There are Lessons to be Learned Even From the Most Pathetic Corners of the Internet

If you know me, and if you read this site regularly, you know that I love the Internet and I love blogging.  My day job revolves around helping businesses shape and promote their online profile, and I spend much of my spare time here at MSF writing about sports and highlighting my favorite corners of the sports blogosphere.

Unfortunately, for all of its virtues and wonderful attributes, the Internet is not a perfect place.  In fact, sometimes it can be quite dark, disturbing, and pathetic.  This fact was hammered home for me this weekend.

First, and most egregiously, was the awful story about the secret video that was taken of ESPN sideline reporter and sports blog princess Erin Andrews.  We haven’t posted about her much here at MSF, mainly because so many other sports blogs do it…and do it better than we would.  But I personally am a big fan of Andrews, for reasons that go far beyond her obvious physical attractiveness.  

She is not perfect as a reporter, but she is very good; and I think that she has done a marvelous job of navigating through the tricky waters of being a confident and competent female reporter in a male-dominated world who has reached cult/celebrity status on the Internet in large part because of her looks and high profile assignments.  Somehow though, she has been able to avoid becoming a caricature or “just another pretty face,” and maintains the professional respect of most of the very same sports bloggers who jump at the chance to post and promote any new picture of her.  

These are among the myriad reasons why the posting of secret video of Andrews nude in a hotel room was so disappointing.  And if you are not familiar with what I am talking about, go to the Deadspin tag page for Erin Andrews and get caught up.  

Most disappointing of all is the fact that it is going to be very, very hard for anyone to be brought to justice in this case.  I unfortunately agree wholeheartedly with Dash when he says the following:

The only truth is that nobody knows anything and we are unlikely to ever know anything about the true original source of the videos. ESPN will continue to play whack-a-mole with bloggers who “discover” the video and try to post it, but it’s hard to imagine it ever getting much beyond that. I would love to be wrong about that, but I’m not holding my breath.

I am holding out hope, however, that with the resources Andrews has at her disposal she can bring whoever is responsible to justice.  Stories like this one are what can give the Internet and blogs a bad name, even though I think the restraint and class shown by the sports blogosphere in covering this story has been both outstanding and reassuring.  

Regardless, whether justice is ultimately done or not, I have to think that the playful, respectful, open, and professional relationship that Andrews has had with her Internet fans will never be the same.  How could it be?  Through no fault of her own she has been completely and unwittingly violated in the most nefarious of ways.  I hope that somehow she is able to emerge from this mess stronger and maintain the open personality that has made her so accessible and successful in eyes of sports fans across the globe.  

In the litany of terrible personal attacks perpetrated by anonymous Internet cowards, the Erin Andrews hotel video has to be right near the top of the list.  Luckily it’s not online anymore in any type of readily accessible way, and hopefully inroads are made into finding out the source.

Which leads me to my next point this morning.

I would like to draw your attention to the most oxy-moronic blog on the Internet: IndyDoucheBags.com, which highlights just how pathetic anonymous and hate-filled blogs can be.  I love the fact that the Internet provides a public voice for anyone who chooses to have one…and as a defender of the 1st Ammendment and the rights of bloggers, I do not deny “The Douche Slayer” his right to say what he chooses…but I also love the fact that I can use my own forum to highlight his hypocricy and utter uselessness.

Here is a quick excerpt from his site:

HUGE ego with miniscule pecker, no humility or self awareness, acts hard but couldn’t fight his way outta a wet paper sack and walks around Indy like he’s king turd of shit island.

Now, you may assume — as I would — that this is taken from The Douche Slayer’s About Me page.  Ironically, however, it is not.  (And he has no About Me page, because he is anonymous.) It is taken from the page entitled Indy Douche Bag Hall of Fame, which features the man I have been told was the “inspiration” for the website in the first place: Nate Davis.

Allow me to engage in some quick full disclosure.  I know Nate Davis relatively well from my time living in Indy and from working on some different creative projects with him.  He is decidedly not a douche bag, but rather a guy who busts his ass every day to move forward in a career he loves, is passionate about, and in which he has many, many chips stacked against him.  Far from a douche bag, I think it makes Nate a pretty damn admirable guy.  Being a white MC is not the easiest thing to do and opens you up to a lot of preconceived notions and unfair judgments.  But see he and The Franchize (link NSFW) perform live one time and you’ll quickly have any prejudices turned on their heads — at least I did — because he’s really good.

Update: Nate actually has a response song to the website.  You can listen using the mp3 player below.  (Warning: very NSFW).

[mp3_embed blog_plyrs="2"]

But that’s beside the point.  Nate Davis is not the only entrant in the “Indy Douche Bag Hall of Fame” because of how he raps or acts, or because he wears a “cocked cap.”  He is there because the owner of the site has a personal vendetta against him which I am told, naturally, involves a girl, among other things.  I’ve never met the guy who writes this pathetic website, but I’ve talked to enough people who do know him to not take one word he writes or says seriously.  Apparently if this guy had 1/1000th of the stage presence of Nate Davis, he might actually have some potential to succeed in achieving his own goals.  He does not, so he’s taken to the Internet to dedicate his life to the altruistic pursuit of…what, exactly?

Look, we all know that there are plenty of douchy people out there, and definitely lots of pictures of people looking douchy.  And, as guys, we all get a kick out of calling eachother out for our douchy moments.  HotChicksWithDouchebags.com is actually a pretty damn funny site that I’ve linked to before.  But there are three significant differences between that site and the rubbish of IndyDouchebags.com.

