At various time throughout the day I’ll find myself mindlessly thumbing through various social media apps, glancing at friend’s photos, re-posted headlines of news articles, and of course the requisite kitten gif.   Being a faithful NY Mets fan (sometimes against my better judgement ) I follow their Instagram feed.  They post pictures of pre-game warmups, PR events, game highlights and even post game celebration.  As far as I can tell most of the 85k followers are Mets fans.  We just want to see our boys in blue and orange swinging the bat, signing autographs, and getting the occasional home run.  I recently came across a picture that was posted right after a game winning home run.  Lots of pro-Mets ‘way-to-go-get-em’ posts. But then there’s this comment that just trashes the Mets; their pitching, hitting, player’s ability, and what ever else you can think of.  But wait… why?  I don’t care so much that they trashed talked my team, but do does this person follow the Mets on Instagram just to trash talk them?  That seems odd namely because if they did, they’d see every picture of a team they don’t even like.  Or did they search a hashtag like #homerun, found this photo and began drafting their vitriolic diatribe?  

 

If you aren’t familiar with the term, the person described above could be labeled a ‘troll’.   Urban Dictionary defines a troll as “One who purposely and deliberately (that purpose usually being self-amusement) starts an argument in a manner which attacks others on a forum without in any way listening to the arguments proposed by his or her peers…” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll&defid=283884   I would say that pretty much summarizes what we’ve all witnessed time and again throughout the web.  Even the first episode of podcaster Marc Maron’s show Maron on IFC was dedicated to searching out a troll in real life in order to confront them.  But crappy ‘hurtful’ jabs aren’t the only thing clogging up the flow of the information superhighway.

 

In September of last year Popular Science, a 141 year old institution, removed their comment boards from their website.  Why would a journal dedicated to scientific exploration and scholarly pursuits do such a thing? To quote Suzanne LeBarre, the online content director,  “even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story”.  In other words, enough mis-informed loud mouths can derail serious scientific discussion.  (You can read more about their reasoning here: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comments).  

 

I’ve even blocked friends on Facebook because ALL they post is ridiculous non-sense.  I’d like to think that I’m open minded, but there is a limit to what my mind can take in.  If every single post one makes is about ‘Politician X’, I’m going to block them.  It gets annoying.  That is not why I am on Facebook.  (Wait.. why am I on FB?  That’s another blog post.)  I don’t’ care if my friends are Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Tea Party, Green Party, Christian, Buddhist, New Age,… you get the point.  Does every conversation we have need to start off with “Well when the aliens came and…”   No it does not.  I remember you saying other things in real life.  

But confronting trolls, removing message boards, deleting comments, or blocking users doesn’t solve the problem.  So instead of shutting down the internet, locking out those who feel the need to waist our time… lets give them all the room in the world to breathe. 

 

My solution is to create a social platform exclusively for people to rant and rave.  Introducing: Quarantine.  Leave FB, Twitter, and Instagram to the rest of us.  You can smear, slander, and scream your head off.   Quarantine has content created explicitly for those who have the time or desire to tear apart, disprove, blindly support, and follow those comment threads for the miles of bandwidth they must take up.  There’s no pictures of kittens here, unless you want to tell us how stupid kittens are.  No, this is thick with: Politics- the left, the right, socialism, libertarians. Money: the poor, the 1%, the middle class.  And of course: The Sexes, Religion, UFOs, and Celebrities.  And that’s it.   

Simply download a plug-in on your desktop that allows added functionality on social media platforms.  Now, let’s say you are on Facebook.  You’ve just posted a harmless random idea you thought other people might enjoy.  A few people respond with similar comments, but one ‘friend’ post something utter pointless and honestly irrelevant.  And you think “Really?  Here?”  Don’t delete it.  Don’t write back.  Quarantine it.  Simply  click the Quarantine button next to the comment and select which label should be associated with this comment.  The comment is removed from your Facebook wall and sent to the Quarantine site as a new thread.  (You may even get a gamification badge for your good work)

 

By labeling the comment you help steer the conversation away from the good internet (read: kitten photos) to where it really needs to be seen: with like minded commentary.  And really you are become the bigger person because you are doing these people a great service.  If they want to go on and on about why ‘yadda-yadda’ is a myth, there is no need to slow down their in-depth dissertation with all of us who don’t feel like engaging in the ‘discussion’.  

 

The person that you Quarantined is sent an message notifying them what happened to their post and a url link to the Quarantine site where they can see it.  Once on the site, users can find many threads, catered to specific topics guaranteed to raise the interest (and blood pressure) of people who just can’t let it go.  And the best part is that everyones’ user name is Anonymous.  Not that it is a secret, literally everyones’ username is Anonymous. 

 

This site will be so rich with barbs and provoking comments that it will prove too alluring and act as a magnet to pull those individuals away from our internet and into the vortex of Quarantine.  And hopefully with enough post and comments being Quarantined we can clean up the internet once and for all.  

PS- With all the opinions I freely admit to wielding I realize there is a certain level of hypocrisy in my hyperbole in the desire to rid the internet of such similar commentary.  So I completely accept that you will Quarantine me the next time we cross paths on the interwebs.