500,000 Comments

Freddie:

This is crucial because, as almost anyone will tell you, only America ultimately can broker peace in Palestine. This is because the deep economic, military and diplomatic investment of the United States in Israel gives us the power to deeply influence Israeli policy moving forward.

I think this is absolutely correct.

This is a test comment, by the way, or else I’d go into a bit more depth–though in all honesty, the purpose of this project is to go in to depth in the follow-up posts. So perhaps I wouldn’t.

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3….

Above is the very first ever comment on this site, made by Erik Kain in January of 2009 in response to a post by Freddie deBoer.

Freddie’s post was  essentially an attempt to solve all the problems in the Middle East; the subsequent conversation it kicked off, sadly but not surprisingly, missed that particular mark by a wee, tiny bit. Nearly as remarkable a feat, however, is that the conversation kicked off by that comment above continues today, more than six years later.

Today, as I’m sure all of you know by now thanks to CK, Ordinary Times/The League of Ordinary Gentlemen logged its 500,000th comment.[1]

Half a million.

Wow.

Stop and think for a moment just how many 500,000 really is: If we were to go outside right now and stack 500,000 cars on top of one another, I’m pretty sure that the city of Portland would fine me at least three grand and so we’re absolutely not going to be doing that. Still, you get my point.[2]

We’ve hit a lot of milestones over the past three years but this one is special, and literally all of the thanks — all of them — go to you folks. Sure, the writers write, the editors heard cats, and Pat and CK do the magical and mysterious tech-y stuff they do — and when you put all of that together, all you have is a website.  It’s everyone else here that’s made that site into a community.

Allow me then to take a quick moment to thank all of you who come here. I know I speak for all the editors as well as the writers when I say that none of us would bother with any of this if it wasn’t for y’all. Your collective intelligence, wit, intellectual engagement, and emotional honesty is quite literally what we pay our writers. If you’ve been thinking that you come here because of us, you’ve got it backward. We come here because of you. Thank you for an amazing conversation.

Now, where the hell did I put that 50 year old scotch?

[1] If you’re interested, the first comment by a non-masthead person was made by a commenter who went by the name “raft.” As best I can tell, raft’s time here was quite short. What has become of him of her, I have no idea.

[2] If not, try using this Fun Stats Fact: If you put 500,000 George RR Martins at 500,000 typewriters, for 500,000 years, one of them would eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare!

None would finish Song of Fire & Ice, however.

UPDATE: The 500,000th comment, for those wondering, was this comment by Gabriel Conroy. I will go ahead echo CK’s observation that “fittingly, it’s a comment quoting someone else’s comment, under a comment rescue post.”