Why SBR is doomed

[mathdotcom]

thank you for your kind words, Mike/Roguey

It really is ironic who this thread attracted.

Might be my sharpest thread ever.

[RogueScholar]

Mathy, I'd say we have another three months until the true downfall occurs. The promise of the Bash will keep the current posters interested until August, and then will serve as the watershed event. Posters will have the ability to network outside the digital framework of SBR and afterwards will do their communications via phone or IM. After they mingle in person they'll realize how much more productive it is to share ideas absent the presence of the idiots, and the forum will seem much less appealing afterwards.

Witness the prophecy fulfilled. This forum has been absolutely dead the past two weekends of football season in contrast to last year. Smaller get-togethers of posters who became acquainted at the Bash have already occured and several others are upcoming across the country. The chat room has become more of a medium for exchanging Facebook and IM contact info than a meeting place in its own right. The points system has emboldened all of the worst kinds of posters while disenfrachising the best. The list goes on and on...

SBR, you are approaching the autumn of your years. Revolution is brewing, you're standing in the tinder box, and the match has been struck. Your move.

[SCRAGGS]

This place looks like a cesspool of degenerates

[zubzub]

yo locusts

[Nickelicious]

Classic video. But no vomiting on the audience or razor blade cutting. Just a bit past their very short prime.

[RogueScholar]

This place looks like a cesspool of degenerates

The degeneracy is constant, but the cesspool atmosphere not so much. SBR used to be a lot more vibrant, and while it was sometimes reminiscent of a circus, it was edgy to the point that it almost demanded participation. The thoughts being articulated were so extreme, and oftentimes fringe, that by the time you'd taken the time to read them, you were already invested enough in the topic to justify writing a response. This led to a great variety of thoughtful posters in every thread, which is the hallmark of a great forum.

Today we have a homogenous porridge with the consistency of buckshot. You dare not sink your teeth into controversy for fear of breaking a tooth on the lead balls of mediocrity which are the favorite tools of our new majority. At best you will be ignored for your erudition, and more likely you will be eviscerated on the pitards of Internet Tough Guys. This is no longer a meeting of the minds, but rather a dick measuring contest with sports as the pretext.

[jellobiafra]

Holy shit Scholar. That might be the most eloquent thing ever written on this board.

I posted this quote from Fear and Loathing when the points format was first introduced. I think it still holds value as an analogy to the transformation this forum is in the process of making:



"There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...

"And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave broke and rolled back."

— Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", 1971

[Bread]

Goddamit RS, you have one helluva mouth on you. Type that again so I can re-enact the first time I read it and my bottom lip dropped to my crotch and quivered just a little bit.

Please.

[lakerboy]

The degeneracy is constant, but the cesspool atmosphere not so much. SBR used to be a lot more vibrant, and while it was sometimes reminiscent of a circus, it was edgy to the point that it almost demanded participation. The thoughts being articulated were so extreme, and oftentimes fringe, that by the time you'd taken the time to read them, you were already invested enough in the topic to justify writing a response. This led to a great variety of thoughtful posters in every thread, which is the hallmark of a great forum.

Today we have a homogenous porridge with the consistency of buckshot. You dare not sink your teeth into controversy for fear of breaking a tooth on the lead balls of mediocrity which are the favorite tools of our new majority. At best you will be ignored for your erudition, and more likely you will be eviscerated on the pitards of Internet Tough Guys. This is no longer a meeting of the minds, but rather a dick measuring contest with sports as the pretext.

GREAT STATEMENT SCHOLAR- BUT ISNT THIS A SPORTS FORUM

[InTheHole]

[tacomax]

The degeneracy is constant, but the cesspool atmosphere not so much. SBR used to be a lot more vibrant, and while it was sometimes reminiscent of a circus, it was edgy to the point that it almost demanded participation. The thoughts being articulated were so extreme, and oftentimes fringe, that by the time you'd taken the time to read them, you were already invested enough in the topic to justify writing a response. This led to a great variety of thoughtful posters in every thread, which is the hallmark of a great forum.

Today we have a homogenous porridge with the consistency of buckshot. You dare not sink your teeth into controversy for fear of breaking a tooth on the lead balls of mediocrity which are the favorite tools of our new majority. At best you will be ignored for your erudition, and more likely you will be eviscerated on the pitards of Internet Tough Guys. This is no longer a meeting of the minds, but rather a dick measuring contest with sports as the pretext.

RogueScholar wears girls pants.

[RogueScholar]

Thanks guys, I was just letting it all hang out up there. Sometimes the hash oil kicks my brain into overdrive, and lofty thoughts meant to inspire leak out. I'm glad they were worth reading.

Jello, I love that quote, you really hit a home run mentioning it in this context. It's in that spirit of standing on a hill with furrowed brow and lidded eyes, desperately discerning that high-water mark, that I hope we can aspire to be better. We already dedicate our time to this place in staggering measure, we owe it to ourselves to remake it a place worthy of that investment.

