OPINION:
Larry Brooks, owner/manager of L&M Racing, and Mototalk are giving each other the middle finger. TFS (me) has made his last post on Mototalk, ending ten years in one place on line (and a pretty fun time). The journalists are frauds and sellouts, the mood is crappy and the industry side is that the internet boards are too aggressive and bitchy and fans are out of control.
The fan's side is if you can't take the heat....and the internet belongs to the internet strong - so give us another team manager to flame out so they will hate the internet as much as everyone else.
There is something very wrong here, and I do think people will agree if they take off their internet personality long enough to think about it objectively. If a manager of a winning supercross team can't go to a leading web site and post some fluff about his rider winning without being harrassed off the board, something is very wrong. Everyone in this sport is a fan deep down and deserves at least a chance to experience the internet with dignity. When you get done laughing at that, think about it and you will agree.
I keep hearing it from people at the races more and more, "The internet is too bitchy. I wish I could participate, but you say anything and you get hammered.." The internet has been around long enough that everyone has seen it, tried it, and a lot of people got treated like Brooks did at Mototalk. It is a fact that people are internet shy and have an overall low opinion of it, or at least of the message boards I spent 10 years on. The internet has pretty much had its chance, and the end result isn't that good.
I have always said the end result you get is because of how you set it up in the beginning, so as someone who has been at this from the beginning, I look at the last paragragh and go "Oh crap! The internet sux and it's my fault!"
So, sorry for screwing up the internet. I accept full responsibility. I will do better next time, I promise.
The AMA just re-thought itself, as we can read off their site, and one thing that stands out was they looked at what made the AMA unpopular (racing does) and what about that needed to get changed (people moved, business sorted out).
Internet message boards need that too. They are popular with fans, but unpopular with industry and racers, and that's too bad. If one could fix that.....That's really not too much to ask or a crazy idea. People tell me every weekend that they would use the net boards more if they weren't taken over by bitching.
As I watched the boards evolve over the years, I keep in mind what Kawasaki's Bruce Stjernstrom used to say, which was leave those boards to the fans, let them have a place they control, they need it. That's true really. The best example of that is GuyB's Motodrive, a fan's place where you can be a jerk and it's not a big deal because you assume no one reads it anyway. :)
I guess I broke the internet a little by ignoring Bruce and letting Mototalk become a bit of a fan-vs-industry soap opera. It was remarkable sometimes, but I honestly think that part has run it's course with just about everyone having the Brooks experience by now. People got close to the internet, got snapped at, and pulled back, and won't try again without something changing.
One has to wonder is it possible to build a place where fans can be fans and riders or team people enjoy it a little too without getting pounced on?
Nah!
