Peter Gibbons plays with the trolls

One of the particular aspects of blogging which really sets it apart from more traditional forms of media is the instant feedback generated through reader comments.  I was delighted the first comment (FIRST!) on my first post (FIRST!) was a rather clever reference to the origins of my blog name.  Kudos to dog_eat_dog.

However, phil u felt obliged to imply that my first post was actually rather boring.  As a regular reader of quality political blogs, I naturally had no idea who he was.  Thanks to the wonders of Google I eventually found his site which appears to consist of him posting media articles seven times a day.  He doesn’t even make little editorial comments like David P Farrar does (“Pleased to see Lady Thatcher agrees with the post I made last week on this very subject…” or “I said the exact same thing to my good friend the Dalai Lama at the gym.”)

Burrowing through phil u’s archives, I came across one of his earliest posts entitled “apologies to readers.”  I expect he has produced a similarly-worded post every week since 2005 but I could not be bothered checking.  He wrote:

any readers(?) of this site should be aware that this is the bare bones/ first days of [this website].

Points for honesty on the readership levels if nothing else.

being technical luddites we are reliant on those who know how to do that stuff to do it for us.  they are otherwise engaged at the moment but i have been told i could get hopeful this weekend, or soon after.

Next on the technical to-do list – install a computer with a Shift key to enable use of capital letters.

so bells, whistles, and more links than you can shake a stick at, (all our stories/reports will link to our sources; this in the cultivation of a culture of transperancy), are just part of the upcoming menu.

It would seem that phil u, not Al Gore as previously thought, invented the concept of linking articles on the internet.  Spell-checking does not seem to have appeared at any stage on the upcoming menu.

whoar.co.nz will, among other things, become an apolitical (as in editorial stance) forum for (we hope) reasoned political/social debate, with lashings of humour. so, bear with us. all this and more, (as they say), will be revealed soon.

I guess the reference to being apolitical could broadly be considered humorous (if unintentionally) but the claims to “lashings of humour” surely need examined by the Advertising Standards Authority.  At least the ( and ) key work on his keyboard…

Given it is just the Internet after all, I have decided to simply continue to aggravate phil u in my own way by using capitals and punctuation appropriately.  I belief his unique writing style is based on a horribly misguided political philosophy – I think he honestly believes that you can’t have capitalism without capitals.