Gresham's Law - And a Thank You

Recently I've realized that I need to give up message boards again. I've had to do this in the past, and I always backslide. This time it's going to be more difficult, because I don't plan to give up reading blogs. I do, however, plan to give up reading the comments.

Why?

Well, I guess I'd break the question into two parts. First, the question is why do I read message boards to begin with? The answer is that there are people out there who really have a lot to say, and have an interesting perspective. The prospect of reading a debate or discussion among such people is very attractive.

Unfortunately, such debates cannot really occur. They may begin as such, but a version of Gresham's Law invariably takes over - Bad Money drives out Good Money.

Every discussion thread always devolves into an argument among the three biggest idiots on the thread. 100% of threads are like this. There is no way for a serious discussion to occur on any message board that's frequented by a large number of people.

But those first few posts suck you in, and soon you find yourself wanting to respond to one of the idiots. It's maddening.

So in addition to notifying everyone of my swearing off of message boards, I also wanted to thank my own commenters, who have made sure that Gresham's Law cannot take hold on THESE comment threads. We've taken a little troll bait in our day, but as far as I know we have no regulars who qualify as idiots.

So thanks, all you non-idiots out there. The Ape Man appreciates your erudite presence on his comment threads.

[edited to remove the nonsense phrase "frequented regularly."]