If A Steelers Blogger Writes 1000 Posts...

...and no one's around to read them, do they really count?

From where I'm standing, the answer is yes.

And today's headline of the day was the lucky 1000th for this two-bit, no good, waste of perfectly good html code, blog.

In the past, I've written a few "look at how philosophical I can be about blogging" posts, but I can never remember what I've said in each. So if I repeat myself here, well, you'll just have to read it a second time.

And sure, this post may come off as somewhat overly congratulatory, but if you can show me the 1000 posts you've written on your blog, I'll be happy to congratulate you too.

As anyone who blogs knows - this business isn't easy. Over the last two plus years, I've done my best to post at least once a day, with things picking up gusto over the last six or seven months. Make no mistake, what I do here on a daily basis may be juvenile and at times moderately offensive, but telling jokes and photoshopping people's heads on other people's bodies isn't as easy as it looks.

I started this site many moons ago on November 8, 2006, a day that will live in infamy for me. As I know I've said before, I wanted a place where I could stay connected to other Steelers fans, while I was disconnected from my own Steelers loving network of friends. To that end, I've put every ounce of myself that I possibly could into making this a fun, entertaining and community-esque place for fans like me who maybe weren't weened on how to read a Cover 2, but who nevertheless have an opinion on the personnel comprising it.

I can't tell you how humbled I am by the fact that at least several of you come here every day to read whatever idiotic assertions I make. I'm not going to pretend like I'm the friggin' New York Times here, but as far as blogs go, not everyone is so blessed as to have such an interactive and frankly, humorous readership. This is where, if I was a total douche, I'd quote you traffic numbers. But you and I both know that would be totally lame. And actually, now that I've used the word "readership," I'm going to go stick my finger in a live socket. I've gone on record in the past as saying how self-serving it is to throw that one around. So for me to do it just now, well, remember what I said earlier about hypocrisy? Yep, here you go.

Not that it makes much of a difference, but from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate all your support. The fact that every week I find myself complaining that I've got several hours of photoshopping to do for Meeting People Is Easy is a testament to how supportive y'all are. For my money, as a blogger, there is no better experience than watching people actually enjoy something you've created. Even if that something is a picture of Steely McBeam photoshopped to look like Satan.

I hate to single people out over others, because I know there are at least five other people that read this blog besides those of you who comment regularly, but I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize certain individuals for their individual contributions.

Some might say that Domski is obligated to be part of this blog as my hetero-lifemate. No. He is not. And yet, he's been here every day for the last two years, and four months or so, helping to keep the conversation going. In the past, he's even filled in for me while I studied for finals. I probably wouldn't have kept writing on here if he wasn't reading all this time. I can't tell you how important it's been that he's supported me on this from day one.

This is for you man...

Sorry, I had to. Things were getting too serious there for a minute.

Equally as important is Tecmo. It's real easy for us (and probably you) to make jokes about how gay we are with our blogs, but this guy knows more about sports blogging than 99% of all sports bloggers out there right now. He's brought to my attention a number of realities about this sports blogosphere that I never recognized. He's been a great friend in the relatively short time I've known him, and I can't wait to see what kind of other shenanigans the two of us will get into in the future.

Marc. I'll be honest, I don't know how Marc stumbled onto this blog. But since he has, he's been one of the most consistently supportive guys around. Both about the blog and about life. As I said this morning about Bryant McFadden - Marc too, is a good man, and thorough.

For the last month or two, tiny350z has emailed me almost every morning with either links or just some plain old Steelers banter. That is simply awesome. Like Marc, I don't know where she came from either. But I'm very glad she's a part of this blog.

I'm pretty sure Ladi Izz showed up for every gameday liveblog this past season. If you've ever liveblogged before, you know how much of a pain it is and how much it helps to have someone else there to fill the gaps. Izz had my back every time and I very much appreciate that.

Beyond that, there are many others including (but not limited to) - Sheena Beaston (of, well, Sheena Beaston), Matt, Sean (of Sean's Ramblings), Blitzburgh (of BTSC), Joey Porter's Pit Bulls (whose blog predates OFTOT by literally five days), The Chief (who's probably been around here the longest besides Domski), Random Asshole (still can't figure if he actually likes this blog or not), Notgomu (who, let the record show, got me a solid Mean Joe shirt for my bday!), Don (who, a while back, gave me some of the best advice I've ever received), Doug, Noah, Nate (whose U2 obsession is unmatched), Vern, L-Niz (you know who you are), John Woods, the Jim (of Sportsocracy), big TC, Shawn K, Sean P, Christy (wherever she's been), Ben, Brett, Jup, and I'm sure I've missed a few.

