Bloggers are nerds and the internet is stupid, Part Ten Trillion

Is there anything more painful than old people making fun of phenomenons they don't even try to understand? Check out this exceptionally bizarre and disturbing piece uncovered by my personal favorite sports site, Firejoemorgan.com, who rip into Dan Shaughnessy for this baffling article about Curt Schilling's new blog and the people who read it.

Enough links in that sentence? Here's a link to a very fat cat.

Shaughnessy's article is disturbingly out-of-touch and chillingly unfunny throughout, and the Firejoemorgan site does a more than worthy job of tearing the article to shreds, but the paragraph that really nailed me was this one, with Shaughnessy writing from the point of view of a fictional fan posting on Curt Schilling's site:

Fanboy38: God bless you, Schill. You are the greatest human being, ever. I'm glad you have this blog because I could never speak to you face-to-face. It's so much easier to communicate anonymously, without eye contact or using my real name. That's why blogs are better.

Shaughnessy is actually insinuating that these Schilling fans would prefer to talk to him on a blog than in person, as though they have ready, face-to-face access with Schilling at all times but instead choose to only speak to him online because they're afraid of eye contact. He then furthers the point with an open-ended "that's why blogs are better" comment, arguing that people who read blogs prefer them to all aspects of tangible life. How many blog readers have ever realistically taken up this position? Absolutely none, ever? Then why rail against it?

It is gut-wrenchingly ironic how every attempt by elder authors to criticize, lampoon, and dismiss the significance of the internet and its patrons ends up being far more ignorant and exponentially more stereotypical than any of the subjects that their frustrated, bitter, writing-on-the-walls-seeing minds are lashing out against. Am I biased because I write a blog myself? Perhaps. But I think I'm more biased because I'm a rational, generally content human being with little interest in reveling in narrow-minded bitterness.

Safe to say, next time I see Shaughnessy's Eric-Idle-with-cum-in-his-hair fro on "Rome Is Burning," it's going to be hard to take him seriously, and not just because he has a ridiculous fro that looks like Eric Idle's fro would if it had cum in it.