Lev Grossman thinks it’s human nature, that everyone is “basically mean anyway.” And his Time magazine piece this week runs with that Hobbesian spin, one that rails on how it’s hard to tell whether spiteful internet commenters are “ruining the web faster than they can save it.”

Grossman gets a good example out of The Stranger, a fellow weekly up in Seattle known on the web for its excellent blog, Slog. Recently, The Stranger decided to hire a guest blogger to add in an outside voice. But it wasn’t long before she was tormented in the comments of each and every one of her posts. Explained one commenter: “Once she got here, it didn’t really matter what she wrote or what she was like. People were going to shred her; it was a game.”

And so last month, she gave up the gig: “What bothers me is that I woke up these last few mornings perfectly happy… until I remembered that I had to write something for Slog and the dread set in. I found myself unwilling to send in my best material, wishing instead to post it on my own blog where it remains mine, unsullied by comment threads that are at turns spiteful and boring.”

Even in her farewell post, apologies were mixed in with that persisting prodding: “We’re under your skin. You can’t shake it off. You will smell us all summer long.”

But so goes the internet. You can find some of our own hotbeds of hate here, here and here.

The question really is what, if anything, is to be done? Do sites start cracking down on every comment to the point of censorship? If so, how do they decide what is and isn’t offensive? Do they let everything continue on its course? If so, how do they deal with innocent participants being dragged through the mud?

We’re all basically mean, anyway.

Tags: blogging, comments, slog, the internet, the stranger, Time magazine