Seriously, Eric should charge for the curation that this site provides! So many clueless chumps out there dropping tweets as if they have some cred... And sucker fans eat that shit up and go crazy.
Beat reporters aren't what they used to be. And now you have to put up with all the wannabe bloggers posting clickbait BS taking everything out of context. Thank you Eric and moderators for all you do.
But more importantly, you can really only watch ONE thing per play... one blocker versus defender, one receiver versus DB or LB, the QB, etc.
So while you are watching that one thing, you are missing everything else. Now multiply this by each play.
So when someone writes, "so-and-so got beat badly by player x"... that might have been the ONE bad play that guy made all day. But because it gets written down, it's taken as that player's whole day. It's also why you see one reporter say one thing and another say the complete opposite.
Don't get me wrong... the camp reports/tweets/articles have value. But you have to take them in context.
But more importantly, you can really only watch ONE thing per play... one blocker versus defender, one receiver versus DB or LB, the QB, etc.
So while you are watching that one thing, you are missing everything else. Now multiply this by each play.
So when someone writes, "so-and-so got beat badly by player x"... that might have been the ONE bad play that guy made all day. But because it gets written down, it's taken as that player's whole day. It's also why you see one reporter say one thing and another say the complete opposite.
Don't get me wrong... the camp reports/tweets/articles have value. But you have to take them in context.
Well said. Some patterns will begin to develop but I always look for one basic thing when evaluating the team as a whole and the new players in particular. I will look at an existing player from last year who was average or below average. If they are still the starter then I know we are not better. As an example Aaron Robinson winning the CB job would be better from my point of view than one of the free agent pickups winning it. Beavers, or another rookie, winning an ILB job over Crowder would be a good sign. Wandale and James being ahead of Slayton is a good sign. Bellinger being ahead of Seales-Jones still another.
I don't worry too much about QBs at this point unless they are missing throws - which does not seem to be the case. It is a red flag if they do not do well in pre-season as they are facing vanilla defensive looks for the most part.
In fact, most times I run across one of these BS tweets it's on Reddit or BBI and so forth.
As for new media, disagree with that as well. I think Giants have some of the best.
The beats have embraced them and have even admitted to adapting based on them.
As for Fireside Giants, I'm not a regular listener, but I'm not sure it's accurate to call Alex Wilson just a fan at this point.
I do have an issue when people set up their own "media outlet" and run it entirely by stealing the good tweets and comments from the fan accounts.
There's quite a few that do this and one specifically that's blatantly worse than the other offenders. Unfortunately for us that are on Twitter, if you tweet enough about the game or respond to certain people, you're eventually going to have your Tweet copy/pasted and re-posted or even an entire YouTube Video done on a point you made to the person...
Today, you're not limited to discussing things with friends at work, or at a bar, or even by writing a "letter to the Editor." Now you can reach hundreds, thousands, millions on Twitter, YouTube...your own website...wherever. Andy Warhol may have been right about everyone being famous at some point, but now his "for 15 minutes" seems terribly short-sighted. However, this development, no matter how incredible, does come with an important caveat.
There's a line from the classic sci-fi film "Forbidden Planet" that goes, "It's all right, sir. Commanding officer doesn't need brains, just a good loud voice." Well, there's certainly no shortage of "loud voices" out there, but the amount of brain power behind each one is open to debate. Keep that in mind. Just because anyone can become a "pamphleteer" now doesn't automatically make them Thomas Paine.
You mean the days when we actually waited until watching the preseason games, or even the regular season, to form our own opinions on players instead of stressing over the fact that, according to @GmenVinnie or @GiantsKnowitall, an OL lost a rep in camp or a QB threw a bad interception? Those days??? I always seemed to manage quite well.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can get back to arguing about rookie backup guards and what have you.
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Would you prefer going back to 1993, when you got your camp reports never? Or in magazine form weeks after it happened?
You mean the days when we actually waited until watching the preseason games, or even the regular season, to form our own opinions on players instead of stressing over the fact that, according to @GmenVinnie or @GiantsKnowitall, an OL lost a rep in camp or a QB threw a bad interception? Those days??? I always seemed to manage quite well.
I think everyone would be better off that way, because you'd get rid of the toxic wild emotional swings from people who overract to info.
But I'd rather have coverage than not. It's on you to decide to turn it off or not.
If you think something sucks or isn't useful, stop using it. Its pretty simple.
I also think teams now know how to navigate social media. After a decade or so you have more guardrails on access, limited answers to questions, etc. plus we already know so much more inherently with player social media accounts, instant access to practice highlights, etc - a lot of it is just fatigue. I know I don’t care about most of that stuff anymore, its just too much and gets redundant.
I get it. I've posted here for over 20 years - gotten riled up at times. I get why people do it, but man Twitter just seems like a destructive suck hole of time and life and happiness. For most people.
As the character Henry Drummond said in "Inherit The Wind,
"Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it.
Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, "All right, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance...Mister, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline."
You take the good with the bad, but eventually you learn to adapt. There really is no going back.
For better or worse, the genii has been let out of the bottle.
People of no particular distinction, who would be avoided or ignored by anyone with a hint of quality education, judgement or life experience, given a free microphone to speak to millions. Really is quite something when you think about it.
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but man Twitter just seems like a destructive suck hole of time and life and happiness. For most people.
People of no particular distinction, who would be avoided or ignored by anyone with a hint of quality education, judgement or life experience, given a free microphone to speak to millions. Really is quite something when you think about it.
This isn't really true. I've never had twitter, but I did have bookspace once upon a time. And you aren't speaking to millions of people just by having an account. And I imagine twitter is setup the same way. If people choose to follow a person, then usually that person is doing/saying something that people find agreeable or entertaining.
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In comment 15770324 Jerry in_DC said:
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but man Twitter just seems like a destructive suck hole of time and life and happiness. For most people.
People of no particular distinction, who would be avoided or ignored by anyone with a hint of quality education, judgement or life experience, given a free microphone to speak to millions. Really is quite something when you think about it.
This isn't really true. I've never had twitter, but I did have bookspace once upon a time. And you aren't speaking to millions of people just by having an account. And I imagine twitter is setup the same way. If people choose to follow a person, then usually that person is doing/saying something that people find agreeable or entertaining.
One tweet by some obscure person with very few followers can be picked up and retweeted by someone not so obscure with many followers, and then it can get retweeted again and again. One doesn't have to have a million followers to enable them to speak to millions.