Following up the “Barrett Sallee article”
Saturday, I wrote a piece entitled “How to deal with guys like Barrett Sallee” that has received a surprising amount of attention in the world of social media. The article really wasn’t about Barrett Sallee per se. It was more about how you, as a fan, should respond to media types IF you don’t want to reward them for writing things you profoundly disagree with.
Writers like Barrett Sallee don’t mind you getting mad about what they write. In fact, they enjoy it, because the more you run their name down the more their price tag goes up. My article was merely a reminder that the best way to show your displeasure with ANYONE in the world of media is to not consume their product. This is hardly a novel concept. Every single person who criticized me for my article does it. It’s called THE FREE MARKET and we all engage in it when we make choices about what to watch, read, listen to or purchase. But human nature being what it is, most of us can’t resist clicking on the page anyway, even when we know that doing so actually helps the person we don’t like.
Barrett Sallee was merely a foil in my article. I used him because he’s the best example I know of someone to whom most MSU fans have disagreed more than a few times. He also has the special gift of needing to get in the final word in every discussion, even if it’s with an obscure blogger like me that uses a pseudonym. This made him the PERFECT foil.
Since he doesn’t follow me and I didn’t specifically mention his Twitter handle when tweeting out the article link, I wasn’t even sure he would see it. I figured if he did see it, he’d probably tweet about it once and that would be it. Never did I expect the kind of reaction generated by this piece. There were tweets and RTs by him of others, as well as direct responses to me. But the cherry on top of the sundae had to be this:
Yep, they actually discussed my article on a sports radio program. I’m not sure what I find the funniest about this, Sallee’s description of my article as a “bizarre rant” or the fact that he thinks the article was all about him. But apparently a lot of his sycophant followers share this belief, which only serves to reinforce my opinion that there quite a few intellectually challenged individuals among his fans.
Really Barrett, why spend any time at all discussing an obscure nobody like me? I doubt your fawning fans will agree, but don’t you think this makes you look just a tad bit small? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to just ignore me? Or does your ego simply not permit this? But far be it from me of “bizarre rant” fame to advise a famous media person such as you. You just keep on doing what you do and we’ll keep on laughing at your expense.
Perhaps my buddy @JDog5513 put it best when he tweeted “You know you won when they talk about it on radio. If it didn’t touch a nerve, he’d never have commented.” I couldn’t agree more, so consider this my victory lap.
Oh and before I forget my manners- thanks to you and all your followers for bumping up my page views.