Engagement on this site
It is midway through the Memorial Day weekend and the threads on the board are uncontroversial and lightly commented on. They seem bland and narrowly conceived. This seems like a trend for the past many months.
I am an occasional visitor these days, but I come here for some pithy and weird exchanges and I leave feeling that what was once a funny and lively site is now an empty suit.
I suppose that this is a stupid post, but I really miss the old MGoblog. Also, I am currently (and heavily) sampling my bourbon collection and as a direct result, may just be pathetically missing something that never really existed.
You win tbe internets today!
Meaning good internets award not sarcastic internets award.
Seems like the dog days of summer have come a bit early.
To be honest, there's not a lot to talk about is there? BBall is in the offseason, but information has been pretty steady with MattEM's posts.
There's been some football recruiting stuff...otherwise not a lot of information on what else is going on...The Mgoblog guys are still producing sold content, even if their opinions are contrary to what others feel they 'ought' to be writing...Its not an objective news site; its a blogger site started by folks that love Michigan football, so they are going to have their opinions on stuff.
Otherwise, I think there's a lot of people that are simply waiting to see what transpires and as a result posting has tamped down quite a bit.
I dunno, maybe I’m just the weird one but I decided I’m not eager to converse with comments saying we should cheat because our rivals do, throw out all values to win because they hold us back, and football is more important than Ace “whining” about “trivial” things like sexual abuse.
I doubt I’m missed around here but the pro-sexual-abuse did it for me. I have nothing to gain and precious little remaining sanity to lose trying to reason with psychopaths, and I can’t easily get into chatting about sports now that I know what some folks here really are underneath.
A’ight, flame on.
You do realize that our supposed idol Bo was active in covering up a MASSIVE sexual abuse scandal at MICHIGAN, right?
I really don't think we can play the high horse narrative game anymore.
High horse? What are you saying? We blew it so might as well admit our pursuit of ethics was a farce?
I feel alone around here but to me, Bo’s failure makes it more important to try to get it right. It means where we’ve been isn’t good enough.
If anyone around here was into ethics only as far as being able to smug it around Michigan State or PSU then as far as I’m concerned they can go fuck off.
I think you should re-read dragonchild's post.
People are able to go out and do things because things are opening up.
If you want weird exchanges, I suggest you show your friends any Tool video. And since you are drinking it may be a fun ride for you.
Here is one
Will listen, but your avatar has me jonesing for Hot Rats.
BTW have been doing “stuff” all weekend. Currently my stuff is wasting time on my deck in the sun, tippling some bourbon and chatting with my wife.
Next up - who knows?
By the way the intro to that video reminds me of the game of life program.
Tool makes pseudo-intellectual music tailored for pizza delivery drivers who want to feel deep.
Bill Cosby?
You know, reading your comments over time, I wonder if you're ok.
I've been watching a lot of Cosby Show reruns lately. I had forgotten how great that show was.
But yes, it's a weird feeling, knowing what we know now.
I'm going to guess the last year+ realigned some people priorities. They did for me. I am not going to let the on field actions of a group young men who wear the crest of a school I lightly attended play as large a role in determining my mood as they used to. It's not fair to them, it's not fair to my wife who has to deal with 4 or more grumpy weekends with me because of it. Maybe some other people got there, or maybe other people just started guarding their own well being.
Everything hits differently for me now. I'm here for the recruiting news, the basketball news and when the season roles around even the football news. I do miss the easy comradery I remember but that may have been rose colored. I don't have the energy for some of the performative fighting on some posts. I don't hate on anyone for doing it, it's just not about to raise my hackles.
I do hope y'all are well though and that you found some new gear you didnt know you had in the last year, and I hope you can hang your hat on it or it brings you joy
You should post some interesting topics then. This is kind of the OT season, lasting to August, until summer football threads start popping up and more in depth analysis begins.. I think the bloggers who use to post a lot like XM and a few others got kicked off the blog.
