I don't blame them for doing it - the web is a hard business, and to get eyeballs you have to shake the tree. But I find a hard time getting value out of that type of coverage, personally.
Well, I have a hard time getting value out of your shoes. Uh... so there! Put that in your California Games-themed foot bag and vape it.
Just like in print publications and newspapers, not all op-eds will be amazing quality (very few will be) but honestly I still prefer that to pages of junk ads masquerading as journalism, repeated and linked to each other by all the major sites, or some stupid "Japan is so wacky! Look at this cake!" piece.
Your opinion is wrong, fanboy. Those cakes are great! Here are 10 reasons why you're missing the point...
[Click to continue reading.]
The main issue, which Pac-Man touched upon, is that there is no goal of elevating the conversation. There's nothing wrong with being an opinion-thug (no one's going to get hurt by it... excluding a few headaches by morphine addicts on the come-down), but it doesn't really do anything. No writing is improved upon, the cakes are still shaped like boobs, and more fracturing of the time continuum continues unabated. "This is how it is! Pick your side and if you're not on mine, you're an idiot!" does nothing for anyone, except the writer's ego. They have learned in this medium that if you pick a side and deride any opposing viewpoints, your peers will jump to your aid in the most unprofessional way possible. It then seeps onto the forums (usually in the negative), which causes those curious folks to scurry on over to read (or not) the piece and leave a critique (well thought out and worded, or not), which causes more peer back-slapping and reader bashing.
It's one of those, uh... one of those vicious turtles? Unicycles? It's one of those vicious things, by golly!
Now if we can only fix the headlines of a certain writer that makes it sound like he's covering D-Day/Zardoz and not some indie developer's bowel movements, everything will be right in the world... but that's just a growing illusion.