|
Now, I’m normally not one for huge, sweeping generalizations but that is what I will be doing today. This is not directed at anyone in particular, so if you write ladder blogs, don’t hate me too much. Odds are I haven’t read yours in particular anyway. But as anyone who reads the blog section of TL as much as myself will know, there is a major pandemic of these atrocities that one must sift through to find the high-points of the section. Undoubtedly, I will get some hate and oh-so-feared one star ratings, especially from the writers of said blogs and, as usual, people who look like this:
![[image loading]](http://www.ohdearism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/troll.jpg) May or may not accurately represent amount of clothes typically worn.
Image stolen from some site called ohdearism.com . It’s not an advertisement, you just always gotta cite your sources yO.
Still, it is something that needs to be discussed.
1) You’re Bad at Sc2
This may be a tad hypocritical coming from a simple, pathetic NA Masters player, but I feel like the point still stands. For some reason, most of these people that write ladder blogs seems to be in the bronze to gold range, where rough gameplans are a luxury and antelope cannons run wild and free. As such, most of your games are terrible and it’s nearly impossibly to even feign interest in them. There’s nothing to learn from them, they’re either you rushing and winning in 6 minutes or you getting rushed and losing in 6 minutes, or, at best, they’re a long “epic” game that is actually two people sitting on their ass for 40 minutes and then a-moving at each other.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/EUsgT.png) That number above your minimap is not directly correlated with “epicness.”
Source: 40 Goddamn minutes of my life.
Is that to say that people in lower leagues cant have truly interesting and spectacular games? Hell no. It happens all the time (perhaps most often when two people rush each other poorly). But as a general rule, people will be hard pressed to give less shits about that game you just played.
2) You’re Either A Shitty Writer, or You’re Just Uninteresting
So you just want to share your progress as a player. Innocent enough, right? But you can’t just upload a bunch of replays from that “sick practice session with your bro who’s totally in platinum, man” and expect anyone with the capacity to change to page not to. If you played a great game in particular, write a battle report or something. If you dont know, all that means is taking screenshots from the game and using (interesting) comments to tell the story of the game. Hell, even if the game isn’t great, you can make it great.
Perhaps one of the best known battle reports is the story of Proberto, which you can find here. It’s BW, which some of you may not be too familiar with, but go ahead and read it anyway. I’ll wait.
Great. See how unspectacular that game was? But Chef is an amazing writer, so he made the game great. That’s what you, Mr. Ladder Blogger, need to do. I’ve done it myself several times, all shameless linked here. If I, a person without an ounce of funny inside my entire being, can write battle reports about mediocre, low level games and have them be well received, you can do. Just stop being lazy and do it.
While I’m at it, I gotta shout out Gheed for perhaps exemplifying this point best. The f**ker just sits there and worker rushes people. Doesn’t exactly make for the most interesting games in the universe. But Gheed is funny as hell and he makes it work. Find a sample of his adventures here.
3) I Just Contradicted the Shit Out of Myself, but Screw You Anyway
Okay that heading is a bit over the top. I don’t actually hate you, fictitious ladder blogger. But yeah, see if you can spot the contradiction between points one and two.
Give up? Or you got it? Here you go anyway:
If you want to really improve and get super good to the point that people actually care about your games, you need to practice. You can’t be sitting around typing out elaborate accounts of your games. And to be frank, even your mediocre ladder blogs you’ve been doing so far cut into the time you could have spent getting closer to your goal of that elusive top 8 gold icon. And if you don’t necessarily care about your rank and your improvement 1) Why are you even blogging about your ladder escapades; and 2) you might as well make them interesting if you’re going to cut into your practice time anyway.
“But Bibbit, I Just Do it to Track My Own Progress!”
Great! That is 100%, absolutely fine and is a perfectly dandy thing to do (though you could have said it less whining-ly, fictitious author). But if that’s what you’re doing, just don’t be sad if nobody reads or comments on it. If you don’t write to make people want to read, you can’t complain when people don’t want to read. Simple as that really.
I don’t think I’ve ever done a real rant before, but I think this is one. It had to be done.
Bibbit is cave-dweller who only surfaces to occasionally make ill-conceived, unfunny jokes. You can follow the tweets he never makes or has never made @ www.twitter.com/Bibbit_Mack
Edit: I found a cool game you can play reading through the comments on this thread. Basically all you gotta do is read a post and guess from the post whether or not the poster has a ladder blog. Its shockingly easy !
 
|
I think people should just put effort into their threads in general. Gotta agree with what you wrote here. If you are not going to put the effort in to make an interesting blog, people are not going to read it.
|
A bad blog about bad blogs ..
|
liked it =D but dont be so whiny about not having a funny bone in you =D
|
On November 24 2011 13:47 d9mmdi wrote:
liked it =D but dont be so whiny about not having a funny bone in you =D
Ehh even metablogs can't possibly be complete without a solid dose of whining.
+ Show Spoiler +
|
the worse type of ladder blogs are the ones where the writer says "i'm going pro" or "bronze - masters in 2 weeks"
|
wow lol very well written, you bring up some good and very true points that we see here often 
Also I agree with shawster lol, I don't believe many of them actually accomplish those goals? 
|
I love the I'm bronze and got promoted to silver EZ
What you think about me going pro?
|
On November 24 2011 13:46 aimaimaim wrote:
A bad blog about bad blogs ..
A disagree.
Great blog, I don't mind reading most aldder blogs, those that just status updates are sort of bland.
|
not gonna lie, i lol'd pretty hard at this blog
great blog :}
|
|
|
While your blog may discourage "fictitious ladder bloggers", I think the more likely outcome is about 50 blogs from prospective ladder bloggers starting their own blog alternatively "sticking it to the cynical, mean, and destructive Bibbit" and "I am a good writer, I am high platinum and not bronze, therefore you must care about that sick game I played today".
But thanks, we do need more blogs about how other blogs are bad. As long as those blogs are entertaining.
|
I don't think I've ever read a ladder blog. I'm kind of surprised there aren't more Starcraft 2 blogs or at the very least e-Sports blogs/zines. The type of blogs that report coverage, news, interview players, interview sponsors or showcase popular VODs.
I guess the show casts kind of do that already, but I do love myself some well written articles!
|
Completely agree, I've almost entirely stopped reading the TL blog section because of this
Still, somehow I doubt any of the ladder bloggers read anyone else's blogs; the chances any of them will see this is... yeah >.>
|
When will you be releasing your blog about Women?
|
I completely ignore ladder blogs. I would however read someone who plays 2-3 hours of practice with one matchup, one map, and the same person who are both roughly equal in skill.
|
Should be spotlighted
Nowadays I see alot of these sc2 ladder blogs by low level players which makes ugh...why isnt there any much real blogs nowadays...
And don't get me started on those !@##$%^&*(() blogs of Wood/Bronze/Gold/Platinum players wanna go pro~
|
Agreed yO. They're just boring. Blah blah.
Oh yeah, might need some help in writing a BR. Sick game today, you'd be proud of me.
|
The 1 base SG pic is funny because even 50 minutes into the game the guy hasn't mined out his main!
|
I agree. It's not even that they're written by people bronze-gold. It's just that they're zero content, not interesting. Even if the author was a pro, I wouldn't care if all they wrote was about how they played 30 games today and they're sick of <that cheese/situation>. No one but the most hard-core fan would ever care. Girl blogs (which I generally don't read) are better than someone using Blogs as their sc2 game dear diary.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
