Sports blogging is a pain.
I learn that everytime I write an article for the Bleacher Report, a sports Web site that practically embodies citizen journalism.
Blogging has become a fun part of the technology era. With this new age of computers and information, the sky seems to be the limit when it comes to speaking our minds.
Too bad we can’t do it without scrutiny.
I’m known to be a random person. I say random things, and conjure random subjects.
I think that sort of thing is perfectly fine, of course. One time, I wrote a random article that was about a what-if.
The next thing you know, some guy named Robbie Luge says, “So freakin’ random” as the first comment on my online article.
I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. Was it offensive? Yeah, but hey, I can brush that off.
But then the guy reads another article of mine and criticizes it, too, without saying anything constructive.
He didn’t even tell me good try. All he did was berate me for being like
the rest of the sports world (It was an article where I admitted I was a bandwagon fan).
The poor manners ticked me off, but what made me even angrier was the fact that people aren’t allowed to express themselves anymore.
For some strange reason, we push for individuality amongst ourselves, but then we get mad when people try to show they have something different about themselves to say.
Sports bloggers on Yahoo write blogs all the time about what they think in current sports events. Then, the list of comments that succeeded it berated the blogger for knowing nothing about sports, athletes or life in general.
That goes beyond just criticism, that is downright rude.
It’s nice to know that I can’t express myself, right?
When you blog, you’re stating an opinion. There are, of course, times when people’s opinions are just blatantly crazy, but even then, it’s their prerogative to be crazy so long as they say what they think.
Is an opinion right or wrong? Sometimes. If someone said something like, “Taking steroids in baseball is OK,” I’d laugh at that subject.
Cheating should never be allowed in baseball.
People still argue about steroids being allowed anyway. No joke.
But come on, if someone makes a valid argument and backs it up, then leave them be.
If their backup happens to be their own thoughts, then fine, that works, too.
No one’s telling you to change your mind, readers; bloggers are just asking you to be mindful of their opinions.
If I say, “The WNBA is not a waste of time and is good for basketball,” then why should I be argued with?
If someone believes that Peyton Manning’s legacy wasn’t marred by his Super Bowl loss to the Saints, why should he be berated for saying so?
As far as I’ve seen, sportswriters are not proclaiming themselves to be the end all be all. They just want to say what they want to say.
If you disagree, fine. Bloggers can care less, as long as they get what they want to say out there.
When you say that someone knows nothing, and is just plain wrong, you’ve gone too far. They did nothing to provoke you.
In the end, people should ease up on sports bloggers. Their opinions mean just as much to them as your opinions do to you.
Berate someone else. Maybe someone who’s arrogant.
But just because somebody has an opinion, and places it out there on the Internet, for everybody else to read, does not mean you gang up on them and call them stupid.
Reach columnist Gabe Mambo at Gabe.Mambo@usd.edu.
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