Comments on: Jezebel Has Standards

By: goomba

goomba — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 22:12:25 +0000

I just had the same problem you are talking about with Jezebel. In my case, I am a PhD scientist and a single mom by choice. You would think that they would be interested in my opinion, right?

In my case, I responded to comment written by some lady who thinks that sperm donation should be outlawed. My post was neither obscene nor libelous nor irrelevant to the conversation. Was it polite? Not particularly. Was it controversial? Absolutely! In any free-thinking society people have the right to be impolite and controversial.

What bothers me the most is that Jezebel likes to pose as some kind of progressive blog page (I guess that is what they are). In fact, there is nothing progressive about censorship.

By: Marie

Marie — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 16:20:34 +0000

As an above commenter said this site was hard on my self esteem I am also a feminist and writer. I find their articles to be poor excuse for feminism and I was being cyberbullied and harassed on there and it was very hurtful. Did anyone else notice that Ms. magazine doesnt link to them in their blog roll anymore…? They used to.

By: Kelley

Kelley — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:18:39 +0000

I think people don’t understand how the commenting on Jezebel really works… you don’t need a star to be seen by others. The star (given by other starred people or staff, I believe), means you’re some sort of extra-special commenter with extra privileges (like approving other users or having “featured” comments). But as long as your comment isn’t entirely in pink (which should only happen to the first one or two comments you make), it can be seen by everyone else. I was put off by their wording when I first went to comment there, but my first comment got approved within a day, and I’ve never had issues posting there since. It was not a suck-up comment either, but rather one calling out someone else’s super-misogynist comment.

Now granted, they do a piss-poor job of explaining this commenting system. I ended up finding a helpful article on Gizmodo about it (all under the Gawker umbrella).

Also, yes. There are a lot of seriously stupid people commenting on Jezebel articles. The articles themselves are sometimes pretty bad too. But I still like a good deal of it. I’ve commented below posts that I thought were stupid/exclusionary/anti-feminist, and said so. I’ve never had an issue. I’m not starred either… but so what?

By: Maddy

Maddy — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:47:53 +0000

uh! I am so glad I stumbled across this post when I googled ‘commenting on jezebel’. I’ve tried multiple times to comment on there and have had no luck, due to technical confusion/errors/not really understanding the process. Spending ages looking for a ‘comment’ button and just not really getting how the heck it works/why the heck i need to script amazing and hilarious comments to work for jezebel’s approval.

Tonight was the final straw! I tried to post a response to an article, and this time i tried replying to a comment that was posted. Everything seemed to go fine, i entered my email address and it told me i would have to wait for a verification email. I got the email and clicked the hyperlink to confirm my email address and submit the comment, and it just lead me to a page that stated “This comment was flagged as spam. This usually happens with short comments or comments that have too many links in them”. Spam? Does my carefully worded mid-length paragraph with zero links need to fit certain other criteria to somehow avoid being flagged as spam?? Providing feedback should not be such hard work.

By: Porky D

Porky D — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:38:32 +0000

It’s typical of feminist sites to exclude opinions they don’t agree with,at least these ones are being honest about it!

By: Poppy

Poppy — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:23:00 +0000

I am so glad I found this site.
I had been reading Jezebel for a while and started to comment and could not begin to comprehend the nasty, vile, love in system them have for comments. I got approved no problem but then realised that getting a star (and thus being deemed “good enough”) to comment on their wonderful site could take a year. The best I heard of was taking four months to get a star, but average at the moment is about a year.
The site reminds me of some crappy boyfriend who promises he will be nice to you if you do enough humiliating, nasty crap for him.
I found it really bad for my self esteem. I know that sounds ridiculous but I’m a writer and a feminist and prepared to put time into things and I realised I was not going to be good enough for them.
The site is vile and full of bile. People joke about the site being anti- man but I disagree and think they have an equal ops policy on who they are nasty to.
I have to admit to being pathetic enough to hunt around for other people who feel the same way so that I felt better about myself and how Jezebel left me feeling. But you know what? It helped.
If this was Jezebel I would now press submit and wait, wide eyed to see if anyone thought I was good enough to promote.

By: Paige

Paige — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:01:56 +0000

When I first read about the comment policy, I thought, “sure, that makes sense, they don’t want spammers!” So I left a comment. Then a couple of days later, another. To date I have left at least 15 comments, none of them less than less than 3 or 4 sentences. Most of them are in direct response to a question posed by another commenter about something I happen to have knowledge about. None of them have been negative in any way (not that that should matter). I’m still not an approved commenter. So yeah, I call BS.

By: ndsuniverse

ndsuniverse — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 07:03:45 +0000

This is really helpful. Thanks for sharing this information. Special thanks to the people who came up with cheatsheets.

By: Sister Wolf

Sister Wolf — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:48:54 +0000

Mila – I like your subversiveness! I want to try that ass-kissing stuff just for fun. I wasn’t aware of the over-the-top pseudo-political correctness, but it sounds awful. I’m going there to investigate.

By: Mila

Mila — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:12:14 +0000

I’m glad I’m not the only feminist who thinks Jezebel is a crock of shit. The commenters on there are the most judgmental, immature, rude, hate-filled, elitist bitches I have ever encountered. They remind me of those pathetic, bitter people who were fat & ugly all through school, but who go on talk shows after getting a ton of plastic surgery or becoming strippers just to show the people who made fun of them how “great” they turned out.

I’ve watched Jezebel devolve from a fun site with relevant articles & intelligent discussions to a total joke. Now, it’s just one article after another about fashion, how much men suck, how being fat is healthy & beautiful, how wonderful islam is(which I find ABSURD, why would a feminist website promote such a misogynistic religion?!), or how everything in life is racist in some way. There’s no more intelligent discussion anymore either- it’s just page after page of ‘Jezzies’ agreeing with each other, and patting each other on the back FOR agreeing with each other. I comment there quite regularly & I find that I have to censor myself or word my opinions very carefully just to avoid being ripped to shreds or banned entirely. The basic vibe there now is; if you’re not fat, ugly, gay, non-white, or extremely left-wing, you’re not welcome & you should really just shoot yourself cause you’re an abomination. SO ridiculous. I’m by no means right-wing, I’m a left-leaning Independent but even *I* get shit for some of the things I say.

And I really don’t get why they make people audition to leave comments on their PUBLIC website. I remember when they first rolled out the new comment rules & I was flabbergasted. I wanted to be able to comment so I started leaving gushing, ass-kissing comments & luckily that worked. Now I sometimes leave obviously fake, moronic comments & sadly, those are “hearted” more than my real ones. *sigh* And sometimes I like to approve comments that I know will piss everyone off, lol… I just don’t get why they don’t make the site private & invitation-only though if they only want people they ‘love’ commenting. It doesn’t make sense. Such elitism, it makes me sick.

Yes Jezzies, please just STFU.