So when we all groaned about this lame attempt by Gold Country Media to "clean up" the comments sections by creating accountability through using their Facebook profiles to identify themselves, we all figured there had to be at least some merit. After all, people having to use their real names surely would make people more civil, right?

After a few months of this new system, not only has the idea people would become more civil towards each other utterly failed, it has driven away the more moderate users who offered more rationale ideas and now fear partisan reprimands for expressing their own views from more ideological minded posters. I've heard "You know, I never thought about it like that, good point" or "You make a good point, I never thought about it like that" about as often as I buy socks.

Not only are there 1/10 of the posters on stories and blogs, the vitriol has stayed the same and in some ways even gotten worse and the majority of posters have left in droves (and all of that advertising revenue. How ironic Gold Country Media?). Now it's just 10 or 15 people yelling back and forth. At least it was cool when there were 100-150 people with most of them being civil and the few stalwarts always wanting to be nasty. The blogs were sort of diluted by non-angry people then and the nastiness wasn't so concentrated. Now? We can all see what it is.

Somebody had mentioned a while ago that going to the Facebook-tied comment section was not about making it more civil, but for the massive new influx of advertising revenue Gold Country Media would receive by tailoring their ads based on information from our own personal information on Facebook. I didn't understand that until recently. Gold Country Media isn't about creating a local place for sharing local ideas with local people, now it's just about advertising revenue under the guise of caring about locals sharing ideas.

Call me stupid for thinking it was something different before, but I think it was something very different before. We all had much more lively discussions before and we could talk about things differently. The introverted grandmother who never posted and didn't want a Facebook account could sound If she wanted to. The soccer mom who didn't want to get all political on a story could just offer her 2 cents under an assumed name and not worry about getting notifications on her Facebook page that somebody hated her opinion and how wrong she was.

If I were to come here from another country and read the blogs section, I'd think half of Placer County hated the other half and that politics was the only thing we cared about. We're better than that, and I really don't see myself using Gold Country Media's products anymore. It's not local in the true sense of the word. It is not ad revenue through Facebook that makes Placer County great, but honest discussion that relies and mutual respect and integrity that makes Placer County residents great and why I love living here.

Politics is a relatively small part of our everyday lives and focusing on that all the time just eats us up inside. We have a lot more in common that we realize and we would all do well to find the things we have in common rather than the things that divide us.

I know this blog will get bumped to the 4th page by tomorrow, only to be taken over by partisan blogs. So just ask yourself the question: is that what you really want to read? You are the change you want to see. Good day! :D