Why this will be the final entry on Blogspot.

Ok, guys, I've really had it now. Things need to change before I completely quit altogether.

Obviously, I'm doing this for free as a hobby more or less. As I've said in the very first entry on this blog, I do this out of inspiration for what Christian and Sean are doing for Girl Meets World, applying what they do to other shows on Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and occasionally elsewhere. Now when I started this I knew things were going to be at least a bit of a trudge uphill. When Christian started his blog, it was an actual effort. He had to put serious thought into his reviews. He was doing it for an audience that can be counted on two hands. He nearly quit at least at one point. He took a bit of a hiatus, yes, during a dearth of new GMW episodes, but also while he was seeing about how to reformat the blog, make it more entertaining for him as well as his readers, and lucked out majorly with Sean becoming his partner. That last point in particular is why I hesitated to even launch this blog without a co-author of my own. My point is, I knew coming in that this would be a fair amount of effort for real appreciative gain, and that's strictly measuring gain by readership only. Again, I don't get paid anything. This is actually costing me through time and opportunity cost (if you're unfamiliar with the concept of opportunity costs - and if you were one of the people who didn't like my Last Man Standing review, I bet you are - Google it). It takes me anywhere from half an hour to 90 minutes, a good DCOM's worth of time to put out even the initial draft of one of these reviews, let alone spreading it across days to incorporate reader feedback and allow my coauthors to have a chance.

Anyway, there are a number of recent events that have made me seriously question whether or not that time and effort and sacrificed opportunity cost is even worth it. I'll just go ahead and start with the most recent and the biggest chip on my shoulder first.

Ok, so, obviously when one does blogging one has to have a thick skin. That thick skin can only go so far when the vast majority of feedback is not only overwhelmingly negative, but actively mocking, at which point the personal value of continuing this blog is equal to that of trying to ensure the roadworthiness of a 1974 Plymouth Volare. For those of you who are not one of my crossover readers with Oppositelock and Jalopnik, the Plymouth Volare might very well be the worst car ever made. There comes a point where you're pouring so much time and effort into a product that was subpar to begin with, with badly compromised and obsolete safety features, that spews carbon directly into the air of your general breathing vicinity at a cost of 18 miles per gallon, that you have to recognize that, yes, you can spend a little here and there to keep the old girl running, but at the end it's just causing more financial and even physical harm to yourself than it would if you just gave up the ghost, unceremoniously crush the hunk of junk and run down to the local Autonation Dodge dealership with eyes set on a brand new Dart assembled in Milan and the toleration and patience for whatever bullshit numbers the financial person will throw at you in the time it takes to marathon not only the Star Wars original trilogy but get through all the Twitter feeds about fanboys either circlejerking to The Force Awakens or preparing their white hoods and dousing their crosses with lighter fluid over the fact that there's a black guy in a Stormtrooper suit in it.

It wasn't so much the negative feedback as so much as the nature of how I discovered that negative feedback in the first place. I actively welcome negative posts on this very blog, something I've incorporated into reviews themselves. It's not even the fact that this negative feedback came in the form of backhanded comments posted from a repost on IMDb without my knowledge. It's the ugly, unreadable, ungodly block of poorly formatted, this-user-clearly-doesn't-know-the-software mess that brought this negative feedback to my attention. I interpreted it as a direct assault on this blog, that this blog wasn't even worth criticizing in firsthand information, that it had to be delivered in such a sneaky, underhanded manner. I threatened the poster responsible with pulling IMDb moderators into this, and then made a complaint on the closest relevant board I can find (it sucks that IMDb doesn't have a board where you can directly talk to moderators or complain about other users, which is probably one of the reasons why, as you've discovered on the GMW board, IMDb is kind of a cesspool on the same level as /pol/ and Stormfront).

I come back to find that the only moderator action was to delete one of my threads, the thread where I posted the latest reviews of this blog, and found a big warning label on my account every time I make a post or thread. So the official position of this blog is now, fuck IMDb. We will no longer share content on that board. We will not link back to entries on IMDb, we will no longer acknowledge the IMDb community. As much of an imperceptible dent as it will make, this blog is now officially boycotting IMDb. I am sick and tired of IMDb becoming a safe-haven for trolls and negative discussion while people who actually want to talk about TV shows get punished.

So how are we going to share content now? I hate to do this to Sean and Christian, but seeing as how both the vast majority of readership of this blog crosses over with theirs, and how their readership represents the vast majority of respectable users on IMDb anyway, I don't see much of a solution other than to shamelessly pimp out my blog on theirs and hope they're ok with it. I feel pretty confident, actually, since that's what I've been doing anyway and they've been more or less welcoming so far.

A major change in how content from this blog will be shared will also be in the very nature of how this blog will be hosted from now on. As I've said, I wanted to migrate over from Blogspot to Kinja, and guess what that's exactly what's going to happen starting today. I've tried to set up my own Kinja blog but in the meantime while that's happening, I'm just going to make new blog entries straight on Oppositelock. This has two advantages: better formatting, and immediate exposure to an in-built readership of hundreds. However, the major disadvantage is that until I can have a dedicated review blog set up on Kinja, this means having Mike and Nick share their own opinions will be incredibly awkward (for the time being they will essentially have to make their own, wholly separate blog entries, or I will have to manually edit and insert their content into my own), but given the pros and cons I feel this is a small and temporary price to pay.

Oh, and that will also mean Mike and Nick will have to make Kinja accounts, fortunately that's a two-minute process with an existing Google/Gmail account. It will also mean anybody who wants to post or contribute will have to make a Kinja post as well, but I'm trying to see if I can workaround that as well.

Anyway, that should cover everything. I'll still probably post linkbacks to Oppositelock/Kinja on Blogpsot, and at least that will allow people to anonymously comment on reviews and essays [scratch that - given that all the anonymous comments I've been getting have been personal attacks not only against me but other commentators, anonymous commenting has been disabled  - only verified Google Accounts will be allowed to post - and that will be a policy that will never change now. You say dumbfuck shit and personal attacks, you get to be held accountable now!], but that will be all that future entries will be limited to. To the few handful of readers who have been reading this blog, I deeply thank you, and I sincerely wish you will continue to join us on our journey.