By Mark
Today I want to tackle a subject that rears it's ugly head too often around the packer web world. That is some of the rivalries and bad blood you see from time to time.
Most of this started before social media and even before blogs were a thing. It goes back to some of the first message boards or forums that were at the time the only way you could get packer news or interact as fans. They were run by news media in some cases or were private.
I myself started on 3 of these sites. Because they were the only source of information at the time the competition was fierce. As time went on you had several sites break away from the 3/4 big forums and members that followed them there. This created a trust issue. Even taking a couple members from a site created a war between sites and rival members.
Two events really made this bad blood boil even more. First the Favre retirement fiasco hit which deeply divided every site and board out there. More splits occurred because of this.
At about that same time we started seeing the blogs appear and this started to draw folks away from these same long standing communities. Again a loyalty and trust issue.
Let's stop a minute right there and digress a moment. At this point you need to understand that a site admin and or owner puts hours into his or her site. It's a labor of love, there is a lot of passion and hard work that goes into those boards.
Don't undervalue how much time and effort people put into making a place you can talk Packer football.
Now continuing as Packerland was dividing so were many of these sites. A few ..well a very few started running ads, etc to try to stay afloat. While there is a lot of logic to that it did and still does chap the hides of many independent sites/blog owners. To them it's a labor of pure love.
Basically it's a purest issue and old school /new school that comes out. Many of the ill feelings are anywhere from 7 to 10 years old and stem from the old message board wars. To most of you this may seem like a petty issue, but to others it's history from way back.
Some of this you just won't change. The wounds are too deep, but I will ask all of you reading this post to do one thing. Stop clicking past sites. Most have free registration... take 2 minutes and register at ALL of them that means more to these owners than any amount of money. Seriously we are packer nation and when we unite it's a beautiful thing.
I hope this helped at least shed a little light into what went on in a place far far away. Ask questions and I'll answer the best I can in the comments below
Until next time GO PACK GO !
Good post Mark!
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