http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpA2tMrQ4RU I SIMPLY CANNOT.

Guys, this has to stop. My time is not terribly valuable but in the course of any given day I am bombarded with hundreds of opportunities to click on links. If I clicked on every link I saw on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and email, I would get even less done. So do me a favor and give me a hint about whether I should spend my 20 seconds on your link or on playing Skifree (see how I did that?).

Now, there are two exceptions to this, and as far as I’m concerned you need to satisfy both of these exceptions simultaneously:

1. If I trust you implicitly to only use this linking method for sites that I am absolutely sure to value; and
2. If you only omit the context for links in situations where there is dramatic, rhetorical, and/or comedic benefit to my being surprised by the link’s identity.

Note that (1) is a condition you are unlikely to meet with respect to most readers/followers, who may like you but probably wouldn’t even stake their Starbucks money on your abilities as an internet curator. And even if you’re arrogant enough to believe that most people think you’re great^*, you still need to actually be great, or at least adequate, at linking with nuance and wit. This means you’ll have to know how to recognize and wield irony well. If you’re like most of the people in the world, this is not your strong suit. So just go ahead and tell me what you’re linking to, so I don’t have to write a stupid blog post about it while fighting the urge to pepper said blog post with examples of the behavior I am decrying.

^* Note: of course you are arrogant enough to believe that most people think you’re great–we all think that. But, to be honest, you’re probably just okay.

The thing about sports is that it, well, tends to be an old-boys’ club. The sports world is full of sexist shit that pisses me off if I think about it too much (and, honestly, I’m not often prone to do that, because I don’t always want to be addressing Big Issues in the context of something I enjoy just for the hell of it, which I suppose is lazy of me). Commercials aired during sporting events or programs often are sexist. There are sexist athletes and sexist columnists, and I hate it all, but I try not to hold it against sports as a whole. That would be like being a Cubs fan, but hating the Cubs because of Cubs fans.

That said, there’s one place where the sports assholes come out in droves and it drives me batshit insane every freaking time I see it. It’s a land where you’ll see Asshole Stupidus in its natural environment, taking a gigantic dump on women and human decency.

It’s the land of the Deadspin commenters.

I was going to leave a comment there but figured I might as well put it here instead, since it’s important that many people in the world know how I feel about this issue.

Basically, I think DS has acquitted itself kind of poorly in defending itself in the comments of the post, but I guess that lack of rational thought is sort of the point of the irreverent misogyny.

I think the best criticisms of this post are the ones pointing out that Tracy is painting with a pretty broad brush. But those criticisms aren’t so great, either, because the fact is that the great majority of DS comments ARE offensive and stupid. So we’re not talking about a few bad apples spoiling it for everyone–we’re talking about a pernicious and overwhelming atmosphere that invites and encourages a race to the bottom.

Not to say that most Deadspin readers, or even most commenters, are offensive/stupid, but the atmosphere in the DS comment space is pretty pathetic most of the time. I like that kind of stuff when it’s well done (Kissing Suzy Kolber, literally the product of DS commenters, is at times pretty brilliant, for example), but there’s nothing less enjoyable than someone aiming for hilariously-rude and missing the mark (ahem, Carlos Mencia).

And it’s true that DS is no worse than many, if not most sports blogs (or, um, nearly all blogs), but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to make it better. I don’t know what it is about public fora, but any blog with a sizeable readership ends up with a crew of douchebag commenters trying to one-up each other in stupidity and offensiveness. It’s a complete waste of time, and I basically never bother reading the comments on hugely popular sites like Deadspin, Engadget, The Washington Post (yes, even old media suffers from this problem), etc.–sifting the wheat from the chaff is just not worth the energy.

So, given that reading comments is not compulsory, even if you do read the blog’s content, how important is it that Deadspin’s commenters come off, for the most part, as hateful assholes? Probably not all that important, really. But it is pretty pathetic, and gives ignorant old media types ammunition in their poorly-conceived arguments against the basic idea of “the blog”–the quality and content of blog comments end up getting attributed (unfairly) to the blog itself. So when Deadspin’s comments are stupid, it makes Deadspin itself look stupid. Which is unfortunate, because Deadspin’s actual tone and quality are pretty great.

