Monday, September 17, 2012

You, too, can write meaningless drivel

Scanning through TheDawgBone used to be entertaining and informative, but in today's blog-obsessed sports world, it's become nigh-on demoralizing.  I've gotten to the point where a headline will completely fool me into a giving an article a click...right up to the point when I realize who the author of the piece is, and I quickly hit my "back" button.  Simply put, the pundits are being strangled out by the pidiots.

Don't get me wrong - there is still some high-quality writing about the Dawgs, most of it not from the "official" sources, but the saturation of the blogosphere is threatening to destroy the casual reader's interest in it.  Fie on you, writers who post seven posts in a day, none of them with an ounce of true analysis of the game, but instead based solely in some hypothetical construct existing only in your own mind where you know more about football than any coach or player who has ever been involved with the game.  Fie on you, writers who fully admit your own pathetically shallow understanding of the game, but still make pleas regarding the "fairness" of being sure everyone has played in a particular blowout.  Fie on you, so called "student-of-the-game" and "lifetime-fan" who thinks he understands the problem facing our "beleaguered" defense, and that they simply need to "MAN UP" and play "GEORGIA FOOTBALL."

I know, I know, I know... at this point, you're asking yourself why the hell I'm being so self-righteous on this one, especially considering my lack of writing anything of substance recently.  I don't know.  I guess that while attempting to swallow the barrage of garbage opinion  info I've been choking down, I simply didn't like the taste of it.  Even Sports and Grits seems to have left the game ... theirs was never the most well-thought-out blog, but at least it had true entertainment value.

I apologize for my absence of late.  I will soon give those of you who've enjoyed my words something tasty to digest.  As for those of you who don't like me at this point, or never did, or have never read me before and now really don't want to read me again...I bid you adieu.  Enjoy the conjecture of the bloggers you find so enthralling ... oh, and tell me again how Richard Samuel deserves a spot in Butts-Mehre's trophy room because he made a tackle on a fake punt.


Go Dawgs.

12 comments:

The Lone Stranger said...

In light of how the fake punt appeared to be developing, I think any of three other Dawgs were going to corral that lead-footed punter. Samuel did, however, find his way past two blockers. He also has seemingly done what is needed from him and, as such, has attained a certain exalted "Everyman" status among the fan base.

Ben Dukes said...

You won't find me arguing with Samuel's character or his willingness to do whatever will help the team win. Still, I've found the outcry from some bloggers and the fanship in general to be a little overdone. The kid never developed as a solid runningback, he probably was a better linebacker, but apparently not as good as the guys we have out there today. So, to talk about him like he deserves a medal for making a tackle seems a bit silly to me. He's a great athlete, and obviously has a great attitude. I hope he finds more success this season, and possibly gets to play at the next level if that's his choice. Still, let's not glorify that one moment as the one that saved the season.

Small Group said...

More meanless drivel: Oh please spare us your "I've been in the arena and I know football and you don't...." expert opinion. DickSamIV is and always will be a DGD! Sports&Grits Rocks! I've gotten crossways with Hijo de Sancho myself on occasion and always found him more than up to the task. My son is a junior at UGA and reads him all the time.
Blogs are cool cause anyone can start one or contribute to one. I have contributed and I never did spend enough time learning to write while in college. I regret that now. Anyway.... I enjoy your stuff and your post game breakdown is pretty good (for someone who has been in the arena ;-).

Small Group said...

Thisdar 434Oh please spare us your "I've been in the arena and I know football and you don't...." expert opinion. DickSamIV is and always will be a DGD! Sports&Grits Rocks! I've gotten crossways with Hijo de Sancho myself on occasion and always found him more than up to the task. My son is a junior at UGA and reads him all the time.
Blogs are cool cause anyone can start one or contribute to one. I have contributed and I never did spend enough time learning to write while in college. I regret that now. Anyway.... I enjoy your stuff and your post game breakdown is pretty good (for someone who has been in the arena ;-).

SDawg said...

Ben, I have a relatively new blog and I post a lot. I don't know which blogs you're referring to (because you do not specify), but I take a little offense at the notion that I am not qualified to talk about UGA football because I did not play, which is what you're essentially saying.

I've always enjoyed your blog and analysis, and have even defended you in arguments with my friends who do not like the things you say.

Where I'm confused about your post is that the DawgBone separates out "news" and "blogs" very clearly and lists (first) the name of the blog. I'm sure after a couple of reads of any site you're able to form an opinion about the quality of work. So what's the beef?

As a blogger who never played (and states so openly), I enjoy putting forth my 2 cents. You seem to also enjoy writing and telling the world what you think. I genuinely want to know where the dividing line should be, according to you. I believe neither the Senator, nor anyone over at GeorgiaSportsBlog ever played, but I enjoy their thoughts and analysis very much. Should they shut their sites down too?

