FreeEnterprise, on 05 Aug 2013 - 3:42 PM, said:
It all comes across as drama to create views with the hope to get more $$$
Money? You think this is all about money? Wow, and you guys call ME cynical?
Ok, it's fair. I've used the line "follow the money" a lot myself so it'd be hypocritical of myself to get angry about it. So let's roll with that. For the record, yeah, I'm not wealthy and I've been having issues. Any paycheck I can get goes into paying off medical debts that, statistically speaking, may never be paid off in my lifetime. It sucks being uninsured in America. But blog postings and videos are not going to pay that off unless I get numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
And besides, as far as I know that blog is not monetized (if there's ads on it I didn't put them there) and the video response to Mike was intentionally not monetized specifically becasue that kind of video is not something I want to make money on. I don't know about the rest of you, but I use ad blockers anyway so if anyone has ads I never see them. So to me, that's all a wash.
No, posts like the one I made is about more than "making a few pennys". My interest has been, and remains, the future.
I'll try to keep this short, which is difficult because I tend to look at this holistically. So, opinions. Paintball isn't a sport, it's a buisness. It's in the buisness of selling an image. That image currently is "you can do anything you want in paintball." It's how they pick up a lot of their demographic of teenagers who are usually in the "rebellion" stage. You suck them and their parents dry by telling them "HEY! Wanna be cool? Buy this gear, attend this tourney, go to this event, and you'll someday be as awesome as your heroes. And you want to be cool like them, right?". Heroes that make self-promoting videos on youtube so they seem accessable 24/7/365. So the industry supports the e-celeb who sells the image that "I play paintball and I'm cooler than you, and I can do anything I want to do, and you can too if you buy this gear", players support these guys through page hits and by buying the products they endorse.
The problem is that this model is awful for long term growth. Without maturity and restrictions, you can't have growth as a sport. Restrictions make it so that you don't burn out all at once. Maturity gives a sport perspective enough to weather out bad times without worrying about failure. As paintball players have seen time and time again the 3-5 year rotation is very real. Fortunately, there's as much an inflow of players as there is outflow, but as we saw with the "PAINTBALL IS DYING!!!!" trend a while back, that's very volatile. It also creates a toxic environment in which players are all about "themselves", and not a "community". When everyone is trying to "take", and nobody is "giving", you run out of resources (real or social).
That is what "this" is all about. Looking at a symptom with the hopes that it will get people to look at an overall problem. Mainly that every 3-5 years, we get a full rotation of players when it SHOULD be "every 3-5 years, our paritcipation doubles". Ironically, when I look at individual sports like snowboarding, they manage to keep participants invioved for a lifetime. Snowbaording is a gear driven activity too, and they have celebrities who make videos that they sell on DVD, but they also manage to do it without burning people out. I think the key is that snowboarding has an understanding that "money won't buy you skill" and they have celebrities who have a sense of maturity about how they present themselves and their sport.
Ask yourself if the actions you see a lot of these painbtall e-celeb guys do would EVER fly in real professional sports.
(Edit add 8-7-13)
Mike responded in the thread, including this statement. :
"Rob, you can say whatever you would like to say, and I'll close this thread. After that, you're not welcome on this site anymore. This site is full of family and friends of TechPB, not backstabbing fucking cowards who don't have the decency to call or email a friend before blasting them on a blog with no provocation or warning. I don't have time for some guy who thinks the whole paintball world should model videos after his, an oof pacing back in forth in front of a camera with a backwards hat on, gesturing wilding, and bitching about overshooting. "
So my prior comment about not being banned from TechPB is no longer applicable.
I miss the old Tyger, the old Tip-Clip series, and music videos. Those were great, hell they still are if you can manage to find them. But Tyger's new themes just aren't my cup of tea. Reading the mean stuff sent back and fourth between Tyger and Mike doesn't make me want to love paintball. Remember the Woodsball Manifesto? There's still those of us who don't care about the media, the latest gear, or whoever's popular on YouTube this week. Those of us who remember when the sport was brand new, and honestly don't care what the rest of the world is doing.
ReplyDelete"We are the roots of the game that have been abandoned by much of the mainstream industry. We don't throw aside where we've come from to make the game more palatable for an audience. If nobody sees what we do, it does not make the effort or result worth less."
Promote that, Tyger. Promote what you think is best for paintball, NOT what is bad for paintball. Positives dude, positives.
Call my a cynic, but I don't see anything positive about the current direction of the game. I'ts not about the game anymore, it's about "personalities" who try to be larger than the game now.
DeleteThe old vids are still up, most of them amyway, "Web Dog Archives" on youtube. I uploaded them all there some time ago.
Web Dog, I want you to know I learned a ton off your old videos. As for all the current negativity, I don't agree with everything but I certainly see your point. Anyways despite it all I hope someday you get back on the field.
ReplyDelete