[SBR_John]

Well written RS but not accurate on some of your more important points. SBR is far more vibrant now, for example. The sports forums and Sportsbook forum are still as you described. Yes Players Talk has evolved, maybe in a direction you think is not as good as before. Players Talk has more than doubled each of the past two years. Of course its going to change. I wish good threads would stay in discussion longer but they just fly down the page. Its hard as hell just finding the Pricks Picks thread on Wednesdays. SBR continues to look at the issues you raised as well as what the growth is doing. A lot of hard effort is going into the now as well as the future to get it right.

[Bread]

Scholar I know you're a royal son of a bitch, but I love reading your posts. Shit makes my brain work. Not much does anymore. You do.

But you're still a son of a bitch.

XOXOXOXO

[jellobiafra]

Scholar I am so jealous of you right now. There you are with the stickiest of the icky, and I'm sitting here with a pile of ammonia scented Mexican dirt.

[RogueScholar]

Scholar I am so jealous of you right now. There you are with the stickiest of the icky, and I'm sitting here with a pile of ammonia scented Mexican dirt.

Wish you were here, Jello. I'd fill up the bathtub so you could swim in it. Getting to watch you undress would be all the recompense I need.

[jellobiafra]

Easy Scholar.

You're just showing off now anyway.... and I'm even more jealous.

[Dark Horse]

Well written RS but not accurate on some of your more important points. SBR is far more vibrant now, for example. The sports forums and Sportsbook forum are still as you described. Yes Players Talk has evolved, maybe in a direction you think is not as good as before. Players Talk has more than doubled each of the past two years. Of course its going to change. I wish good threads would stay in discussion longer but they just fly down the page. Its hard as hell just finding the Pricks Picks thread on Wednesdays. SBR continues to look at the issues you raised as well as what the growth is doing. A lot of hard effort is going into the now as well as the future to get it right.

Too late. Genie is out of the bottle.

Only thing this forum has going for it now is that it's not easy to get another forum off the ground.

Any chance you could sell the forum as a separate entity, keep SBR, and start this place over?

[Bread]

Dark Horse is angry.

[zubzub]

Easy

Thou ist better than, jello, them that will rise from the tarpits thou ist better than them that will rise from the pits

Be not spiritful and merry and cheerful with them jello for they indicate your decline, are a sign of your decline and ye.....meant to stay here


for

[zubzub]

on to NFL.


pwn this.

[Bread]

Too easy.

Keep laying out those bread crumbs, Hansel.

[durito]

Doomed?

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Remember how many books sbr sends people too

[zubzub]

[RogueScholar]

Too late. Genie is out of the bottle.

Only thing this forum has going for it now is that it's not easy to get another forum off the ground.

Any chance you could sell the forum as a separate entity, keep SBR, and start this place over?

I have to concur. They've cultivated the watering down of this place to a critical mass, and to salvage it isn't compatible with their current business model. It would be fascinating to see if new management could return it to a time when those in charge didn't care solely about traffic and post counts...

Players Talk has more than doubled each of the past two years. Of course its going to change. I wish good threads would stay in discussion longer but they just fly down the page.

...but about a measurement of just how many good threads we have compared to the worthless ones. John gave a politician's answer to a substantive inquiry, and I found it indicative of the new "philosophy" at work here. Not once did he mention a vision of quality, his only thought was for "doubling" whatever metric he finds most closely mimics the forum's impact on the bottom line. He claims we're vibrant, but so is a preschooler's fingerpainting. Shouldn't we aspire to more than vibrancy, but rather an artistic masterpiece of a forum whose spectrum of good posters reflects every hue on the palette?

[zubzub]

ficking sherly doomed

[jellobiafra]

Thou ist better than, jello, them that will rise from the tarpits thou ist better than them that will rise from the pits

Be not spiritful and merry and cheerful with them jello for they indicate your decline, are a sign of your decline and ye.....meant to stay here

for

zubsie, I can't help but read your post in the cadence of Rain Man. Like Rain Man, if he were some kind of whacky profit.

[tacomax]

A lot of hard effort is going into the now as well as the future to get it right.

Who is doing all the hard work? Ganchrow hasn't logged in for nearly a month so I don't think it's him.

There must be a good package at SBR if you let your staff take a 4 week holiday in one of the most important business times of the year - can I send you my resume? I love the hours!

[BadNina]

Taco, that would get you out of the basement!!

[jellobiafra]

Wait a second. Am I to understand that tacomax is not a paid employee of SBR?

[tacomax]

Wait a second. Am I to understand that tacomax is not a paid employee of SBR?

People say I am but the fukkers haven't paid me for the last 4 years.

[SBR_John]

Growth needs to be managed and I think SBR is doing an excellent job now and has a great game plan moving forward. Growth is the result of an excellent product and very creative and hard working managers and staff.

If you look at the SBR contests, lines, reviews, picks, forum, ect., they all are very high quality sites that we have a big time staff working on around the clock. There will be a dip and a target missed but I can assure you the plan has always been to have the highest quality.

[jellobiafra]

John, that's all well and good. But when are you going to get around to addressing this issue of taco's delinquent pay?

[zubzub]

**** taco

dudes a spaz

[jellobiafra]

zubzub, you are no longer my favorite "new" poster. It's was fun while it lasted though.