Monday, November 2, 2015

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.

9 comments:

  1. I'm confused what you expect to change by moving to Kinja. What differences are you looking forward to? Either way, I made zero dollars and zero cents from BMWR, and each review took three or four hours. If you don't love doing this, don't do it. All the best.

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    1. I'll only add that while Sean and I are happy for you to post your Girl Meets World reviews in the comments of that specific episode's reviewed, we don't necessarily want the comments to become a dumping ground for every single review you do of every single show. Basically, as a rule of thumb, if it's not about Girl Meets World you probably shouldn't be posting it in the comments of a GMW review. Thanks, and best of luck. Sorry this isn't going the way you'd hoped.

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    2. The move to Kinja is because I'm sick and tired of Blogspot's software, but the more I think about it the more I think I'll just shutter the blog completely. All the people who read my blog I can just directly engage with either in the comments of your blog in relation to GMW or just tweet directly to. Considering one of the reasons why I made this blog is to defend the shows I like, I realized that I'm under no obligation to defend anything I like. Most of the people are still respectful of what I like, and the few that do don't deserve a lengthy defense, they deserve a simple "fuck off." I'd rather put my creative energies now into projects that stand a chance at larger exposure.

      Either way I thank you both, Christian and Sean, for at least providing the inspiration. I'll continue to have fun over at GMWReviewed.

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    3. Oh, and just to let you know out of fairness, if you get alerts on this reply or not, if you don't mind I can go ahead and at least share general essays about the entertainment industry as related to young actors like Rowan Blanchard and Sabrina Carpenter that I'll be writing from TVClub @ Kinja (not to be confused with AV Club's TV Club). I'll probably only write like one a month at the most.

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  2. I would have a preferred a site i've heard of, but eh, kinja is fine too. And wow imdb is more of a cesspool than i thought.

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  3. I haven't heard much about Kinja but I am happy to follow you there. You mentioned that the way Blogspot is set up, and its nasty refreshing habit, as why you wanted to leave Blogspot, so any issues are always going to be around. Sean and Christian are right. If you aren't enjoying this, step back for a bit. Christian hit burnout but then found a partner which turned the blog around. It goes for stuff other than writing. When I wanted to do a race, all my friends who were runners told me to find a partner.

    While I can neither endorse/criticize you sharing the link of Sean and Christian's blog (Love you guys for making that blog such a great place), I will share your blog on my Twitter. Now, I've tried my best to stay anonymous with this throwaway account and will continue to do so. You will never see post as my real name. But more outreach is more outreach.

    I can't stand IMDB. I can't stand the way people snipe at each other. I hate it. I can't stand how much hate Rowan gets. It's sickening. The stuff the IMDBers go on about are either highly exaggerated, taken out of context. It's like they hate her for being herself. The stuff they say is why Rowan needs to continue doing exactly what she's doing.

    I don't care how old she is. I don't care what her beliefs are. (Which I happen to agree with but regardless.) I appreciate Clint Eastwood's talents but I'm not going to badmouth him for having different political views as me. I want Adam Sandler to be successful and I think he has real talent-and he has different political views than me! When did it become so acceptable to hate on people for being different? In my own life, I've learned that I will not agree with everyone. And that's okay.

    Is Rowan going to make mistakes? Yeah, she's a kid. SHE'S A KID! What were we all like at her age? I cringe at my 13-year-old self. Hell, I cringe at myself at 20!

    To Sean and Christian, you guys rock.
    To Unknown, while I don't really watch any shows other than GMW on the Disney Channel/Nick, I will follow you, my friend. As long as you continue to write, I will follow. Besides, it's giving me ideas too.
    To IMDB, take a chill pill seriously.

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    Replies
    1. As Shipping Wars are Stupid has mentioned, he has contacted me through Twitter so this really isn't so much for his benefit as so much as to just not give the people that I'm leaving him out in the cold, if they so happen to be reading this (now a couple weeks after the fact *shrug*). Either way, also I'd like to give a public thanks to him.

      As for Rowan's age, I care about her being 13 (now recently 14) in that 1.) because it is legitimately remarkable that a person her age is able to be savvy enough to utilize the platforms of fame available to her to share her opinions - her own older network costars like Dove, Debby, Laura, Zendaya and Bella really didn't start to utilize their platforms in such a manner until they were nearly adult-aged or even a bit after and 2.) because she's 13/14, it's more than a little disgusting how much unwanted sexual attention she gets (not necessarily on IMDb - anymore - but elsewhere).

      I also would like to give shout outs to Sean and Christian. If they didn't rock so hard this blog would never, ever have happened. And yes, I'll still be writing, though I've been giving some thought as to what that will look like. I'll find some way of letting you guys know - it looks like this is Mike's blog now, and I for one don't mind at all what he's done with the place.

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  4. By the way I'm now disabling anonymous commenting because of exactly this. Guess what, you say dumbfuck things and personal attacks, you get to be held accountable now!

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Wow I can configure the title for "Featured Post"

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