Good Grape Wine Company

April 21 2009

Looking for the Lunatic Fringe?

Reading Dr. Vino’s posts and notes from his email exchange and that of Mike Steinberger’s with Mark Squires, Robert Parker and Jay Miller, respectively, reminds me of the worst kind of hell known to man – high school.

Most of us graduate from gossipy name-calling, rumor-mongering allusions, pettiness and snootiness from a perceived position or station in life—mostly around second semester of your freshman year in college.

Most of us do, I should repeat.

Of course, there are always those that don’t move on to higher education, and those that simply never move on to higher mental maturity.

Now, I will grant Bob Parker (I don’t know him, but I do like to call him ‘Bob’) and the members of his team a certain defensiveness because they are frequently assaulted with games of “gotcha,” but the bigger grievance I have is with the Squires message board, and all messages boards, legacy throwbacks to a pre-Web 2.0 era, that are largely bastions of triviality marked by group think and bouts of nastiness, with denizens that project faux bravado from the keyboard.

Based on following the wine blogosphere, I have noted that Lyle Fass, formerly of Chamber Street Wines, and Alice Feiring have both been booted off the board in the last year or so.

Not content to learn from others, I followed along (albeit silently) on eBob and a Notre Dame football board for a period of time last year before finally giving it up.

Many argue that all social networking is a time sink, but, in my opinion, there is precious little that offers less value than message boards.  I find they are primarily populated by nut-jobs with pseudonyms spouting off nonsense to the nth degree, mostly the lunatic fringe, that special sub-section and micro demographic of a movement or interest group that spout a vigorous and often extremist party line.

My moment of clarity on message boards came somewhat simultaneously.  On the eBob board, I read with bated breath as an anonymous person defended and re-defended something of so little significance with such venomous vigor that I was left dumbfounded. This train wreck in slow motion unfolded over a 16 hour period, as well, just to ensure that the argument was slow and painstaking.

At the same time, I read posts on a Notre Dame Football board in which adult men listed their wish list for recruiting, talking about football players that are juniors in high school, pending their first prom, with an intensity of 4th hand understanding that left me bewildered.

What it really boils down to is the wine world doesn’t have the corner on bores, or boors, often the same people.

No, they exist in all niches on the internets.

Do you know what is even more head-scratching—that I was spending MY TIME on them.  “What am I doing,” I thought.  It’s the same notion I have when I throw another $100 on the blackjack table in Vegas after getting swept out of my first $100 in 15 minutes. 

Message boards, unfailingly, are the equivalent of listening to the insecure, loud mouth guy at the bar bare too much information that is ill-informed in cringe-worthy fashion.

If you want to see the lunatic fringe, message boards are a good place to look; it’s the online equivalent of going to Wal-Mart on the first of the month.

You won’t find me at either place or message boards in general—wine, football, etc.  If that makes me guilty of my own brand of high school snootiness, so be it.

What I blogged about a year ago:  An Open Letter and a Call for a Merger in the Wine + Technology Space

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