Old friends

Its funny how message boards evolve over time. Having posted on various basketball sites for 10 years ( Sportstalk , Real GM , BaskteballBoards and here ) I've seen the ebb and flow of these sites.

Right now , this is exactly how I like it.

Less is more. For me anyway .

I'll be straight up .....I stopped posting on realgm years ago because it got too big and there were a lot of ignorant twits that passed through the gates and took the quality of discussion down.

I really liked the mix of people we had over at basketballboards but I didn't get as personally busted up with the change in ownership and the various things going on behind the scenes that pissed off many and fractured the site

And then it kind of became the baskteball message board equivalent of Chernobyl

So back to RealGM ...and the things that piss me off most about the Bulls board over there is that :

1. The arrogance of the core there who appear to care more about cultivating their own own line personas that tie in with their aspirations

2. The ignorance of the ass kissing flock who post there that appear to be about paying homage to these message board sociopaths

3. The unwillingness of the minority good guys there to do anything about it

Y'know , god bless somone having aspirations ...but there is a lot about that messsage board which is all about ( sadly ) strata politics and the associated pathetic human elements behind this

I mean its a fucking sports site for fans for crissakes

Too many of that core , with the exception of Duck and BenB , take themselves waaaaaaaaaay too seriously

Keep em the fuck away from here is my vote.

 

OMG. Was just thinking about how shudderingly awful "Ron" and "The Rifleman" were when basketballboards first get started.

 

Miz seems too invested in TelevisionWithoutPity.com to post much on sports anymore. Narek has so far not been interested in posting in one more place. ScottMay used to drop by, but it was slow going in the early days. Maybe he'd like it more now

 

Heh, Ron is apparently back to being an admin over there. He was... well, I'll give him lots of credit for starting the site.

 

Boy, I'm not a recruiter. So, I'll just give my perspective as a shopper of internet forums.

I started following the Trib's old site, when Phil and Shinky were there, plus ACE, etc. I followed it because I could get news and in-depth discussion there that I couldn't elsewhere. But as I followed it, lurkingly, I began to get involved in the personal drama of the site. In particular, Phil, who was a well-spoken, but generally arrogant, know-it-all, got into it with a bunch of others (don't remember the details), and I strangely felt compelled to put in my two-cents. Why? I don't know. It wasn't my fight, but I got into it. And it mattered to me if what I had to say was recognized or responded to by others. But for that to happen, I had to go all in and spend a fair amount of time thinking about and formulating comments. Eventually, the trib got tired of that weird sub-culture of internet sports fans, modified the site to give themselves more control, and drove everybody away.

So, off to realgm, which was run by some Brazilian guy, and Transplant (Tom Rossem, right?) was there writing stories. Some good aspects of it, but the site was a magnet for pop-ups and bugs and viruses, and then TBF came around advertising BBF. So I went there, and TomBoerwinkle welcomed me, and I just hung around mostly lurking until the Jamal Crawford - Kirk Hinrich wars, and, I had some extra time because I was on an extended work trip from my family, so BBF became a kind of family at the time. The same dynamic of fighting to be heard, recognized, and involved in a kind of running conversation. Getting passionate, trying to get through to the "opposition". But as long as multiple voices were heard, no one voice dominated, and there was a place for someone like me. For that to happen, as Tom B. is saying, there needed to be enough strong voices with a sufficient sense of humor to keep one another in their place without too much rancor. Curry-gate seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back, plus one or two aftershocks, and I remember getting a message from Scott May, saying, if this is the end of BBF as we know it, I've enjoyed knowing you and hope to see you over at realgm or sportstwo. I didn't even know what happened.

I just wasn't interested in flitting about from board to board, so stuck it out in Chernobyl (-thanks for that, FJ). It was slow, but somehow there were a few good people who stuck around like Yodurk, Narek, Dornado, jnrjr and some new people, and it isn't a bad place to be. Slow, like FJ says, not too much testosterone, but some debates and shared passions. When I found Duck over at realgm, I went there, but I just wasn't interested in making the kind of investment in building relationships there, because there was so much volume that it wasn't possible to do it unless you went into hyperposting mode. I go there still because of the info that gets dug up due to the high volume of posting, but it's not a fun or welcoming community, to me, as an "over the hill, never that good anyway, internet gunslinger."

Tom B recently asked me to come on over when he left realgm. I was hesitant for some of the very reasons he mentions in his post above. I don't know that I long for the salad-days. In fact, I don't. But I would appreciate a community where multiple, strong voices are heard, where there is a generous helping of humility and humor that promotes quality discussion without the MMA-WWE smackdown attitude that so easily takes over in these still wild internets. And Tom convinced me that my joining here would help create such a place. I just trusted him, since I do trust him as a poster and administrator, and am willing to give it a shot. (Although honestly, that first post in this thread sounded a bit like a drunken post of nostalgia

Well, I don't know if this helps the discussion or not. I do appreciate the invitation to come here and try to build a great place for people to come and talk about the Bulls and whatever else, however tangential, that might spark good conversation.

 

No, we haven't built a huge RealGm or BBB.net here over the past couple of years, but especially during the season we usually have a good dynamic. And it's really not a bad one that involves a lot of ass kissing. I've had pretty epic debates on various stuff here with guys like Bullshooter, Denny, and JayJohnstone, and I very rarely see any agreement, let alone any online mutual auto-eroticism. If anything, the prevailing dynamic here is that folks have continuously disagreed here without a bunch of politicking, drama and theatrics (at least on the Bulls board... we dealt with a whole set of nitwits in other areas). To me, at least, that's a very refreshing thing, and I think as time goes on you new guys will appreciate it all the more.

Maybe it is due to being smaller. I do worry that if a whole pile of people come at once, maybe we'll inherit some of those problems. Or maybe that's just what happens any time you get a significant number of folks together. Factions will form and whatnot. But ideally my goal has always been to grow the board in terms of good discussion and posters while leaving out as much meta-criticism and navel gazing about how other folks feel as possible. There do seem to be sites around the net that manage this. For example, Blogabull and PacersDigest both seem to have pretty good dynamics in this respect. I don't agree with every aspect of how those guys run their sites, but as a general rule I respect they fact that they've got big numbers and manage diverse opinions without denigrating them or splintering too much. So it is possible.

In any case, I do think we're "getting there". Through last year, we had a core of about 8-10 really good posters who were frequent contributors and a few more guys who stopped in from time to time. Over the summer we've added five more regulars that I can tell, and all guys that are really fun to read and don't always have the same thing to say.

I'm not sure what the critical mass is, but it'd definitely be nice to get a few more folks in here. As far as concrete steps, I think one of the problems is none of us want to be perceived as going out and actively spamming other places. Like, I've worked hard to build up a good relationship and good name for us on Blogabull, and we do get some mention and traffic from there, but I don't want to push it too much to the point where we'd be seen as an annoyance.

That being said, a link to good threads and discussions is always a good way to go. Also, there's the http://www.bullstwo.com front page for Bulls stuff, which we typically use to highlight our best discussions and still see everything else going on.