Paul Carr wrote a brilliant column for TechCrunch yesterday. Read it — and make sure you read the entire thing.

I found it brilliant for few reasons. First, for the first half I found myself disagreeing with Paul, and leaning more towards what Mathew Ingram has to say about the role of “citizen journalism” in society. Paul makes solid and interesting points about citizen journalism’s lack of effectiveness in some high profile examples, but I tend to side with the idea that the free flow of information — yes, even when some of it is false information — is a good thing. That’s just my opinion.

But when Paul’s post shifts to be more of a point about the degradation of our society as a whole, I’m 100% with him. That’s why his post is great. I don’t necessarily agree with his set-up, but I absolutely agree with his conclusion. And because of that, I find myself now thinking more about what I disagreed with. As I said, I have my opinion on it, and I came into reading his post with that opinion. But good writing should be able to shake you out of your preconceived opinions. I’m not saying that I agree with Paul now, just that I’m thinking about it, whereas with most posts, I would simply disagree and not think twice about it.

Okay, enough gushing about Paul’s post.

I do believe that our society as a whole is gradually going down the tubes. I say that as someone who, in many ways, is just as much to blame as anybody else. Human decency is dying. Yes, there are plenty of examples that you could claim disprove that, but I’m talking as a whole. And sadly, I believe there’s no way to fix it. A world-changing event might temporarily shift things, but I believe that degradation of the human race as a whole over time is a part of our nature. It’s a sad and very cynical view, but that’s my feeling about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think life is great. But that’s me saying I think my life is great. In the end, we’re all fucked. The movie Idiocracy is far from a great one, but it’s overall theme is so dead-on in my mind. That will be us in a few hundred years.

Still, it’s important to think about ideas like this, and to debate it. Hopefully someone better than me can come up with a way to prove me wrong. Or a group of people.

And on a smaller scale, that why it’s great to see some insightful posts, even just about the citizen journalism aspect, that both agree and strong disagree with Paul. This is Bitchmeme at its finest, because it’s an important topic.

Then there’s one post that absolutely takes a shit on Paul’s post. This one — which I only link to so you can read it yourself and see how ridiculous it is.

Dave Winer calls Paul’s post “rubbish” and claims it’s simply traffic bait. That’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Traffic bait is easy. Write a post called “Top 10 Ways To ______” and you’re fucking set. The shorter the list, the better. Paul’s post could not be any more the opposite. It’s very long and densely packed, and most people probably (sadly) won’t read the entire thing (which is why I noted that you should do so along the top).

In fact, it would seem that Winer didn’t even read the whole thing. As he writes, “Of course what the nurse at the hospital did, according to his account, was horrible.” Who the hell is the nurse?

Winer has a point buried in his bile: Basically, that you shouldn’t stereotype based on a few examples. Not a bad point, but he’s wrapped in his bullshit attack on Paul and TechCrunch.

Obviously, I both work at TechCrunch and am friends with Paul, but it should be easy for anyone to see that Winer is out of line. He’s doing the exact same thing that he’s accusing Paul of: Writing something stupid, so others will write about it and link to him (like me, here, sadly).

This is hardly new from Winer. Come up with some ridiculous accusation of TechCrunch of doing something which isn’t true, write about it, tweet about it, etc. Mix. Repeat.

You’ll notice that after months of implying that TechCrunch had some sort of business deal with Twitter to be on the Suggested User List, that came to a screeching halt when we got booted off of it post-Twittergate. Did Winer bother to admit he was a dumbass for saying that over and over again? Nope. He just stopped saying it. Shhhhh.

After a few commenters disagreed with his rubbish (no quotes needed there) today, he shut the comment section down. Shhhhh.

Okay, enough about that garbage. Read Paul’s post.