So here are the three most annoying types of comments or posts frequently seen on Polish blogosphere, listed in ascending order of annoyance (although, to be sure, all three types far exceed the threshold beyond which you feel like smashing your computer against the wall):
1) "Who's paying you to say this?" This type of blogger/commenter automatically assumes that anyone and everyone who expresses certain preferences or beliefs does it because he has a personal interest in it (as in, he is paid or blackmailed by corporations, secret services or whatnot, or does it out of pure opportunism, hoping to get noticed by someone influential, or I don't know what). Because we all know that the most common reason for people to express their opinions is that they expect personal gain from it, not that they actually, you know, have such opinions. Another interesting observation is that commenters who use these sorts of accusations always use them against people they disagree with. Somehow it seems obviously true to them that people who express opinions they agree with cannot possibly do so because they may have a personal interest in it.
2) "Can you prove I'm wrong? No? Then you've just admitted I'm right! I win! I win!" When you start reading Polish blogs, especially ones about politics, you'll immediately notice something so bizarre you'll have trouble believing your own eyes: There actually are people out there who either do not know or do not agree that the burden of proof of a proposition rests on the person asserting it. Seriously. And they're not a rare breed either. "These elections were fraudulent. You, Mr. sociology professor, with all your polling data and fancy statistics methods, somehow can't prove they weren't. So which one of us is right?" (This is an actual quote.) And on and on, in hundreds of mutations and hundreds of thousands of copies.
I think (though I may be wrong) that, as opposed to the #1 type, these comments can only be made by people who are genuinely quite stupid. It's no use defending them saying that they may not have heard of the "burden of proof" rule and so are simply ignorant, not stupid. I think most people don't need to be taught this rule; they come up with it on their own. This is not to say that Polish commenters are less intelligent than Australian or American ones; it's just that the norms of English-speaking internet community punish this type of stupidity much more severely, so stupid people keep quiet.
3) "Your preferences are all wrong. Change them immediately." This one is an absolute gem. Like the previous type, this sort is only made by the terminally stupid. It is, however, quite distinct in one sense: while the previous two types are merely much more common on Polish blogosphere than they are on the English-language one, this one appears to be unique to it. I have not seen this type of comment ever made on any English-language blog. Never. Not once.
Okay but what is it I'm actually talking about here? It's when a commenter goes on someone's blog only to tell the author that they've chosen the wrong topic to write about, and nothing else. "There are huge important things x, y and z happening in Polish politics right now, and all you can write about is your wife/daughter/weekly poker game/whether or not it was Charles Sanders Peirce who invented randomized controlled trials? What is wrong with you?!" Sometimes (quite often, actually), this goes together with a Type (1) comment for good measure: "Someone must be paying you to distract blog readers from what's really important."
Can you comprehend the depths of egotistic stupidity of people who believe that what's important to them must, by extension, be important to the entire world, strongly enough to actually become actively indignant whenever they see someone who appears to believe otherwise?
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