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In case you haven't seen them:
Hatemedude 1
Hatemedude 2
When we started Daily MetaGame we did so with the intention of promoting a game and a community that we thoroughly enjoy. We wrote the code, created the graphics, wrote and edited the articles and asked for nothing in return other than for you share in our love of the game. We do this in our spare time because we enjoy it, the same reason that you play the WoW TCG.
If you follow the forums, you probably know that my sense of humor isn’t for everyone (kirkwb). If truth be told, I’m a bit of a troll and I’m a fan of other trolls’ work. Many people get the humor or can tolerate it to the point that they don’t have feelings either way. But those that do not appreciate it, do so passionately and vocally. While some, like myself, find it fun to tweak people’s perceptions of what is entertaining, sometimes people just don’t get the joke.
When Hatemedude and I got into a little verbal brawl over at the forums, I saw an opportunity. I thought it would be entertaining to challenge someone who was a harsh critic of content to provide some content of their own. In corresponding directly with Hatemedude I found a funny and intelligent guy. We’ve chatted with him over IM and he has a pretty sharp wit. Of course, his wit is not for everyone, and even with my slightly off-kilter sense of humor I don’t appreciate all of it, but I can appreciate and admire the guy behind it. Humor is in the eye of the beholder; it can only be defined on an individual basis by opinion. That means not everyone is going to agree on what is and isn’t funny.
He is a guy that I would probably hang out with in real life and there would probably be a lot of ball busting going on. He is new to the game and discovering his own way around what is good and what isn’t, but he does have a decent start on the path to becoming a better player. Decks from a new player’s perspective have been done before and since we clicked on a trollish level, I talked to him about trying something different. I wanted to capture a dynamic that happens in our regular play group.
My play group includes guys. Guys who bust each other’s balls. To outsiders the things we say to each other can sound harsh and offensive, but we’re always laughing. I get more old man jokes than Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon and I’m about as absent minded when playing cards as the guy who invented Flubber. Pip gets railed constantly because he always seems to read new cards wrong. Eric is known to get a little competitive, especially when losing to little kids. Rob will always be little Scrubby in my eyes even though we now seem to share the load in old man jokes. Niles is known to wear Wolf shirts; sometimes shirts with two wolves on them. Tim is the kid from Up:
Hatemedude was already a kindred spirit, as it were, to this kind of comradery. I pitched the idea to him, put in the now infamous {Editor’s Notes:} and sent it to him to see what he thought. I explained the idea to Tim and Mike and asked if they thought this was too much for the reading public. I did have my own misgivings, but those were outweighed by my creative drive to try different things. We figured we’d try it as an experiment.
We’re free to experiment in the content we provide because we are the ones putting ourselves out there on a daily basis. What some find entertaining and amusing may not be agreeable to everyone and we’re going to try things out that not everyone will agree with. We will always monitor the feedback, though, and be wary of what is popular or not. But there are mixed signals:
Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How can that be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given? "I want to see what he'll say next."
Pig Vomit: Okay, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?
Researcher: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Pig Vomit: But... if they hate him, why do they listen?
Researcher: Most common answer? "I want to see what he'll say next."
We don’t get a lot of feedback on most of the regular content we do. Let’s be honest, the majority of our readers are coming here for deck-lists and don’t partake in the forum systems and that’s just fine; but it makes it a little difficult to gauge what people will and won’t like. So we go by numbers.
In the last 4 weeks our top four articles consisted of Mike’s 2 part Deck Dump articles outlining his brews for Block Constructed. We see that and are now working on getting more writers to submit decks for the Format du jour. The third place article was our Throne of the Tides preview article and as much as I’d like to think it was my amazing writing that you all flocked to, I’ll be honest and admit that previews are to our ratings what lesbians are to Howard’s.
The other article in our top 4? You guessed it: Hatemedude and myself having a little fun and shenanigans. We felt we were doing two things, getting a deck-list that is current and can be used as a starting point in your own testing and also trying out something that seems to get everyone’s attention- a little bit of trolling. Before you go off voicing your opinions about the decline of DMG; how you are above this kind of thing and you think our site should also be above it too, think about this: Those with the loudest voices are also participating in the actual trolling.
