I have been thinking about photography on the internet a lot lately (what to do, how to do it, how to advance discussions, etc.), and I keep coming back to this following fact: You could write about the most innocent topic (e.g. “I love kittens”), and there would still be people who would have to publicly disagree (“I don’t. I love puppies.”).

And if you have comments enabled there’s a very good chance that things might escalate, resulting in what could be called The Kittens vs. Puppies Flaming Wars of the early 21st Century. It would start with someone interpreting “I love kittens”, to then somehow arrive at “So why do you hate puppies?”

Needless to say, if you allow anonymous comments, some people (“animallover37”) would have to throw in some incredibly useful commentary (“ur all douche bags!!!”).

Why is that? As long as what I just described is true, attempts to advance photography online by means of forums or groups or discussion collectives or whatever you want to call them will forever have to struggle. And that’s really to everybody’s detriment.