This is a guest post written by Jefferson Reid (follow him @jeffersonreid on Twitter.)

Commenting a blog is simple. Yet doing it properly seems a challenge that’s so beyond most people, I feel a remedial session is in order. Allow me to lend a hand, or maybe just a finger. Here goes:

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.1.) First, read the blog, or at least skim it.
For Generation PlayStation people, simply look at the pictures.
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2.) After that tiresome interlude, it’s time to comment. The initial part of your comment should refer to the blog in some glancing way. It wouldn’t hurt to insert a faux civility here, something bland like: “nice blog,” or “good read,” or “pithy and trenchant.” Whew! That was exhausting. If you have anything left in the tank at this point, mention something specific from the blog that you pretended to enjoy, or really did like.
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3.) Now, feel free to go Proustian on that mofo and totally rewrite their blog in your own words. Better yet, veer off on another topic, thereby showing the writer what their post really should have been about. I’m sure they’ll thank you for it later.
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4.) Of course, when a blog is truly a reeking pile of excrement, especially one with a video, please follow your mom’s advice: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Clam up. Then again, mom was never on YouTube being force-fed “spoofs” of Star Wars movies done in Lego animation rife with fart jokes and kick-in-the-nads footage. While admiring the technical chops required to make a light saber cut through a video fart-cloud made of Legos, I’m sure your mom would tell you that this is unnecessary and really “not very nice.”
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5.) If you’re forced to watch one of these turds, however, feel free to summon all the vitriol you can muster and unload bigtime. But please do us all a favor and avoid the stale complaint that goes something like this: “Thanks. I’ll never get that 2:37 back again.”
I always want to ask these timeless commenters: What more-productive activity were your planning to do with that time on YouTube?
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6.) Also, as a commenter, if some blogger has the audacity to be smarter or funnier or better looking than you, it is your right, nay, your duty, to slag him or her anonymously. But since not every site allows anonymous posts, you’ll often have to troll-up and create a fake name like, Anne Nonimus, Ima Spectre or N. Scrutable.
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Do it, because spreading the hate in the comments section is not only a civic duty, it makes for compelling drama and drives traffic to the blog you’re excoriating. Who doesn’t love drama? The ancient Greeks had Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides and Evenmoreofthese, but we’ve got blog-comment flame wars. Best of all, you don’t need to get dressed up (or even dressed) to be a part of this theater of the unheard.

Are there more commenting commandments that I’ve overlooked? Let me know.
No need for stone tablets, just tell everyone all about them in the comments section below.
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