Well this is a first – someone actually wrote a poem about me. However, rather than being a love poem from my girlfriend, the first poem written about me is a satircal Dr. Suess spoof glossing me as the "Gromey" (after the Grinch), talking about how I stole SpectacleFest. This is direct response to Friday’s entry about Buzz Out Loud and SpectacleFest.
First let me be clear about something – I’m not upset that people have decided to have fun at my expense. If someone has that kind of time on their hands to write a 5 page, 1,363 word poem about this than more power to them. However, I feel that it’s necessary to point out that the basis of their poem is based on a false premise, and that I essentially was personally attacked. Again, I’m not upset, but I am annoyed.
I’m annoyed because while my comments were constructively taken on the show (they are setting up a completely separate Wiki & relegating SpectacleFest comments to after the show officially ends), people feel the need juvenilely misinterpret my comments as "those who would crush SpectacleFest".
I don’t hate SpectacleFest, and the essence of my blog posting was not to say that the joke itself was bad – but simply that the constant renditions of the joke were annoying listeners like myself. While I did call out "the listeners" in general, I did not cast blame on anyone specifically and personally tried to go out of my way not to offend the hosts of Buzz Out Loud. I was very conscious about not making any personal attacks, and I’ll let those who read the post decide whether I did. The satirical comment I made about "it’s not funny anymore guy" was not targeted at anyone specifically and was made more to drive home a point.
Where I take issue is that I put these comments out on a blog so that people can read and respond appropriately. There’s a comment mechanism that works well, and people have challenged my views in my blog before resulting in a fruitful discussion. I enjoy being challenged, and enjoy engaging in thoughtful debate. What I don’t enjoy is people resorting to personal attacks simply because they disagree with me, then do it in such a manner that’s basically behind my back. I’m not saying Frank L shouldn’t have submitted the poem to the show, but at least give me the courtesy of writing a comment or emailing me. I also must concede that I should have emailed my blog entry to the Buzz Out Loud hosts, rather than relying on their Technorati feeds.
It also frustrates me that Veronica decided to post this on her own blog, essentially taking a side in this issue and giving the impression that she took my critical feedback about show listeners personally. This is definitely discouraging to anyone else who may share my views about the joke, or anyone who would like to submit feedback in general (If you don’t agree with what everyone is saying, we’ll vilify you). Seeing this on her blog causes me to take this joke personally – there were probably better ways to communicate this poem (i.e the Wiki they are working on).
Again, I’m not upset and I know I’m probably reading too much into a joke about someone commenting on another joke, but I wanted to explain why I don’t think this is very funny.