Note: I spent the last few days in Syracuse, N.Y., with only a little access to Internet. These are the posts that were meant to run on the days in the timestamps.
The more I think about it, the more I realize the likelihood that my recent absence from blogging is due in part to the negative feedback one can expect when writing for the Web. Of course, I speak not of the readers of Movie Hawk; with the exception of a few tiffs here and there, my nose is relatively clean, and my readers are overwhelmingly supportive. I think instead of the war between fanboy factions: Mac vs. Windows, Marvel vs. D.C., Studio 60 vs. …itself. Too often, especially on blogs, people go out of their way to write inappropriately negative propaganda against an opponent with little recourse. Yes, I understand that I’m not breaking new ground here, but I feel the need to point it out. If you don’t like blog posts about Apple products (certain Gizmodo readers), don’t read them. If Veronica Mars isn’t your cup of tea (some AICN folks), don’t waste your time trashing it in the talkback. Leave those spaces to those of us who want to use it to spread more information. Believe me, if you pull back for a second instead of throwing your negative hat into the ring, it’ll save us all a lot of money in future blood pressure medication.
It wasn’t too long ago that Facebook was the place to go when you were tired of the noisy, ad-laden social networking found elsewhere on the web, most notably the platform’s biggest competitor, MySpace. Facebook was meant to be…well, a facebook—a place where students from a college could interact with and get to know one another. But in the age of venture capitalism and billion-dollar site acquisitions, it was only a matter of time before Facebook turned itself into a moneymaking juggernaut, disregarding the very intentions under which the site was first created.