Getting Away From Bigsoccer

Back in my last relationship, we both got hooked on a TV show on one of the low-power stations called “The Phil-Am Show.” The program was targeted toward the local Philippine community here in Chicago. No, wait, it really targeted the upper class segment of that community. The show looked like it was shot with 1980’s era video equipment, was hosted by a guy who switched between English and Tagalog and ran stories about the small rich clique that ruled the social life.

Anyway, if you are wondering where this is going, there was an ad for a local newspaper every week, which had as its motto “The Paper That Builds, Not Destroys.” A very curious ode to live by considering you may have a circulation of several thousand, but still pretty admirable.

Why do I bring this up? Because I want to talk about how I decided to stop using the soccer discussion website Bigsoccer.com, who could use the motto “The website that destroys, not builds.”

I became a member of the site in the fall of 1999, about the time that I started to get the notion that I wanted to become a writer. As someone who needs info, I needed a place where links and other things were posted, along with discussions about those things. BigSoccer (or BS, which will seem appropriate in a minute) was the destination and I went for it.

Nearly six years later and a lot of grief later, I am so, so, so sorry that I did that. Today, I made a vow to get away from the website, the sooner the better.

The problem with BS is not that it doesn’t help the soccer community interact. In fact, it does a good job in doing so, helping to keep the info about the sport circulating when most of the MSM tends not to cover it, or does badly when it does. It’s a big reason why I think that Soccer and MLS may be the first big league to show growth through use of the internet.

But on the flipside, BS may have the most lopsided signal-to-noise ratio of any website out there. BS is, for the most part, a bitching and whining party, an arena that your average internet nerds can talk smack to each other. Sort of the equivalent of two little girls having a hissy fit fight.

I’ll be brutally honest that I am a sensitive sort of guy. I hate people who make fun of me or take rips on my just for the joy of doing so. At least at this age I am at, I am starting to recognize that I need to surround myself with more positive influences. Anyone who has tried to get themselves to some general level of happiness after being so down on themselves would agree with this.

However, as I have tried to grow up, I kept going back to BS, like a needy person in a co-dependent relationship, hoping he will finally get the love and respect he needs, only to get nothing but grief. It may sound a wee bit dramatic, but there were times where I got major shit from people on BS that I allowed it to negatively affect me.

Two things, though, made me realize that it was time to get away from BS.

First, oddly enough, was Kent McDill. He is the Fire beat writer for the Daily Herald. Now, I have my problems with him because he writes his stuff in such a way that he either a) hates the subject he is covering or b) he is using some sort of blackmail to keep his job at the Herald. His work is haphazard and full of mistakes. For someone who wants to join the print trade someday, seeing someone continue to get paid for sub-standard fare is pretty frustrating.

Anyway, on Sunday night at Soldier Field, McDill called me over. He asked me why only seven people had responded to a column he had written last week about asking for opinions about what the best lineup for the Fire is. He started ranting about how those on the net only complain about his work and that he was trying to get the sport some publicity for the Fire. Pretty much an egotistical rant, in my mind. He compounded matters on Tuesday, when he wrote those feelings into his column, which I am sure pissed off a lot of Fire fans.

This afternoon, thought, I started to feel a bit of sympathy for Kent.

I had posted a joke on a thread on BS about how the Fire are starting to exploit new marketing ideas, starting with Seven-11 sponsoring Wednesday’s match against DC United. The discussion started to move toward players getting individual sponsorships. I answered that maybe Zach Thornton, a pretty big guy, should be sponsored by Old Country Buffet.

I got some positive feedback from that remark, but a couple of guys made fun of me, including Chris “Coz” Costello. If you have been to Fire games, he is the one who is drumming along in Section 8. He also is the biggest asshole you ever want to meet. (He also has a blog himself where he sounds so self important.) He has really been mean and disdainful toward me through the years we have known each other and he tries to act all superior toward me, typical of a U of C grad. In reality, he is a failed rock drummer who plays in a couple of cover bands and he is a pretty bad writer to boot.

Anyway, he mocked me one too many times and I started to put myself in Kent’s shows. Yeah, I did rip Kent earlier in this post, but in a way he is trying to do what Coz isn’t – trying to build, not destroy. Its shit like that on BS that really, I think, pushes away a lot of fans and makes those in the soccer community look like a bunch of nerds who are trying to be cool and elite, when in reality they are, for the most part, just a bunch of geeks, just like this more proletarian nerd.

I have taken a couple of swipes at people in the past on my soccer site, The Fire Alarm. However, for the most part, I have tried to be as professional as possible, trying to act like a tall tree that withstands all the wind generated by critics. If I make a mistake and someone complains, they are justified to do so. But ripping for the sake of ripping, which seems to be the central core of BS, is not what I want to see on TFA. (In fact, we have decided that Matchnight will remove the forums off the sites on Friday for that reason).

Anyway, I decided not to post anymore on BS. I may still need to go there to get my news bits every day, but I am damned if I am about to put myself out for a bunch of snobs who have no right to be snobs in the first place. It may help my general disposition each and every day, while I try to focus on using my website to be a tiny worker in the building of the beautiful game in the US.