First, the guy who runs Hot Chicks With Douchebags is not trying to stand above the fray like he’s some paragon of cool himself.  From his FAQ page:

Q: Why do you call yourself “douchebag1″? 

A: Because I’m a drunk and angry scrote myself, and I have to double fist bottles of tasty Night Train wine when I realize how many sweet, innocent young beauties are being groped by pathetic, greased up knobs as we speak.  

Second, his personal mission is not about attacking one individual, nor is he out to specifically harm anyone’s reputation:

Q: I’m in a picture and upset and would like you to remove it. How can I do that?

A: If you’re spiritually weak and cannot sustain the verbal beating you or your loved one morally deserves, simply email me at douchebag1@hotchickswithdouchebags.com, specify that it is you in the pic and you’d like it removed, and I will remove it. Or if a comment in the comments thread relays any personal information and I missed it (I don’t check all comments), email me and I will delete the comment. 

Third, Hot Chicks with Douchebags is actually clever and pretty funny.  Indy Douchebags only proves that its site owner knows lots of derogatory words and how to upload pictures to his server.  Congrats.

But, once again, even all of that is beside the point.  The truly sad and pathetic thing about IndyDoucheBags.com, and what makes it more of a personal mirror for the site owner than anything else, is that it is just another in a long line of anonymous, venom-spewing websites that serve no real purpose other than making one individual person feel a little better about themselves by unnecessarily tearing someone else down.  His personal obsession with Nate Davis individually just makes it pathetic.  And the fact that he edits or omits dissenting comments, or alters dissenting letters written to him before posting them, just adds another utterly lame layer to the story.

We are no strangers to calling people out for douchiness here at Midwest Sports Fans.  My own personal disdain for the work and personality of Jay Mariotti are well documented, as are similar sentiments of other bloggers and his former colleagues in numerous places elsewhere online. However, I don’t hide behind a pseudonym (JRod is my well-established nickname and the MSF About page provides my full name), nor do I edit or alter any dissenting comments, and I certainly do not shy away from criticism or for standing up for what I write.  And I’ll admit when I’m wrong, or feel like I may have overstated something, or when I’ve been too harsh or out of line.  I’m not perfect, nor is this blog…but at least we don’t hide behind a computer and spew nothing but hate day after day in some lame quest to fulfill a childish personal vendetta or feel better ourselves.

But any reader of this blog post right now would not be out of line to ask what is the difference between what Indy Douchebags does to Nate Davis and what I’ve written about Jay Mariotti. And the truth is that there is probably not a whole lot, and the fact that I’ve written about Mariotti multiple times and attacked him personally is actually pretty lame on my own part.  Criticizing his work is one thing, but actively engaging in a “douche-hunt” is, admittedly, a little much.  So I have to thank Indy Douchebags for helping me to take a closer look at myself and analyze my own actions.  As Pete Bell, played by Nick Nolte, said at the end of Blue Chips: “I’ve become what I despise.” Unlike Bell, I’m not quitting my position anytime soon, but I am happy to leave lame pursuits like personal douche attacks in the past.  This site will be better for it.

Posting a picture of a douchy guy and having fun with it by making a clever and non-personal descriptive observation is funny, entertaining, and one of the millions of avenues down which blogs can and should travel to entertain their readers if that is what their target market finds entertaining.  But becoming fixated on one person and calling them out personally for being a douche actually reflects worse on the person doing the attacking, rather than the other way around.  And making such attacks anonymously makes it even worse.

I’m glad I was referred to Indy Douchebags to make such a realization, and as I said, I feel that it will make this site better for our readers in the long run.  I wonder if The Douche Slayer is capable of such introspection, or if he’d even care.  I didn’t start MSF to call out Jay Mariotti, so it will be easy to leave that in the past.  The Douche Slayer had one person in mind when he started his site, and that is the only voice he knows.  Kudos to him for building up a reader base of other people who enjoy reveling in that sort of thing, but how long before his readers catch on to the unintentional autobiographical undertones in his rants?

But he’s really just an insecure worm who treats the people of Indy like sniveling peasants who owe him something.

The above quote is, once again, taken from the Hall of Fame page. But the more I look at his site, the more I begin to wonder how much of The Douche Slayer’s ranting is genuinely intended for comedy and/or mockery, and how much of it is intended as a personal distraction from his own self-loathing. Perhaps The Douche Slayer is just a sad and unhappy person with a heart filled with hate and lined with vitriol, in which case I just feel sorry for him.

My posts about Jay Mariotti may have gotten me laughs, but they did not earn me any respect, nor did they make me feel better about myself. That’s why they will stop. Perhaps The Douche Slayer’s personal quest to insult Nate Davis in every way possible will stop at some point too. Maybe, maybe not. But if it doesn’t, I’ll know exactly how to view The Douche Slayer and his website: much less with the simple lack of respect I have for it now, and much moreso with a level of sympathy and pity reserved for people whose happiness is predicated on the destruction and exploitation of others.

There is nothing sadder than seeing someone revel in the hate and destruction of others, because it is a manifestation of who and what the person doing the hating is. The Douche Slayer, as well as whoever is responsible for the Erin Andrews video, have given us an all-to-revealing look into who they are while trying to reveal who others are.  They’ve also offered up a few of the worst examples of what the Internet has to offer.  

Luckily, there are lessons to be learned from these two stories and I am happy to have learned one myself.

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