Although of course there are plenty of exceptions to Tracy’s general argument, I don’t think there’s any question that Deadspin’s commenters are representative of a misogynistic streak that runs through sports culture. And having someone point that out (and actually be heard) can only be a good thing.

I’ve been thinking about my most popular posts, in terms of hits (most coming from web search sites). The common thread is that Googlers really want to know how to do stuff: how to reset their ipods, how to block the stupid video on ESPN’s homepage, and how John Basedow died in the tsunami (or not).

The first two links (A and B) consistently get more hits than the rest of my blog, combined. The ESPN one, I get–it was linked by Deadspin, and actually fixes a problem that lots of people have. But the iPod one is even more popular, and the actual content of the post is basically just a series of links to other, useful sites. I don’t understand it.

And the John Basedow post is not actually that popular, but it is a personal favorite, especially since the lazyweb came up big and I now have the mp3 of the John Basedow theme song, of which I will never tire.

Now You Know.

The irony is that I think he’s probably right–this isn’t very good journalism. Baio should have tried to get in touch with the relevant persons (just about all of whom seem to be quite available) before publishing. No question, it’s a thorny issue–the material he’s citing was company property, so he doesn’t need permission from the employees to post it–and who knows what happened behind the scenes.

At any rate, there’s a lot to enjoy here, if you’re patient enough to wade through it all.

Highlight: Diet Dr Pepper.

Highlight #2: Hipsters. Now, this is really just another Stuff White People Like, but I found it funny and this is my blog so I don’t care if it’s hypocritical:

Here is a perfect example: thrift store clothes. The stuff you are buying (overpriced, I might add) from a thrift store(or vintage) was shit that was hot 20 years ago, but you rationalize it by saying “it’s ironic.” You just picked up the scraps of some guy who is now 30 but wore that stuff when he was 17…oh wait you are 30 also. High school hipsters I get, but old hipsters? There ain’t shit hip about a 45 year-old in skinny jeans. Why don’t you just go to the kids you hated in high school’s old houses and raid their childhood closets? That way you can wear the very clothes of those that were such “jerks” to you in high school. How is that shit for ironic?

That’s a certifiable hipster burn!

Anyway. I like that site. Thanks for linking it, Lauren (ps, might be time for you guys to get a new URL).

¹ Although that was subtly different, in that it subtracted Garfield’s words/thoughts, but not Garfield himself. I assert that it’s actually much better that way than without Garfield entirely. Not quite as weird, but a lot more funny/poignant.

I’m not even going to read the story–it couldn’t possibly live up to the title.

• this blog
• the other blog
• twitter
• shared RSS items
• shared other stuff

I tried to use Yahoo Pipes to put them all together into one stream, but it didn’t work. Probably because I’m not that bright. Anyway, that’s pretty much everything I ever write or link. Except for my dream journal, which I keep under my pillow.

Then, this:

I love techno viking.

If I were a woman, the prospect of being subjected to this kind of abuse (or, worse, the kind of abuse it forebodes) would scare the hell out of me. I wouldn’t feel safe. And the fact that for half of my friends and family this is not idle, hypothetical speculation–that it is, for all women, a very real problem–that really horrifies me.

This is all compounded, in Catherine’s case and that of other people who’ve written about this on their blogs, by the seriously idiotic harassment of misogynist commenters who swing by just to essentially reinforce the impression that men, especially men masked by anonymnity, are clueless and/or malicious jerks.

The internet commentary runs the gamut from well-meaning (e.g., “you should take it as a compliment–they think you’re attractive” or “dealing with the occasional jerk is par for the course in a big city”) to ignorant (“This is caused by a small minority of men“) to delusional AND misogynistic (“Now if she really wanted to teach this kid a lesson she would have walked up to him and said if you ever want to see, and touch big beautiful breasts like mine you better learn how to talk to a woman properly, saying nice titties will not get you the titties.“).

