Publisher at The American Bystander
is Blogmom of Hey Dullblog. His novels and parodies have sold 1.25 million copies in 25 languages. He lives in Santa Monica, CA, and runs The American Bystander all-star print humor magazine.
Latest posts by Michael Gerber (see all)
- From Faith Current: “The Sacred Ordinary: St. Peter’s Church Hall” - May 1, 2023
- A brief (?) hiatus - April 22, 2023
- Something Happened - March 6, 2023
Commenter Hologram Sam wrote in to say:
“Blank On Blank finally did an animation of a John & Yoko interview.
“What amazed me were the comments on the boingboing link. It looks like the anti-John backlash is growing.”
To me, Sam, that’s not a backlash, just another sterling example of Homo internetius. Uncharitable opinions hastily expressed, based on commonplaces and half-digested conventional wisdom.
Internet comments are the single worst invention since the hydrogen bomb.
Related posts:
John Lennon’s…
The Ballad of La Fortuna
Just how blind was John Lennon without his glasses?
John’s Vocals on Don’t Let Me Down
Prove Violence Doesn’t Work: Do Good in John Lennon’s Name This Dec. 8th!
Why I love John Lennon
Why People Love John Lennon
John Lennon’s favorite movie?
John Lennon on Allen Klein, 1973
John in "Nether-Nether Land"?
Why I love our commenters so much…
Yoko Ono on the Breakup
The boingboing comments are brutal, and I guess they took me by surprise. I didn’t expect such vitriol from that particular crowd.
“Internet comments are the single worst invention since the hydrogen bomb.”
I enjoy the heydullblog comments because rather than being an excuse for poop flinging, they teach me stuff I didn’t know about Beatle songs, tribute bands and the Beatles themselves.
Oh, places like BoingBoing are just as irritating, they’re just a different kind of irritating. Whereas sites like Slate devolve into your standard troll wars, sites like BoingBoing and Dangerous Minds are prone to a kind of doctrinaire group-think normally not seen outside certain college campuses. Which is fine for them, if they like it, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve actually learned something from internet comments.
We work hard to keep the level of commenting high on this site, Sam; it restricts our audience, for sure. But I think it’s well worth it, and glad you seem to, as well. HD comments are as much Continuing Investigation of the issues raised in the post. Sometimes it works, sometimes not–for example, I was trying to be provocative in the Let It Be post, and I’m surprised nobody’s come up to defend the film–but it’s always worth people’s time, we hope.
HD has the best comments of any site I visit – the work that’s done to keep it that way is very much appreciated (at least by me).
Michael, be prepared to wait a long time and I mean LONG time for someone to come on here and defend LIB. I can remember when I was just starting to get really into the beatles in high school and I came across a LIB VHS in my uncles basement while checking out his old records and I was super excited. You mean the beatles made a movie that’s not black and white that doesn’t take place on a bus or a beach or in Pepperland but was just them playing some of their later songs while looking awesome? is what I said to myself as I looked at the cover and read the back. This is before I knew anything. I was excited. Afterwards I was crestfallen. That movie can suck the joy and life out of anyone. Instead of blasting metal rock at Gitmo to detainees they should just force them to watch LIB on a loop and I’ve no doubt prisoners would spill their knowledge after 1 viewing.
Now, the concert at the end has some of my all time favorite moments in the groups repertoire. This gets very nerdy beatley but there’s a point during 909 when John and Paul catch eyes for the briefest of seconds and both smile at each other in a very knowing and understanding way. This was a song they had been playing together since they were 17 and that look to me says that after all those years not only did they still enjoy playing together (sometimes) but that they finally nailed that song down and the satisfaction was evident. There is joy on that rooftop if you look for it.
Wow I just went on such a random tangent that I think I ended up disproving my initial theory and defended LIB!
Here’s my latest problem: I keep seeing all these new Godzilla trailers featuring Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I completely accepted him as John when I saw Nowhere Boy, so now my brain is telling me John Lennon Vs. Godzilla… Please advise.
I’d actually love to see that movie, Sam. It would be fun to see Lennon use his scathing wit to toast Godzilla.
Sam:
Lay off the booze/weed.