I have to be honest when I say that annoyed the hell out of me.

I did a little research and wound up on another thread, reading about people being banned and everything. I think after reading that, I was tainted and more annoyed because I saw just how many people, how many commenters I knew being banned left and right, over the same things. Short note it was always about Kaiser. Always. After that whenever I went back to post I couldn’t stop thinking about K and how the bigger picture shows someone control hungry, power hungry, controlling. Not freedom of speech. Not good conversation in fun. Some things you see you can’t unsee, and this was the case I found with K, her posts and her heavy moderation hand. Unless people are cursing other people out etc, I don’t think any comment should be deleted. It’s a joke. If someone wants to call another commenter out for being aggressive and rude to other commenters, they should be allowed to.

Also, it’s embarrassing, in my opinion, that a writer would attack their commenters in the way she has in the past. That’s dirty, distgusting, vile behavior from someone in a position of power, I don’t care who it is, or how she was working alone or whatever. If you can’t hack all aspects of your job with decorum and grace, then you need to step away. That there is proof around of her nastiness would embarras me to my very core, if I were her.

Basically all the website is, is her reading news from various outlets, possibly reading the comments on other sites too, and then regurgutating it for the people. I don’t care that she does that but let us call a spade a spade. She’s not doing investigative journalism, she’s not breaking stories, she’s collecting and curating news, reporting her spin and then heavily moderating anyone who doesn’t agree, and then some. It’s beyond frustrating.

But I do love so many of the commenters, and their perspective, but I’m having a harder time lately commenting, because I see the injustice. I want to tell everyone else about these sites, so they know, but alas, no way to send out the smoke signal. And then other times I think, you know what, let this chick have her glory or whatever. I would actually hate to have her job, and the constant need for approval, the heavy moderation, scouring the web for things to write about. Every post is an open ended question designed to make people comment and give their opinion.