Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Comment threads are closing, thankfully – but the underpants brigade have won

 ‘Oh please not more lies from the LibLabCon BLIAR propaganda machine!’ ‘If the author of this article had read the documents of the Council of Chalcedon in the original Greek, then he might not throw around the word “monophysite” with such casual abandon.’ ‘Only one way to stop the Caliphate capturing every village hall in this once green and pleasant land and no I don’t mean green as in Ms Caroline Lucas – Vote UKIP!’

I’ve just invented these comments, but if you’ve been anywhere near a newspaper website over the past decade they’ll sound familiar. These days, however, they’re a bit harder to find.

That’s because ‘below-the-line’ comment threads are being killed off by the media outlets that set them up. With a sigh of relief.

Malicious creeps have had their microphones turned off, mid-rant. So have countless monomaniacs who aren’t malicious but who have been sucking the life (and profits) out of the publications that host them. Clever, polite people have lost their platform, too, but I’ve yet to meet an editor who feels their pain.

Unmoderated comment threads are an idea whose time has gone. But they have left an unnerving legacy. Their mood of permanent thin-skinned irritability has rubbed off on everyone.

A decade of posting random thoughts on websites read by millions has turned previously even-tempered folk into querulous bores. They remind me of Viz magazine’s grotesque fogey Major Misunderstanding, whose blazer lapels quiver with indignation every time he thinks his opinions have been challenged. (I know the type, being one myself.)

For five years I was editor of Telegraph Blogs. Every day, from the moment we switched on our computers, we had to live with the drone of the ‘underpants brigade’, as one colleague called them.

To the casual reader, these Y-front warriors were obvious fruitcakes.

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