The Boston Globe has a story about anonymous online posters posters, and it's pretty much what you'd expect. Except for the below section where the writer describes an internet experience completely different than any I've ever known.

I’ve always loved finding the hidden gems in online comments – the surprising slice of data that makes me question one of my political assumptions, the pithy one-liner that makes me laugh out loud. But those gems seem increasingly rare amid all the yelling and hollow rage and predictable talking points.

Comments on news sites are about 1.5 steps above comments on Youtube. To prove my point, commenter BarackSnoozesOilOozes (whose avatar is a picture of Barack Obama with Joker makeup in the style of Shepard Fairey's Hope poster) chimes in with:

Another one sided article by the Glob.

They Glob fails to mention that the mods often favor posts by anti-American Democrats who support Obama because that's how the paper leans.

It took 5 freaking comments, 2 of which are, "First" and "Second" for the comments thread to devolve into name-calling and paranoia. This is my favorite article of the week.