The ego on display was only exceeded by the disregard for their audience. One woman’s presentation consisted of her reading aloud a journal article, including a lengthy and stupefying literature review. Throughout this literature review she showed only one slide. SFMOMA + art historian and only one slide! If she got around to her own scholarship and any other slides, I’m not sure. I was asleep.

Another guy, who monopolized not only the Q&A of his “conversation” segment but those of all the others, showed a video. Of himself. Talking. The only difference was in the video we could see his pores.

Another one of the “conversationalists” (those charged with leading the Q&A with the three speakers) asked what might have been a question if it had not been embedded in the longest run-on sentence uttered in the history of that beautiful auditorium, “Would you say blah blah, because of the long history of blah blah, that in spite of the fact that blah blah, and in light of the research that blah blah, - you get the idea.

The host of the event made a remark about radicals in San Francisco and New York, and then sniffed that he doubted that there were radicals in Detroit. Ha, ha, ha. Those Midwestern rustics are sooo amusing. How do you know, have you been to Detroit?

Yet still I stayed. Listening to the hubris and critical tropes (Protestantism and capitalism- Again?) was the price I paid for being in the company of people steeped in a subject that interests me. In their zeal they forgot their manners. That’s OK. These folks were loveable even if they couldn’t communicate their way out of a paper bag.

Our children don’t belong to us. All parents eventually learn this, in increments or in a bolt of insight. Our children's lives are their own. We feed them, teach them, willingly sacrifice for them, but in the end, we don’t get to choose their destiny.

When you are the mother of a son, at some point you realize he is a man, and it can be a bit of a shock. A man! The mysterious “Other” that women spend their whole lives trying to understand. When you hug him he feels like granite, when you laugh he lifts you in his arms, and when you argue, you know he is controlling himself, because he is strong enough to break something.

When my son told me he wanted to be a soldier, I didn’t pay much attention. I assumed he would eventually major in something impractical but safe, like philosophy. I knew nothing about the military and could not imagine a reason anyone would choose it. Then the day came when my son said to me, “I have wanted this for four years. I am not going to change my mind.”

That’s when I started reading. First because I couldn’t resist the title, “Love My Rifle More Than You,” Kayla Williams' story of being a woman soldier in Iraq. The next book was one my son recommended, “One Bullet Away” by Nathaniel Fick, a Dartmouth classics scholar turned Marine lieutenant, who led one of the first units to enter Iraq. “Generation Kill,” which was made into an HBO series is also about Fick’s unit but is told from the perspective of Rolling Stone reporter, Evan Wright. These books do not sugarcoat the confusion, waste and senselessness of combat but reading them with my son gave me an inkling of what concepts like “honor” and “warrior” mean to a man like him.

But smack dab in the first graph of an Experian report for Advertising Age called “Face of the New Marketer,” is a category called “Socially Isolated” which confirms my guess about IED blog bombs and the people who throw them.

“These people are generally unhappy with their lives and feel alone. Not surprisingly, they fall at average or below average for e-mailing. [They have no friends] But that doesn’t mean they eschew social media. In fact, they’re 12% more likely than the average person to use blogs, message boards or social networking sites.”

In other words, whiners and meanies are disproportionately represented in social media. If you doubt me, take a look at the comments on your local newspaper’s website, or check out the flames that Hillary Clinton attracts on YouTube.

Experian divides social media users into personas, much like Constellation Wines' Wine Genome Project segmented wine drinkers. Along with the Socially Isolated malcontent there are Approval Seekers, Health and Image Leaders, Smart Green, Brand-Loyal, Stay-At-Home Moms, Upscale Grays, First Time Home Buyers and Divorced.

While the negatives on wine blogs are few, vigilant wine marketers would do well to keep their eyes on the review sites that seem to be everywhere.

1. "With writing, if it isn't on paper it doesn't count." 
   
2. "Create sensations by choosing verbs, not adjectives and adverbs.
   
3. "Try jumping into a scene by describing the sensations. Then go back and introduce or give it context."
   
4. "Create tension in your writing but creating a time frame."
   

Before: "I'd forgotten a hot pad, so I put that on the table first, then set down my chard gratin, baked in the small, dark red rectangular baking dish.

After: "I'd forgotten a hot pad, so I put that on the table first, then set down my chard gratin, baked in the small, dark red rectangular baking dish that my mother-in-law bought for me when she and her husband came to visit, flying from San Francisco to Nice. It was the last trip they made together and the only thing she acquired on the journey."

Being naturally paranoid and not quite over the original sin of my Catholic upbringing, I assumed that this online graffiti was the dark side of human nature. That on a bad day, it could be any of us sounding off that John McCain is an albino dwarf and Hillary Clinton is a lying beast.

But at a recent Word-of-Mouth Marketing Workshop I was doing for the San Luis Obispo Library (slo) I heard this wise observation:

Rather than presenting the dark side that is part of every one of us, the online world of commenting is attracting a subset of us that is very dark.

The anonymity of "comments" is a place for troubled people to throw their written IEDs without detection. There's plenty of ugly stuff printed in letters to the editor but at least those bomb throwers have names.

I imagine these misfits sitting in their grim little rooms late at night, alone with their phone sex commercials and laptops, posting venom on one blog after another. Before they had comments, what did they do for kicks? Dress up in sheets and burn crosses with their buddies? Seriously, it would be interesting to know if online membership of hate groups like the KKK has decreased now that there are so many new ways to hate.

I still appreciate the openess and access of Web 2.Yawn. But I try not to read the comments.