Internet Wisdom For Your Holiday Weekend
Our pretend buddy and former colleague Will Leitch left the sports blog Deadspin last week. As he invented that popular website and has a reputation for being an agreeable human being -- rare for the Internet -- we were interested in his parting words. Here are some of them.
When you hear old-school folks like Bob Costas talk about how "meaner" everyone has gotten online, it's clear they're missing the point. It's not that people have suddenly become cruel toward you; it's just that you can hear them now. Twelve percent of this country thinks Barack Obama a Muslim. You think 100 percent of your readers/viewers are going to love you? But so many people have constructed their careers in a plastic bubble, where only their friends and supporters talk about their work. Now that the Web's here — and we use the word "now" awfully liberally — it's amazing how unprepared they are to handle criticism.