Grand Theft Auto V’s reviews came out today — the game itself is out tomorrow.

Unsurprisingly, comments sections the world over erupted into chaos on each individual site’s review (although USgamer’s has, as ever, remained largely very polite and articulate, which is a trend I sincerely hope continues).

Of particular concern is Gamespot’s review, which gave the game 9/10 while still managing to point out the fact that yes, GTA has some issues with women that it really should have probably gotten over by now. My concern isn’t with the review itself, which is an interesting, well-argued read; rather, it’s with the 3,192 comments that are beneath it at the time of writing — a figure that is literally increasing by the second right now.

What is the value in that comments section? Leaving aside the loathsome content of a significant proportion of those individual comments, what possible value is there in allowing people to comment on a review at such a rate that it becomes literally impossible to follow a single conversation? What possible value is there in 3,216 (yep, it’s gone up in just those few words) comments, many of which contain the same ill-informed, bile-spewing opinions? For that matter, even if they didn’t contain said bile, what possible value is there in having 3,230 comments beneath a review? Who is going to read all that shit except, possible, judging by Twitter, for people who have a particular taste for masochism?

It’s not just Gamespot’s review that’s a problem, though it, at the time of writing, appears to feature by far the most objectionable people. Destructoid’s Jim Sterling has been complaining about commenters once again lambasting him for rating [game x] one score and [game y] another score when they have nothing to do with each other. He notes that he doesn’t believe review scores are the problem there, either.

Perhaps they aren’t, either; perhaps the problem is the comments section.

The trouble with proposing something drastic like eradicating all comments sections, however, is that they’re occasionally valuable — though increasingly we’re in a situation where comments sections are only useful and conducive to meaningful discussion on smaller sites such as USgamer, and personal outlets such as this blog. In the case of large-scale sites like IGN and Gamespot, it seems that all comments sections achieve is to give imbeciles a soapbox to stand on and bellow their idiocy from while simultaneously finding like-minded twats to validate their opinions, culminating in the ridiculous sight of people genuinely clamouring for Gamespot to fire the reviewer Carolyn Petit for giving Grand Theft Auto V 9 out of 10 instead of the 10 that they, the people who have not played it yet, think it deserves.

But what can be done? Should IGN and Gamespot just close their comments sections?

Well… Yes, I think they should. They’re clearly not adding any value to the conversation. There’s no sense in trying to make it a “dialogue” between the site and the readers when the comments come at such a pace and in such a volume that it’s impossible for the original writer to engage in discussion with people who actually want to engage in discussion, and in the meantime the braying idiots just get a megaphone with which to bellow their idiotic shit into the void. Shut ’em all off, I say, and leave the discussion to sites with a community small enough to make online interactions actually meaningful; let the big sites become places from which content is just shared and discussed via social media rather than the wretched scum-pits they seem to be becoming today. It’ll put the attention back on the actual writers and the things they’re saying — and it will probably significantly benefit said writers’ mental health, too, because I know I certainly wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of the torrents of abuse some people have been getting today.

3,512 comments.

Can we reboot the Internet?

[EDIT, June 7, 2023: 22,164 comments. Just in case you were curious.]