But there are also nasty types commenting, the Times warns:But thanks to a particular wrinkle of Internet culture, DaShiv is a star, an internationally famous portrait photographer, feted and fawned over during his 10-day visit to New York. This fame is not thanks to his own blog. He doesn't have one. Nor has he scored big by creating a clever YouTube video or a flashy MySpace page. DaShiv's notoriety stems from the popularity of the comments and photos he posts on blogs run by other people.
Commenting has become such a widely played sport that new tools are being deployed to separate the "trolls" - unwelcome commenters - from the favorites. Eater plans to offer readers the option of custom-filtering comments to exclude certain writers. Little Green Footballs started a rating system that lets users vote a comment up or down on a page, "to help the better ones be noticed," the site creator, Charles Johnson, wrote in an e-mail message.H&R commenters, "derive pride" by commenting on this post.
What point there might be to someone putting all his creative sweat into a 1,700-word exegesis on the cultural status of Bonobo apes, which a few hundred strangers might read, can be partially explained by a writer's desire to be recognized within an online community, Mr. Poe said. On MetaFilter, readers can mark other users' comments as a favorite, and commenters derive pride from how many times they have been "favorited," he said.
