Folks often ask me "how have you been able to make comments work so well on your blog?"
It is not any one thing, it is a bunch of them.
But one of them was the decision to have a "bouncer."
Back in the early days, when we were using the native Typepad comment system and maybe we'd get 10 comments on a good day, my brother, who uses the handle Jackson online, and his friend, who uses the handle Tony Alva, were very frequent commenters here at AVC.
And whenever someone would come into the comments and say nasty stuff about me or what I wrote, Jackson would go right at them. So I started calling Jackson my "Bouncer."
It was effective and the trolls eventually lost interest in the AVC community.
Jackson got social media burnout four or five years ago and lost interest in AVC and pretty much everything else online. He went back to his vinyl records, photo albums, and hard cover books while the rest of us moved onto soundcloud, instagram, and wattpad.
And so I needed a new Bouncer. The obvious choice was Kid Mercury although I might have been tempted to go with Fake Grimlock if he had been around.
The Kid stepped into the role with skill and aplomb. And he is still in the role. Although to be honest, we rarely need a Bouncer anymore around here. The community is the bouncer now in many ways.
I was reminded of this when Jackson showed up yesterday without any warning. I am not sure if he will stick around. If he does, be prepared for an old school bias and a fair bit of cynicism. I hope he sticks around. We could use a bit more of that around here.
