Ron Artest gets hit by a cup right before the malice.
Whenever I see an anonymous insult posted as a comment, it reminds me of Ron Artest when he got hit by some random cup (although they eventually figured out who it was), which ignited the “malice at the palace”.
On Dream League’s YouTube account, I recently uploaded a clip of Brady Morningstar (3 million views in 3 days, who woulda thunk?!) where he was about to shoot a free throw with no one else on the blocks, and the ball slipped out and he tried to save the situation by quickly catching the slip and throwing it up for a shot, while losing his balance.
I probably see one airball free throw per season in our leagues, so I posted it and shared on Facebook and Twitter, to poke fun to our hoops community. However, I said in the video description that I think Morningstar is a fantastic player. I saw him play in a few closed scrimmages this past summer and he was solid and held his own. I had no idea who he was and was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a starter for what is now the #1 college team in the nation: Kansas.
But soon the influx of YouTube comments came in and many of them were sh*tting on him, about 50% of them.
TrueHoop recently bemoaned (1) the posting of nasty comments and (2) posting them anonymously. The blogpost referenced a New York Times blogpost about a high school basketball player’s mom who dug around and found that…
Sports fans are a zealous bunch, to be sure, so I thought I would investigate the wider blogosphere; surely rabid fans were to blame for such a breakdown in civility. Wrong. Political blogs, celebrity blogs, literary blogs and, yes, even some mommy blogs had one overwhelming thing in common: snark.
But the beginning of her post summed it up perfectly…
Who are these people? Seriously. I want names.
That, of course, is exactly the problem when it comes to online commenters, even on high school sports blogs. Hiding behind a screen name allows the unidentified to say anything without taking responsibility for their words.
There’s a couple of things going on here. One, TrueHoop and the NYT allow for anonymous commenting. Back in the day before ESPN bought it out, TrueHoop was a thriving community and when you commented with something of value to add, someone usually reciprocated with a well-thought-out response.
ESPN and the NYT are stuck in the beginning of Web 2.0. That was when you wanted as many comments as possible — even spam! — because doing so got you ranked higher on Google. That’s how TechCrunch was built. Big companies like ESPN and NYT are always a few years behind the curve and, quite frankly, don’t get it (not like they need the extra traffic). They’re just trying to keep status quo, for whatever reason.
Luckily I’ve sensed that snarky comments aren’t as prevalent as they once were. People have grown tired of them and if there are enough negative comments on a post, there will be enough people out there to help balance things out, to put things at 50/50. I think it will continue to improve, back to the point where, for example, TrueHoop used to be (although TrueHoop will never be the same, sadly).
Times have changed. We’re now in the Facebook era where, for the most part, you know who you are talking to. MySpace is pretty much dead and people want a real social “network”. Facebook’s users have a real identity, be it a person, a corporation, or a group/organization. There’s a way to reach people; it’s a two-way street. Thank goodness.
I think the popularity of Facebook reveals that most people are sick of seeing the snark. I hope more and more blogs get their readership somehow integrated into Facebook as well.
For the record, I like Twitter better than Facebook because of its versatility and have criticized Facebook for being a “walled garden” many times, which requires a bit more upkeep, but Twitter’s great in that you can only post 140 characters. Facebook’s “real people” policies and Twitters limitations will discourage trolls. Both services also allow you to block other users.
Pretty soon, I hope the advancement of Facebook and Twitter reinforces that snark is cheap and is a waste of time.
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