Again, I enjoy your work and hope you'll respond to this.

- Spence

Ben Dukes said...

I don't recall ever saying "If you didn't play football, you shouldn't write about it." In fact, Steve Sabol's death is a definite reminder that those who never played can still affect the game, and change the perception of it by the common man. On the other hand, there are many "writers" out there who lack not only an understanding of the game at large, but also the ability to string together cohesive thoughts. As such, theirs is an endless string of garbage which offers little to the reader, other than a sounding board of the writer's own thought. I don't write purely to be a sounding board for myself. I can sit in a room and talk to myself all day. Most of what I have written over the years has been for the purpose of informing those who read it. I don't create posts purely to incite arguments. I don't write entire posts and then add the "but I don't really know what I'm talking about" caveat at the end.

As far as "what's the beef?" Well, yes, I can decide I don't like particular writers or delivery systems, and avoid them. But, I also see things like someone writes a complete garbage article and titles it something like "Todd Grantham will eat your mother for dinner." Then, that page gets hundreds of hits. The title gets bolded up as a "popular" article. But, the article has no substance. And, it has distracted eyeballs from reading something that may actually be of value. Perhaps some readers who go to that article then decide to avoid TheDawgBone all together. That is a bad thing.

That's my beef. I don't make money off this blog, and I don't gain any ego boost from pageviews. I want people to read what I write so that they may better understand the game, maybe be a bit more informed about why things play out the way they do, and in the end, maybe be entertained somewhat as well.

When someone's junk-filled garbage blog endangers that, it pisses me off. Not because I'm some self-righteous dick who thinks those who didn't play football don't understand it, but because I honestly do this for the fans and horseshit posts discourage further reading...which means the fans lose out.

SDawg said...

Thanks for clarifying. I must have misread your point.

And while I may not agree with the extent of the problem about the Dawgbone issue, you raise an interesting point that cheap titles may take away from actual analysis. I don't know how the Dawgbone decides to biggen certain posts as opposed to others, but it seems arbitrary and based on the sexiness of the title. So you raise a fair point there.

Hope to see some more posts from you this year with your insight.

Go Dawgs.

S

Mr. Sanchez said...

Ben,
Maybe you should check gatanews.net as your RSS type feed of UGA athletics news. It has a "preview" option, so you can check out the link before clicking on it. That feature is one of the things that has attracted me to that site over dawgbone.


And if anyone was wondering, while we have promoted that site at S&G, we are not affiliated with them whatsoever, and neither myself nor CC are anything more than fans of that site.

dawg521 said...

SDawg and Ben,

You make very valid points about misleading titles that get you to a page that is clearly there for page hits (thus more ad dollars) than it is truly insightful analysis. I myself have weeded out a few of those that are posted on the DawgBone and refuse to click the link! But there are a few that blatantly use extraneous sensationalism to incite you to click on it, thus making it bolder which draws attention from everyone else. It makes you second guess yourself and say "hmm, maybe there's something of value on here today...I'll bite today." and then its still the same drivel that is always there. It's just got a snazzy title and is wrapped up in pretty paper with a nice neat bow on it (read: professionally designed web page).

Now, off my soapbox...I've never "been in the arena" nor do I write a blog or comment a lot but I do enjoy all the different perspectives on not only the Dawgs, but college football in general. I've certainly expanded my knowledge base and can intelligently have a discussion about certain football musings just by reading and understanding everyone's thoughts and comments. Keep up the good work!

South FL Dawg said...

I love your writings Ben but I disagree with you on this. Despite the fact there is is a lot of drivel, as long as it's not morally offensive I want to be the one to decide what I read. Go Dawgs.

Lucid Idiocy said...

I help run The Dawgbone, and we've struggled with this exact issue. We put in the link expanders, which increase headline sizes the more people click on them, in an effort to improve the site's readability. But in the end a catchy / controversial headline overcomes that.

We had a preview function for a while, but removed it because we didn't want to pull that much content from beat reporters/bloggers. There's a fine line between aggregation and over-aggregation when you're not purchasing content.

We've thought about limiting posts from folks who try to game the system with their headlines, and maybe that's something we should do. But we've tried not to exercise that kind of control unless we really get a lot of complaints about a particular blog.

Click bait is a problem, and I think it's endemic to the Internet. As a newspaper reporter in my day job, I miss the days when we didn't have hard data to confirm that people just want to read about who got arrested and who Kim Kardashian is dating. It's an depressing feedback loop, with internet traffic driving coverage priorities.

I wish I knew the answer. I'm glad you, and others, are thinking about it.

- Travis Fain

Andy Coleman said...

I've essentially stopped blogging because of all the junk blogs that popped up last season.