Jackie Robinson was no noble pioneer. Rather, he was complicit in the continual subordination of the African-American for white male profits, each day working the sun-drenched dust in a manner repulsively similar to his ancestors, their plows replaced with a glove and a Slugger as the hypocrite Branch Rickey sang along to "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball" and the ca-ching of windfall profits...
Sure gets attention, doesn't it?
It's really easy getting hits on the internet. The potential of the above, if written with any intent of seriousness (or not, given the popular inability to read sarcasm), is virtually endless if a link were dropped in the right places or spread by the right information loci.
Of course, it's also categorically awful, undoubtedly disingenuous, and potentially dangerous.
But damn, it would get hits and comments, right?
It's tempting as a writer in the information age to publish digital trash, to go straight towards baseless criticism, sex, drugs, violence, vulgarity, gore, and—perhaps the biggest offense of all—writing with search engines, blogrolls, facebook, and message boards in mind.
It's tempting because that's where the instant gratification is, both in terms of internet advertising norms and raw page hits, where quantity indubitably signals quality. Viva democracy, viva capitalism, and instant gratification and the average internet sports fan seem to go hand in, well, baseball bat.
But let me ask a simple question: when you take these angles, when the words you write are nothing more than conveyor belts of softcore pornography, hatred, and puerile humor, or if they're produced with search engine optimization in mind, are you really marketing yourself as a writer?
Or are you just a factory-built machine pumping out search-friendly terms and attractive themes for the internet crowd?
After all, the average prostitute is great at getting hits. She's not so good at selling herself as a human being.
Good writing, ultimately, is about communication, and subjective in most cases. Every great writer has a style of their own, a voice that sounds unique amidst a tidal wave of societal babble.
Great writers can be imitated often, but never wholly duplicated. It's not just our fiction greats like Hemingway and Faulkner, but also our common sports writers; say what you will about the man, but a Rick Reilly column is easy to pick from a lineup and a struggle to duplicate.
To be a great wordsmith, to rise above the Internet equivalent of Pauline Kael's "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (say, Pat Forde or Gregg Doyel) one needs to communicate ideas and complex thoughts and emotions, a definitive point of view where the reader can see both a real human writer and the lively subject material at hand.
That's writing.
It's what Ryan Alberti does on a weekly basis, mixing a liberal arts curriculum with consistent observations on humanity through the lens of a current hot topic in sports.
It's what LJ Burgess does on occasion when his tolerance threshold has been breached, as seen in the splendid and passionate Joe Namath article he wrote awhile back.
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