No Need to Fear the Dickness
Update: I did actually find a pretty good Nascar forum at www.speed.com. It is not filled with spam and seems to focus mostly on topics related to racing, most likely due to it having a moderator who stays on top of things. In the few discussions I have had since joining the forum I have fund everyone to be helpful. Many of the problems the other Nascar forums faced were issues similar to those on other forums all over the web. Speed is of course the cable channel focused on Motorsports, which shows Nascar practice and qualifying, Formula One and has other interesting programs including one of my personal favorite Windtunnel with Dave Despain.
It is an uphill climb to begin with when you launch a new blog or website. In my case I have little experience in doing so which makes it even tougher to know what to do in order to gain a following. Having the name Dickness creates another obstacle in my attempt to gain a loyal following. Well at least to get people to pay attention in the first place. At the moment I do not have a niche blog so I tend to blog about anything in the news or anything that interests me. If I see a movie or watch a sporting event that I feel warrants mentioning or that I have something to say about I will do so. The problem with this is that a good deal of search traffic comes to the main page of my site so for example someone searches for a movie review that I wrote recently, for example the Wackness, when they get to my site the first article they see is the most recent one which may be anything from a satirical post about Rush Limbaugh to a post about Nascar. Neither of these topics are likely to interest the person searching for the Wackness so they may click off the site before finding the Wackness review and will probably never return to my site. That is why it is difficult to launch a blog such as the one I have here at Dickness.com.
As I said previously the blog’s name makes it even more interesting. I went into a Nascar forum recently to mention a post I had done recently with a mock announcement made by Nascar CEO Brian France. I noticed that no one was commenting on it, but there were a few tags listed next to the post saying something along the lines of spam, mean and something else that I cannot recall at the moment. I posted a reply to my original post saying how I was confused since I had posted a link to an article about Nascar which I thought would be enjoyed by fellow Nascar fans. Someone replied saying it was my name which caused people to react that way. As the name was Dickness and obviously the website has the same name, with the article permalink name included. I replied that my last name was Dick and it was not some sort of spam site. The same guy told me that they received all sorts of spam and trolls on the forums and that this ruined it for everyone. Really that is about the truest thing I have heard recently. Message boards and comments sections of most major websites are filled with spam, trolling, and then you get the comments from actual people which are often filled with hatred. My brother who is an extremely intelligent adult is active in some of the forums of a major sports website and he was relaying a story to me about how he called out some idiotic forum member and showed that he was lying about something. I explained to him that it is likely that said forum member was a twelve year old boy, a mentally deficient adult or just plain ignorant so that it was really not worth getting worked up about.
I do not really understand much of internet culture. It does not make sense to me that people want to go on the comment section of some writer’s blog and tell them how stupid they are for having an opinion that differs from what they believe. I can relate at times because some writers or bloggers can be infuriating, but often it is someone who is a twelve year old or a half literate adult who is yelling at someone because they said something critical of their favorite team, athlete, movie or television show. An example that I came across today where I was on the other end of this problem was today when I was reading one of my favorite Nascar related sites and one of the writers made two or three blatantly racist and stereotypical comments that were meant to be funny. The comments were not only not funny, they were hateful and completely off-topic from the topic of Nascar, but this guy writes for a fairly successful website so he has a good number of people who probably read his stuff. The comment section had only a few comments with one person pointing out how offensive his comments were and another pointing out their disdain for the person who was offended so easily. I was initially posting a comment about how terrible and unfunny the author’s comments were but there was some sort of problem with my computer and it did not get posted. I did not bother posting it again because as I told my brother it is pointless to argue with people who you do not know online. You are not going to change their mind anyway. This is why I have avoided comments and message boards in general, as I am interested in having discussions with people not shouting at strangers over the internet. I do want to comment on other blogs for entertainment and hopefully in some cases to further the readership of this blog. Some of the best blogs I read I have interesting and insightful comments from their readers and that is what I hope to eventually get from this blog.
The Nascar audience is one which I truly do not understand. I grew up in the Northeast so I was really in the dark when it came to Nascar. This is actually my third year following Nascar, but much to my surprise I have become a huge fan. I still do not get the culture though. Most Nascar columns and comments on the internet focus on how things used to be better in the good old days, but this is usually rebutted by people who compare modern Nascar with the old days. When compared Nascar is much more competitive and the races are usually more entertaining. Also the drivers are much safer. Years ago the threat of drivers dying was very real every time they raced now thanks safety innovations the threat has been greatly reduced to where it is only a faint thought. Some fans do not seem happy about this though. Really though when you break it down the biggest gripe some of these fans seem to have is that Nascar is no longer a regional sport. It has become a national sport not just a sport in the Southeast.
Drivers like Jeff Gordon who came from California are often booed for being too corporate or image conscious, but then drivers like Kyle Busch and Juan Pablo Montoya who are aggressive and say whatever is on their mind are criticized for other reasons. Montoya is called too aggressive and he is from Columbia so there are portions of the fan base who would not have liked him even if it turned out he was Dale Earnhardt’s half son from a fling he had when he went on vacation years ago. Instead of cheering for guys who seem to embody the old school aggressive drivers they professed to love they almost exclusively cheer for Dale Earnhardt Jr. Junior as he is known is really not much like his father. He seems to be quiet and introspective by nature and from everything I have seen of him he is a likeable guy. He sometimes gets unfairly criticized for not winning as much as his father. His father was arguably the best Nascar driver of all time so that is an unfair comparison. Really the closest comparison I can come up with in sports for his popularity is Tiger Woods, but unlike Tiger he is not far and away the best driver in his sport. No Junior is probably among the top ten to fifteen drivers and likely the top three or possibly the best among active drivers at restrictor plate tracks such as Daytona. The point is that if Junior was from California instead of North Carolina and his last name was Gordon or Busch instead of Earnhardt he would likely not receive much support at all from the Nascar community, instead he is Nascar’s untouchable with a recent incident at Daytona being the one notable exception.
Maybe it is unrealistic to expect to ever gain a healthy following in the Nascar community. I only occasionally blog about it. My name is Dickness instead of Earnhardt and I really do not understand much of the core fan base or at least it seems that way so far. Maybe there is a segment of the fan base who would be interested in my commentary about the sport. I will not complain about how Nascar used to be better back in the day because I did not watch it then and I will not complain about how Nascar is trying to promote its sport too much in areas of the country other than the south where its real fans are because I guess I would not be considered a real fan if that was the case. If I never gain a following in the Nascar community I can deal with that, but what if the fear of the Dickness is more widespread than that. Does everyone who sees the name of this site on a social network like Digg or Yahoo Buzz assume that it is spam or that the site is offensive in some way? Probably, but for now I am going to continue to try to churn out good material and see what happens.
Full Disclosure: I am in the process of changing my theme so if someone goes to the main page they see more than just the latest post. I think it is going to be a huge improvement. I will likely not post about Nascar for a bit anyway unless something happens that piques my interest. It was the beginning of the season hence the uptick in interest and posts about Nascar. I know many people who do not understand the interest in Nascar and I can relate as I was of that opinion not too long ago. I try to post on a fairly wide range of topics and not to get too bogged down in any one topic so as not to alienate the loyal followers of this blog. Eventually if that does not work I am may try to have a few separate niche blogs, but for now I will stick with trying to get people to stop fearing the Dickness.
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