Thursday, January 17, 2008

Fuck fan participation

What I hate the most about ESPN.com or any other major sporting news website are the blurbs featuring fan quotations. It's not as if the quotes that are chosen make one iota of sense. If fan quotes are so important, why even have columnists? Comments are fine, but the interactive nature of sports websites is mindnumbingly awful at this point, because it gives the fan an unnecessary sense of self-importance. As a rule, fans are superstitious, and, in a way, that is what fans have to offer to the game experience. Well, that and drunken rowdiness. But to take random sports fan quotes and paste them onto the front page of ESPN's site is pandering for attention in a way that is shameful, because there are hopeless motherfuckers out there who have nothing else to hope for other than to get a sentence or two about the Red Sox or Barry Bonds or Tony Romo posted on the site. Then, these sports geniuses can promote their quote to their friends and family in an effort to engender more readership on the site. Fucking lame.

3 comments:

sarahmcsimmons said...

why are you being such a fan hater?

kenniebloggins said...

I'm a fan, obviously, and to a fault at times. I mean, I spent New Years Eve with my ankle bandaged because I was celebrating Alabama winning a meaningless football game. And I know that was stupid. But I didn't log onto ESPN.com as RollTide92 and post, "Bama's win against Colorado just shows what the rest of the SEC has in store for next year," or some banal shit like that. However, I'm also not the asshole who writes shit like, "Oh, Patriots have what it takes to go all the way." Or "The BCS got it right. Go Tigers." There are far better fan letters to the editor in small local papers that actually capture some sort of sense of humor. But, like, don't put some schmoe's opinion on pg. one of anything. Just read the fan quotes for a week on ESPN and see if you don't lose it, especially if it's a day when you (a) received a ticket en route to work and then thought you were going to have a free day the next day due to inclement weather (but then realized you wouldn't.) Then they become infuriating.

sarahmcsimmons said...

since i witnessed the celebratory ankle injury, i knew deep down that you weren't a true fan hater.

now i realize you're simply a hater of media outlets giving airtime to fans that don't have advanced english degrees or even a vocabulary higher than a fourth grade level. got it.

i actually find myself feeling sorry for the folks that probably get the most joy in life by seeing their lame comments make page one. and i only lost it when i realized that this crap gets published, but espn.com never published my "whatcha knowshon, bitches" comment...even though i posted it every week for three + months.

you're right. fucking lame.