Thanks for everything, kids. I hope you enjoy hanging around here as much as I do.

Now, can I get a group hug?

PS - Check it out, no curse words. Somewhere out there, my Mom is finally proud of me right now...probably Leo Tolstoy too, judging by the length of this thing.

Obligatory Footer - If you haven't already, become a fan of OFTOT on Facebook, join the blog network and follow me on Twitter. Or don't. Your choice, really.

These Interwebs, Man. Ruining Everything...

So I just read a pretty good post that I found rather interesting. It's from the Columbia Journalism Review blog, and it's all about how they perceive the quality of sports reporting to have decreased significantly with the advent of these here internets.

It wasn't necessarily an attack on blogs, as I had kind of expected. In fact, it was actually a call for sports editors to get their acts together (or something to that effect). But there were a couple of things I noted that I wanted to share with y'all. About blogs, of course. After all, what the hell else do I know about? Certainly not football...

Anyways, hopefully you haven't clicked away yet and are ready for a somewhat serious post. I kind of hate writing them, to be honest. Only because I tend to like to keep things in my life light-hearted and humorful (probably not a word). But sometimes I just have somewhat "serious" thoughts on something that I feel like sharing. If you are with me, great. If not, so be it.

Here it goes...

First, and I quote...

"The Web, meanwhile, did to sports writing what it has done to journalism more broadly: carved up the audience and exacerbated the more-faster-better mindset that cable TV began. Anyone can go to the Web anytime to get scores, rapid-fire articles about games, and gobs of analysis and statistics. There are generalized sports sites like ESPN.com and CNNSI.com, hyper-focused team news blogs, sites run by the athletes themselves, and irreverent sports sites such as Deadspin."

Ok, so unfortunately this has had an adverse effect on the journalism industry, but really, it's a good thing. I tend to liken it to the music industry.

So there (in the music biz), you've now got a whole truckload of artists who through the power of ProTools and iTunes can now get their music out to millions independently. This is a good thing. More music, in theory, should mean better music. When artists hear what other artists are doing and realize how good it is, they then will likely be compelled to write something even better. Maybe even without noticing that that is what they're doing.

While it should be the same for sports writers, apparently it isn't. But that's not for lack of trying (apparently...and I won't keep saying it, but not having any context, all I can do is take what they've said as true). It is, as the post indicates, how crafty can you really get in 400 words and with a limited time frame? The responsibilities and restrictions journalists have seem to constrain their abilities to write game recaps, in particular. Which is unfortunate, because I'm sure that with more traditional training and significantly more practice than I could ever offer, what they'd say could be quite engaging.

The other thing that I thought was a great little nugget in there, which is essentially my mantra as a writer (or whatever you'd call me with respect to my literary endeavors), was stated (uh oh, passive voice...tsk tsk) nicely by ESPN's Buster Olney...

"Don’t worry about beating the seven other papers on the hamstring story; focus on developing your thousand-word game story. Remember the great writing you loved as a kid? Write it up like that."

I couldn't have put it any better. However, this isn't a phenomenon unique to the mainstream media. From my perspective (which is, just that - mine) there are even some blogs out there that think they too need to rush a game recap post up, in the hopes that somehow, just by being first, they'll get all the eyes. Failblog. And I'm not talking about how I just used like 15 commas in one run-on sentence...

My feeling is that I'm going to write what I want to write, in the way I want to write it, which includes taking my time in an effort to make it as intriguing as possible. Now, by "take my time," I of course mean three to four hours, not like two days. Frankly, like sports writers, us bloggers don't have that kind of luxury either. But I'm not going to gyp myself or y'all out of a more interesting game recap just because I feel the need to prematurely ejaculate a garbage post. If this is you, I suggest you take a step back.

Anyways, some might say that bloggers are at the bottom of the food chain in terms of writing prowess. Probably largely due to the fact that many of us use the words "dick" and "balls" more than the triple word score Scrabble terms we learned back in High School and College. But I think, just as with any job/industry, if you look for them, you can find those gems. There are plenty of blogs out there that are both well written AND funny.

I used to tiptoe around profanity and tried to keep my language objective and balanced (still do, a little). But then I wised up. This is more than just a blog about the Pittsburgh Steelers. It's me, in literary form. I write just like I speak. So chances are, if you ever met me on the street (or maybe you've even seen it in the [Unnamed] Steelers Pregame Shows), you might even feel like you already know what I'm going to say. And I think that's the way it should be. Or at least that's how I'd like it to be. Otherwise, why would you read anything I write? If I wrote like everyone else, you'd be better off just reading everyone else.