By posting pages and pages of flames and opinions two things are getting accomplished; first: there’s actually some real points being discussed about the deck and people are thinking and talking about the game. Even someone who I won’t mention because he likes to look for his name in articles and call writers who cite him barns, said that this 2nd deck-list of Hatemedude’s was better than the last. The second is, believe it or not, you are being entertained. Even if you hate something but can’t help to have to read it and comment about it, you are being compelled to think and talk about it. You are enjoying it, just like this audience:
When someone in the forum posts an opinion that you agree with, you participate and cheer them on. When someone posts something you don’t agree with, you participate and jeer them. You walk away from it thinking about and talking about it for long after the event itself happened. You were part of a happening.
People who never post anything on our site seemed to respond to this stuff. Even creating new accounts because they couldn't remember passwords for ones they created long ago and never used.
Why weren’t you giving feedback on the stuff you do like? Why would you choose now to feedback? Why do things like this get the most hits? I’ll be honest, I like to read the most controversial threads and enjoy the banter and it seems like a lot of people do because they are the threads that go on for days. Even the people that go into those threads saying they don’t like that kind of thing are participating and perpetuating them.
The opposite is true as well. There are very friendly threads with subjects that I enjoy and I'll read and participate in those as well. There's something for everybody.
I hope you don't leave because you don't like a couple different things we try on the site. Do you watch all the shows on NBC and expect to like every show on there? Did you quit the WoW TCG because you didn't like a few decisions CZE made?
The answers probably are: No, you only watch the shows you like on NBC and no you didn't quit the WoW TCG because you're still here reading this (Assuming there are things they changed that you didn't like). I just ask that you extend the same logic to DMG. Read and comment on the articles you like, ignore and don't participate in the ones you don't. Pretty simple really. Even my BFF Rob stays away from the forums because he doesn't want the negativity to take away from his enjoyment of the game. Rob's a pretty bright guy for a scrub.
But if you can't help but to read and comment on the stuff you don't like, I'd like to suggest that yes, maybe you do enjoy it in a preverse subconscious way that you can't even explain yourself. This kind of thing is as old as human history.
If you truly didn't like it you would move on to something else that you do like, forgetting about it and not talking about it ever again. The guy complaining about the trolling in the threads by making post after post after post doesn't even realize he is perpetuating the phenomena. You're not just feeding the trolls, you're getting a couple warts on your nose as well. I get it and I think it's pretty entertaining to watch and participate in.
People are still talking about Andy Kaufman’s antics today. He got the audience to participate in many ways. One of them was by being the heel that everyone can join against, another was by taking his whole audience out of the theatre, down the street to have some milk and cookies. That guy ran the spectrum. He loved it when you loved him and he loved it when you hated him.
Hold on, pard’ner, don’t get me wrong, I in no way think I am the comedic mind that Andy Kaufman or Howard Stern are; and no, I don’t think I could write for Cracked. I’m just a big fan of that kind of humor and I love thinking and talking about their antics, whether or not I agree with any or all of them. I look for it in everyday things, and the forums display a lot of it. Both the heels and the milk and cookies.
But I did get you to think, discuss and participate. Some of you who’ve never posted a peep, came out of the woodwork. Welcome, have a seat, let’s talk. What do you like if you don’t like this kind of stuff? We’ve published 238 articles at the time that I write this, and I’m guessing you were OK with 236 of them. I sincerely hope you’ll stick around even if you didn’t really like two of them.
With that said, there are lines. I’ve had my own crossed in the past and I’ve let people know when they’ve crossed them. While many get the joke, we recognize that not all do and they think that it’s vicious for vicious sake. I’m proud, but I’m also willing to admit when I’m wrong, just like I was willing to give someone a chance even if I didn’t agree with him and post his article. Granted we had a little fun with it, but he was always in on the joke and appreciated it for what it was and I’d like to think we could hang out in real life.
Hatemedude will always be welcome to submit articles and deck-lists, in him I see a passion for the game that I share; but I will discontinue the Editor’s Notes. While they were done in the same vein that some guys in real life like to bust each other’s balls, I recognize that it comes out with a little too much vitriol in print. What Hatemedude chooses to do with his articles, I will let him decide. I like the guy and I like his articles and I like the discussion and humorous banter he stirs- but, my Editor’s notes were admittedly a bit too distracting. I’ll see if I can interject some of my humor in other ways. Hatemedude doesn’t need my help to do what he does.
Will it be something I try again in the future? Probably not in the same form. I’ve learned a lot from this little experiment and if we can find a way to do it where the whole audience can get the joke it may be worth exploring. Maybe some kind of joint writing article where we can share opinions on something and interact more directly in a way that shows we are having fun. A point and counter-point kind of thing.
Or maybe we’ll just try some milk and cookies next time.
~Kirk
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