Dave Portnoy's Solution To The Comment Section Is The Greatest Thing That I've Ever Known

What a time to be alive.

Yesterday, my close personal friend, and the man whom I call “Uncle Dave” even though he is not biologically related to either of my parents, created a caste solution for our once-wretched comment section. By asking our commenters to fork over the derisory fee of $1 a WEEK, he managed to weed out all the racist, uneducated, illiterate, low-class, undignified, jobless, dreamless, shapeless buckets of shit-huffing, mother’s-teet-sucking, non-fucking, uncircumcised jellyfish that once graffiti’d their filth all over the pages of my beautiful work. Poof! Gone! For a DOLLAR. ONE DOLLLLLLLAR. Hahahahaha you poors! How can you be so poor? I shake my monogrammed handkerchief at your filthy clogs.

Let’s put this in perspective: every morning, I pass a homeless man on the way to the office. He sleeps in his feces, spits his disconnected thoughts at nobody in particular,  and shakes his Dunkin’ Donuts cup of change at the shapes that pass by. Even though I never give him money because I’m trying to help him kick that pesky heroin habit that surely landed him there, I can tell that he’s got more than a dollar in his cup. In other words… this homeless heroin addict… could comment! (if he had a computer/phone, and let’s face it—that’s not going to happen due to heroin). He can afford to do what all the lost commenters can’t. I suppose the Reality Kings were right: money talks. Or at least, it allows you to.

And thus, I woke this morning to a brave, new, wealthier world. Instantly, I could tell something was different. Gone were the poverty-stricken hobo children whose daily routine was to proclaim their distaste for the “new barstool,” announce their departure from the site forever, and immediately create a new username for continued commenting. In their place, a sleek new fleet of refurbished, enlightened commenters; a higher breed of financially liquid feedback. Dare I call them… a jury of my peers? I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, but early signs would have me believe that we would enjoy a bubbly, $14 delirium tremens together. Hell, they might even have some helpful constructive criticism for me.

“Francis, as you know, your prose is superb. However, you tend to over-decorate at times, and your figurative asides occasionally obscure the point of your paragraph. Concision will always win the day,” says the enlightened commenter, sitting atop a reclaimed-wood stool in a smoky, brass-topped bar.

“Thank you, dear friend! God bless you, and God bless your parents for making your education a priority!” I tearfully declare as we clink our thick glasses, their dark contents sloshing gently around the ice like the waters of the Bering Sea. I’m doing it again… ah! Apologies. This is the happiest I’ve ever been. And I went to theme parks as a child.

Here’s to the new era, comrades. As Humphrey Bogart once said, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.