Bottom line - I'm all for good writing, be it blogs, newspapers, magazines, books, or poetry. Hell, I'll even take some good subway or bathroom graffiti if you've got it. And part of good writing, at least for me, is personality and engagement. Reading is a form of entertainment just as much as it is a tool for disseminating information. If you can't engage those who read your writing, then that's unfortunate. But I do think that this is one of the major reasons why people like blogs. You watched the games. You know how they went. You know what you thought about them. But do you know what other people think about them? At least that's one of the main reasons why I like them.

Anwyays, I'm sure by now you've gotten my drift and you're probably going cross eyed from all my rambling. So I'll cut it off here. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, should the mood strike you.

/grabs pillow, sets up on office couch for three hour nap

Random Nerdiness...

I don't know about y'all, but I started reading sports blogs back in the dark medieval internet days of late 2005. Back then, you still had your Deadspin, and probably some of the other big boys out there today, which was kind of your prototypical sports blog - covering the entire sports landscape. But as these interwebs have evolved, and more and more people have heard that you can allegedly make money by starting a blog, things have gotten pretty saturated. And by "pretty saturated," I mean it's become a cluster[eff].

You've got your splogs (spam + blogs), your blog networks (a few of whose bloggers I'm quite friendly with and whose writing I thoroughly enjoy), your smaller, independent blogs (most of which die a quiet death after a month or two), and more and more you're seeing the MSM getting in on the action.

So it's not surprising to hear some people proclaim that "blogs are dead."

But I'd like to add my opinion into the mix, if I may.

I understand the thought. Like I said above, nowadays there really are way too many blogs that are out there just to make money or ones that have a much more journalistic, and less "personal" tone. But I'm kind of struggling to see how that means that "blogs are dead?"

If you read the Wired piece, one of the things the editor mentions in making his point is that - "it's almost impossible [for a blog] to get noticed, except by hecklers." And maybe that is true, but I think that notion assumes that everyone who blogs is doing it just to get noticed. There is, of course, a degree of truth to this, in the sense that for many of us bloggers, this thing isn't a diary. We want interaction, which innately requires being noticed. But to assume that anyone who starts a blog just wants to "get noticed," runs counter to the spirit of a blog in the first place (in my opinion).

Blogs are one person's unbiased, unrestrained, and unedited (that part's key) thoughts on whatever it is that they choose to "cover." Sure, there are plenty of people out there who are blogging simply to "get noticed." But a lot of times, a blog like that isn't very good, because the person writing it isn't necessarily emotionally invested in what they're writing. Some may be, for sure. But to me, a blog is a conversation. It's me and you (that's the royal "you"...like, all five of you), talking about something we love, day in and day out - here at OFTOT, that's the Steelers. So what more incentive do I need to keep blogging?

One of the other thoughts put forward by the Wired piece, which followed the previously quoted portion was - "And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter."

So, this is a subjective judgment. For HIM, spending the time to build a "successful" blog isn't worth the payoff. But for some, it is. Case in point - I didn't have but more than one avid reader/commenter for the first six months of this blog's existence (Domski). Of course, it hasn't really grown THAT much since then. But the point is, many blogs come and go. The ones that endure, however, often prove to be the most interesting (except this one, of course).

It takes time to find your "voice" and "style" (and I don't mean reading other blogs and copying theirs). And it takes time and effort to find avenues for promotion, which is one thing that I've admittedly never really spent much time doing (perhaps to my own detriment). If you're not willing to commit that time, you surely won't ever have a "successful" blog. But if you do, you can really enjoy what you've created.

Make no mistake, this shit may look easy - just pounding on some keys all day - but it's not. Ask any blogger you can find and they'll tell you the same. You have off days, off weeks, sometimes off months, during which you can't for the life of you think of anything to write about. Not to mention the fact that most of us have real, full time, 40 hour-a-week, jobs to worry about, and any other family/friend/extracurricular obligations we may/may not have.

I guess what I'm really saying in all this is that, to me, the notion that "blogs are dead" is just as silly as saying "TV is dead." In general, the medium may have become diluted, but you can still find some gems among the morass of editorial fecal matter.

For all I'm concerned, as long as people are writing them and other people are reading them, they are not dead.

Of course, all of this is my own personal opinion, and y'all may or may not care. But it was on my mind. And as blogging goes, that's usually how posts come to fruition.

/end overly philosophical discussion on completely irrelevant and stupid topic

I owe y'all a few brain cells for this one...if you made it past the second paragraph, that is...