There are plenty more examples out there–the ones I linked came from a more or less random scan of this Yglesias post (some fun comments also available at an earlier post of Catherine’s here. What I find most amazing about the comments that attack or undermine the suggestion that street harassment is a serious problem is: how can anyone seriously argue that? Sometimes it’s relatively mild (a whistle or a suggestion that a woman “smile!”), sometimes it’s vile (“nice tits” or much worse), but in every case it’s objectifying, childish, insulting, and shameful. It reflects so poorly on men that this kind of behavior seems acceptable (or even admirable) to any of us–and it’s so much worse that the general reaction online from men seems to be condescension or an echo chamber of chauvinism.

I mean, I’m hardly the most sensitive guy in the world, and this stuff makes me crazy. I think of my female friends, and how much bullshit they have to put up with because this behavior is generally tolerated, and now I go online and read about how it’s women’s fault because they aren’t coming up with good enough ways of repelling it? That is seriously fucking stupid, my internet friend.

I don’t know how to fix street harassment. But I think that writing about the phenomenon, over and over and over again, does at least confront people with the fact that it’s not a rarity, it’s not limited to bad neighborhoods, it’s not women’s fault, and it’s not okay.

[Comics Curmudgeon]

I guess I’ll just have to figure out a way to disable something else annoying. It’s a tough decision: Carlos Mencia, or people who stand on the left on escalators?

I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there.

There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.

I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.

We’re humans. We live on land.

Sharks live in water.

So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.

A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.

When I see on the news where it’s like, “There have been 10 shark attacks,” I’m like, “Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.”

Nice use of the semicolon, too.

From Gilbert Arenas’s Blog.

(Great minds think alike, although I chose not to throw in a Rich Ankiel joke.)

• From print to Web: The Washington Post goes digital (good luck figuring out the capitalization scheme in that headline)
  Fortune Magazine paints a fairly positive picture of the Post’s efforts to “leverage” this “internet” thing everyone’s been hearing so much about. In all seriousness, the Post has done a pretty good job of adapting to The New Reality of Internet Tube.Oh or whatever they’re calling it now–they’ve been doing regularly-scheduled chats with writing staff and guests for a long time, and I think they have comments (reasonably moderated, not stifled) just about everywhere now. As you may have noticed, I have my complaints about the Post’s website, but I do appreciate that they’re at least making an effort to figure out what a newspaper will do in ten years.

  As an aside, check out this quote from the article:
  

  The best evidence of the difference is the fact that advertisers paid about $573 million last year to reach readers of the company’s newspapers, predominantly the 673,900 daily and 937,700 Sunday subscribers to the Post. Advertisers paid only about $103 million to reach the eight million unique visitors to the Post’s Web sites each month.

  Well, you know, there’s a lot you could take from that stat. To me, the proper conclusion is: nobody has any idea how to make online ads really work. There are a lot of reasons for this–they’re harder to target geographically, they’re easier for readers to ignore (or just block completely), etc.–but if you ask me, the problem is that they’re everywhere. I think The DECK is onto something. A single ad aimed at a particular niche of readers has got to be more effective than a million blinking neon lights blaring out the same stupid scams we all mark as “spam” in our inboxes.

• Impossible is the Opposite of Possible (embedded below)
  Michael “George Michael Bluth” Cera, star of the upcoming Superbad (an Apatow Corp. Production), made this a couple of years ago. It’s a spot-on, hilarious parody of Impossible is Nothing, which is hilarious in its own, unintentional, right. Cera and a buddy have a new CBS-sponsored online show thing: Clark and Michael, which I haven’t watched yet–but I have heard from a reliable source that it is very funny.
  
• Fontbook
  An extensive, fancy catalog of fonts. A great example of my odd interest in acquiring things that I have absolutely no use for whatsoever. To be honest, in order to really make full non-use of this thing I’m going to need to get a chrome- and glass-heavy coffee table upon which to rest it.

Keith Richards: ‘I Snorted My Father’

Excellent.

Short summary: the NY Times has implemented a new function where double-clicking on any word on the site (i.e., not links, just regular text) makes a new window pop up with a helpful definition of the word. This includes such words as “the,” “green,” and “Spanish.” For those of us who semi-compulsively mess around with the text we read, this is a disruptive disaster. Thus the campaign to bring back free clicking. Please consider passing this along to your many friends and encouraging them to do the same, until we bring the paper of record to its east-coast liberal knees.

Joe Rogan’s description here. [Defamer]