You should post some interesting topics then. This is kind of the OT season, lasting to August, until summer football threads start popping up and more in depth analysis begins.. I think the bloggers who use to post a lot like XM and a few others got kicked off the blog.
At some point, the site’s extreme snarkiness and everything is an inside joke was going to catch up with it and impact engagement. I’d bet the number of new users is close to zero, and so if the previous active users stop posting as much for a variety of reasons - e.g., banned by the site, turned off by Ace’s bitchiness, posting on Q forums instead, etc - overall engagement drops.
Only visit about every three months. Used to be on multiple times a day. Can’t stand most of what I read anymore. Peace out til August...
may just be pathetically missing something that never really existed.
The good old Golden Age Fallacy.
Personally, although I don't post a lot, I certainly check up on the board more often when exciting sports things are going on. Basketball was interesting and exciting this year. Football was a terrible experience and it seemed like during our brief football season there wasn't much debate—almost everyone agreed that Harbaugh needed to go. Given how things shook out, I think most people are too dumbfounded to predict anything. If the last twenty years of Michigan football have taught us anything, it's not to make any bold predictions.
The discourse on the board will always be, to some extent, dependent on the state of Michigan sports. Right now there's not many interesting things to say about basketball because things are going so incredibly well. The opposite is true with football. It's been too long for me to remember (and I didn't post back then), but I'm willing to bet the board was in a similar form during Brady Hoke's bad seasons when Beilein had the basketball team humming.
BMW or Honda?
Not all are welcome. Sports content is limited due to pandemic and other circumstances. This was (and hopefully will be again) a great site for busy people to take a break from stressful reality by reading mostly unimportant entertainment-based sports content. IN the words of Kramer, when speaking about Roy the dentist, I ave a wife, a job, and lots of other stuff. Reading a sports blog will either bring me joyful distraction or I won’t read it.
I do find it weird that basketball is by far our best sport and engagement with basketball content remains decent at best and bad at worst
It's June. The only semi-major sport still going is baseball, maybe. Things will pick up once football season rolls around.
Well I miss the old Michigan football that was worth talking about in late May.
Let’s see...
Brian has given up on life in general, and UM fandom in particular.
Ace is a negative, petty, and miserable person.
Matt EM is decent, but not as knowledgeable or compelling as the people on UM Hoops.
Seth tries really hard but doesn’t have any charisma whatsoever.
Wonder why the site isn’t any good?
Since all you guys are fighting, this is probably a great time to tell my feel good baseball story. I've mentioned this here before, but my son plays D3 baseball. He's a pitcher, and his team was in the NCAA regionals this past week. Today they played the #1 team (Wash U) for their regional championship. They forced Wash U into a game 2 in double elimination, but lost the second game tonight. Season over.
Rewind to yesterday. They played Wash U in the morning and lost pretty badly, 8-1. Our hitters didn't show up and our starting pitcher had one really bad inning from which we couldn't recover. So we ended up playing the #3 team, Webster, in the losers bracket, winner to take on Wash U in the championship game on Sunday. This was an elimination game for both of us. My son came in the night before and pitched 3 innings against Webster and did really well, so my husband and I didn't think he'd pitch in the 2nd game. We decided to head home, which was a 3 hour drive. We said goodbye to him between games, and he didn't mention anything special. So we're about 3o minutes into our drive home when my husband suddenly says, "What if he's starting and he didn't tell us?" I told him to immediately check Twitter and there it was: our son was starting this Must Win game and he didn't tell us before we left. He normally pitches in relief and had only one start this year. We debated whether we should turn around. Maybe he didn't want us there? Maybe he was nervous. We went back and forth. A parent texted us: "Where are you? Your kid is starting." We decided to keep going. But I told my husband he couldn't listen to the game because I was now so anxious I could barely focus, and I was driving. So we decided he would check the game every 15 minutes and tell me if our son was still in. I figured if he was still in, he was doing ok. If he was out, he struggled but only a little because they wouldn't leave him in, in a Must Win game.
