EPTBright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich.
A fantastic look at the dangers of becoming overly positive.
I certainly appreciate the sentiment that remaining positive can have beneficial effects. But when you're actively trying to stay positive, it can be hard to assess what needs to be negatively reinforced. People looking to be positive can often downplay negatives and thus fail to properly address them. I don't know how to run a tournament, but I DO know that I planned my weekend around a big SC2 tournament and was incredibly disappointed. I can't tell anyone how to fix things, but I certainly know that they need to BE FIXED.
We're not the gentle but firm parents of our adolescent son MLG. It's not our collective place to sit MLG down and take the time to explain why their behavior was inappropriate and what they should do in the future. Most of us don't have that know-how. But we sure as shit can voice our displeasure to show a business that we aren't going to put up with more of that.
Now I don't buy into the whole, "it's the internet, that's what's going to happen" mentality, but I feel like this pressing need to offer solutions along with your criticisms takes things too far. As other people have said, the most constructive thing most of us can say is "Find someone who can run a tournament better and hire them." Does that diminish the worth of our complaints? I don't think so.
MLG was not a situation where you can expect people to sit around table and go, "Well, what did MLG do right." It was a massive failure in terms of the broadcast.
If you want to take something positive out of this though, look at the passion all these complaints contain. They really want MLG to be good. MLG would be in a lot more trouble if people didn't really care.
Should people be less full of piss and vinegar? Yeah probably, but I don't see the particular set of complaints being voiced against the event to be unwarranted.
