Stick to What You're Good At

We all have our opinions about things. When something big happens in the news, thanks to the internet, people flood the interwebs with their thoughts, feelings, and opinions about things. That’s cool, right? Well, there is a different trend emerging that is not cool. Some websites have started publishing articles about things that they just shouldn’t be posting about. People are flooding other pages with angry posts when their anger is a bit misdirected. There needs to be a little bit more sense exercised.

Last week another horrible school shooting occurred. It was a terrible tragedy that immediately evoked emotion from the public. Among those emotions was, of course, anger. Anytime there are reports of violent crimes committed against children  anger runs high, and quite understandably I might add. These are the worst types of crimes. The anger fueled the fires for some websites to start posting highly opinionated articles about gun control. I can understand to some extent why this began happening, and it is expected from some types of websites. The problem is that it bled into sites like Gizmodo who have no business releasing these types of posts. Gizmodo is a tech news site. I’ve gone there multiple times a day for over a year to stay up-to-date on what is happening in the tech world. I’ve noticed a decline in the quality of articles released in the past year and a heavy bias towards Apple, but there was still enough decent reporting to keep me coming back. Then I visit the site the day of the shooting and not only did I read a post that was nothing but opinions on gun control, but the writer was making outlandish remarks about the 2nd amendment being dated and needing to be done away with. That is not only inappropriate for a tech site to be posting, but it was a poorly thought out and worded piece that expressed a radical, liberal opinion that is merely a knee-jerk reaction from an ignorant puppet. I’ve since removed Gizmodo from the favorites bar on every computer I use and I’ve made a vow to myself to never return to that site. You were good at tech news Giz and you should have stuck to that.

This prompted me to being my quest for finding another tech news site to frequent. I’ve found 2 that I’ve been visiting the past few days that I’m liking so far. Among the 2 is TechCrunch. So far I’ve found it to be just as good, if not better than Gizmodo at delivering the tech news of the world. Yesterday I noticed they released an article called “”Gun” “Control”". My heart sank as I opened the article and prepared for disappointment. As a read through the post a smile slowly began showing up on my face. It wasn’t the liberal, opinionated piece of garbage that the post on Gizmodo was. Instead, it was actually a post about how the tech world has made gun control more difficult and blurred the lines of what can be considered a gun. The writer tackled the matter of using 3D printers to make functional guns and how this is going to effect the gun control issue. I was so thrilled that TechCrunch took the high road here and stuck to what they are good at! TechCrunch will now get all of the traffic I used to give to Gizmodo.

A few weeks back there was the incident where a football player shot his girlfriend and himself. Bob Costas took it upon himself to express his opinions about gun control. You’re a sportscaster Bob! No one needs to hear your opinion about anything that matters. Bob’s comment got him some much deserved by press afterwards. As much as I can’t stand the guy, Bill O’Reilly (someone who expected to share opinions because that’s all his show is for) tore Bob a new one according to what I’ve heard. I still need to find a clip of that and check it out.

Bottom line folks….don’t alienate your audience just because you get worked up about something. If you blog, write, or whatever on a certain topic then stick to that topic. You will piss people off if you break away from your “usual” so exercise some self control and refrain from doing so. Fortunately for me, I write about anything and everything so the sky is the limit!

~ by jgdigitaljedi on December 18, 2012.