So like clockwork, my husband would look at his phone and say, "He's still in." Fifteen minutes later: He's still in. Two hours later: he's still in! Finally, "He's out." I asked, "How many innings did he pitch?" "7 2/3." Thirty minutes later, my husband says, "Game over." I couldn't bring myself to ask about the outcome. A few moments passed, and my husband says, "HENRY GOT THE WIN!!" I screamed, he screamed, we called our son and screamed. It was my favorite baseball moment ever.
I'm smiling and (almost) crying at the same time that your son did so well and that you are so proud of him, yet both you and your hubby missed it.
That would have killed me to miss seeing my own kids excelling on such a stage.
I know I mentioned it in a post last summer when I "returned", but being a mod here for years quite literally began to affect my mental health and my ability to even care about one of the things I care about most, which is the University Of Michigan and her athletics programs. The years of bitching about "snowflake threads" while people offered no work-efficient alternatives, the years of being accused of bias, the years of being called a "socialist" and other things by people on here finally got to me. It began to actually hurt, and it was a rather disturbing feeling.
All the while, my physical health was failing me for a second time, so as some of you know, I spent Memorial Day 2020 and the week after it at St. Joseph Mercy in Ann Arbor having nearly kicked it yet again. Medically, it's already been quite a ride for someone in their 40s, and psychologically, years of being an object of scorn around here finally became a little too much. In late July, I decided to return in a more relaxed role, but if you ask me why I am able to compartmentalize losing so quickly, it's because moderating in the sports blogosphere, as much as The Horror and its surface incomprehensibility, taught me that this skill is a necessity.
Appreciate you and all you bring to the board, LSA. Anyone that gives you shit here can eat a bag of dicks.
I think I now have a much better understanding of the bad place you were in psychologically a year ago, LSA.
Not that I wasn't somewhat aware of how moderating can sometimes be an anguishing job (after all, I had moderated a much much smaller U of M discussion board for several years until getting fed up with it a half dozen years ago). But there is definitely a small-but-maddening handful of people here who are so effing negative that I sometimes wonder if moderating is worth the trouble. And that is why I sometimes step back for a day or two from even thinking about moderating and revert for 24-to-48 hours or more of just posting fanboy nonsense, not even looking at my mod duties unless forced to.
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To everyone else: I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss XM (and to a lesser extent, WD) and his contributions to the MGoBoard. I have kept somewhat in touch with XM (by text only so far) since his banning and I intend to continue to do so. I also occasionally interact a bit with WD on Twitter.
"Casualties" such as both those bannings do bother me, but I also didn't have a say in either decision, nor do I have the power to "un-ban" or convince either of those gentlemen to rejoin the board (BTW, both have made it pretty clear that they don't intend to return, "burned bridges" and whatnot). But hell yes, I'd be happy to see both of them return.
Try engaging with the real humans in your life? Who depends on a sports message board for socialization?
Thank you! This comment sums up my blog thoughts for the last 3 years. Also reposting every espn link and Twitter quote doesn’t help this place.
I’m waiting for Kevin to respond.
Two thoughts: people have argued a lot lately about Yost and Bo.
There isn't much to argue about re: the football and men's basketball teams. There isn't much optimism about the former, and everyone is happy about the latter.
Bring back XtraMelanin and WD. It’s a blog, not an effin’ religious hierarchy or government branch. They have weird views, that’s what a blog is for. Overall, they both contributed greatly to this blog. To be honest, I found their post sometimes more engaging and interesting than some mods (sorry, mods, sometimes!).
Well, to your point, I used to come here multiple times per day. Now? Likely 2-3x per week. Hard to pin all of that in the staff. I’m a dad now, and I’m busy with other things, but there’s certainly been a major shift in tone around here over the past 2-3 years here. That starts with Brian, and filters all the way down. Seth seems to be the only one really engaged anymore. I feel bad for him.