“Anytime I hear the word ‘blogosphere,’ I immediately change the channel/close the window/stop the video, etc.”
-Court
From the “This Pisses Me Off” Department comes a tale that involved acclaimed book writer Buzz Bissinger, not so acclaimed book writer and successful internet dude Will Leitch (a fellow St. Louis Cardinals fan, which makes him automatically okay), former St. Louisian and snobby jerk Bob Costas and, for reasons no one properly understands, wide receiver Braylon Edwards from the Cleveland Browns.
If you haven’t watched the video, please take a minute now.
When I first got into this internet writing gig, I thought about becoming a sports blogger. But then I learned something: There is fierce competition among those dudes. Many of them are not only quality writers but are also annoyingly hard working—so much so that I just didn’t feel like throwing my hat into the ring and working my ass off to get noticed. The competition for dudes who write about banging strippers is pretty limited, and that’s why I chose this angle of comedy. I’m known for doing the bare minimum.
But enough about me. Well, for this column anyway.
If you watched the video then you understand the kind of horseshit and paranoid thinking that is pervasive among some of the finer print writers out there (and make no mistake, that bald, slouching asshole in the video is a damn good writer). If you’re too lazy to watch, or just don’t have the time, here’s what went down.
Costas wanted to talk about sports blogs. He and Bissinger bashed them a ton without really addressing any issues. Leitch kept his cool and Braylon Edwards wore the kind of expression a dude wears when he arrives at a party only to find out that there are no chicks there and everyone wants to play role playing games. It looked like a shitty time for all involved.
Bissinger basically said that all blogs were crap, and Costas didn’t seem to mind the opinion. So the general theme was that the internet is irresponsible, stupid and encouraged the worst kind of writers. There’s some validity to that claim, but it was never discussed because Bissinger decided to have a goddamn meltdown on national television, which seemed strange to me because it seems wrong to accuse someone of profanity and reckless thinking while recklessly thinking and being profane. But Buzz has sold millions of copies of books and I can’t afford a girlfriend so what the hell do I know?
Anyway, one of my favorite sports bloggers (and also one of the writers at The Office), Ken Tremendous, had some words about Bissinger’s rants. KT’s words sums up Bissinger’s logical fallacy better than I could mainly because I just learned what those words mean:
“It's a big hot wet mushy smelly bonebrained mistake to (a) use one sentence from anything as a representative sample of the thing, much less as a representative sample of all blogs everywhere, and (b) to mix blog comments and blog articles. It's an even bigger mistake, in my opinion, to disparage the level of discourse on the Internet and use blog comments as an example. (And swear a ton while doing it, while saying that the Internet is ‘profane.’) Picking a random blog comment and wielding it as a club to bash ‘blogs’ is like picking a random romance novel off an airport bookstore shelf and saying, ‘This book sucks. Fuck you, Tolstoy—your medium is worthless!’”
Now that we’ve got the logical part out of the way, let’s get to the core of this. And that is fear.
It’s not just that some of these print writers fear for their jobs (after all, they can write on the internet as easily as or easier than you could), they fear for their respective place in the media. Which is to say that if they lose their readers, if they lose their power to wield their voices on national television, then they ain’t what they used to be. Without their audiences, they are just like you and me (okay, just like you). Instead of evolving with the medium, they are rejecting it. This is a little like refusing to wear a seatbelt because your old Nash Rambler never had one. You may be pining for the good old days, but you’re gonna get your face cracked open one day.
Look, I have written in the real world and it sucks. Ask Casey Freeman. The pay is lousy, the schedule is obscene, and most of the joy you have as a writer gets sucked away by your four millionth article on fecal matter or aquatic design or a baseball game. It happens. And that’s what makes the internet so awesome. We can write what we want here. We have that freedom. And the old guard does not.
And they hate us for it.
And I can understand their hatred. I can understand their fear.
But at the same time, what I cannot understand is why they feel a need to lash out at a medium that they disrespect. This is kind of like me randomly screaming about something someone wrote on their MySpace blog. Who gives a shit? If blogs really sucked so bad, why get upset?
And therein lies the answer: Many of them do not suck. Many of them are quite fucking good. Many of them are written by people as good as or better than Buzz Bissinger.
I mean, Christ man, this ain’t brain surgery. It’s 2008. And we have a medium we can use to reach the people. Step up or step aside, Old Dudes. Internet writers are here to stay. Many of us are hard working, job holding, word loving people. And some of us even write accordingly.
But, in the spirit of acting like we’re being treated, I as an internet writer have an obligation to end this piece in the most cliché internet way possible.
Buzz Bissinger is a horse fucking douchebag.
God, I love the internet.