The Morning After

Or, the afternoon after. Whatever.

First, yesterdays post was a bit harsh, but, I could have taken it a lot worse. Through several conversations and several blog and their comments sections I can see that there may have been more at work here than two professional geeks talking bad about non-professional geeks. Maybe their hit count was low? Best solution? Insult people, that'll make em link to you.

Someone told me they think they're just bitching about blogs the way fanboys bitch about Marvel. "They suck!" "I'll take seven copies of that new Arana title please!" Buddy Dino got at that as well, saying that they're only saying MOST of them suck, but there are some goodones. First, the good ones they mention are either retired or rarely update anymore (which is probably their most valid point, it's hard to keep good content and update regularly, very hard) so I think that's not giving the rest of us a fair shake. second, most of EVERYTHING sucks. That's not exactly an astute observation, is it?

Maybe they read waaaay too many blogs and are just bogged down by the mediocrity of most of them (I'm a mediocre blogger at best, I know that, I can handle that). Simple solution, much like floppy comics, STOP READING THEM! Then they cease to bother you. Don't like where Marvel is going with the X-Men, don't read. Don't like to see Mike Sterling expres his unnatural obsession with Swamp Thing, dont read!!!! Most of us didn't start blogs to be cool (heh, that's a laugh) or to copy anyone, or to get people tolink to us, or even to get people to read what we write. It was to write! Just to write. That's it. Because we wanted to. Because we think The Intimates deserves a bigger audience, Joe, and we want to scream it from the highest mountain. Bloggers everywhere championed your Wildcats book, and how do you thank them? By insulting them. Yeah, good friggin' job.

I'm getting riled up again, and I don't want to turn this into a days long rant about two idiots looking for attention. Like Dorian I find the humour in it to be fascinating, unlike him I feel the need to get pissed off and yell back. There's an interesting discussion going on in his comments section right now, Augi and Larry Young have piped in. Larry brought it to my attention (not specifically) about getting people to link to them. I hadn't thought about that. Agi seems to think we should be discussing the merits of their case. Like Dorian, I say, what merits? They make a handful of valid points while insulting part of their audiebce? That's a lesson in how not to write a fucking column. Howard Stern they ain't. He also goes on to twist Dorian's words to say that only bloggers can critique bloggers. Augi, that's not what the man said, he said there were more qualified people. Casey and Fraction write are print writers, by the way, that's why they are referred to as "print writers" makes sense to me. Maybe you're right, and you just don't get it.

See, insulting people is idiotic, and only serves to focus some attack back at yourself. Augi now has reason to never like anything I write because I've attacked him for no apparent reason than having a different opinion than mine. It didn't make much sense did it? But, unlike Casey & Fraction I have this handy comment thing that lets people respond to me....

Tom Spurgeon also drops in and makes some comments.

jdonelson (that's what it says!) makes a great friggin' point:

"In that column, Casey & Fraction condemned an entire medium because they didn't like they way that one group of people uses it. CBR presents re-heated press releases or six-part interviews with their own columnists about that columnist's new comic book and calls that news. I can condemn them for that but I don't turn that into a blanket criticism of all news sites or the entire internet. THat column was uninformed and poorly researched. It's a shame because some people who might have considered writing or reading blogs may now write off the entire medium. (Not to mention that the readers who might have checked out some blogs and judged for themselves couldn't do so because that column provided ZERO hyperlinks, even to the blogs that were mentioned by name)."

I don't know who you are, but you hit the nail on the head, and I thank you.

In case you're wondering, yes, this is done in spite of Casey and Fractions thoughts on link blogging, and like them I've provided no links (well...one, okay!) so that when someone stumbles upon it they can scratch their heads and go "this guys really dumb, he talks about all the people and what they have to say and I have no idea where it's coming from."

All this has been keeping me from my goal of discussing the week's DVD's as well as a few movies and TV shows. I'll get to that later, I promise.

-L