30,000 posts (and nothing going on)

Thirty thousand posts. How does one descend into such depravity, such despair, such douchebaggery?

I feel like the fat guy who always figured he’d be OK as long as he could still get up to use the bathroom, only to find himself crapping in a bedpan and wheezing for air. I feel like the junkie who always figured he was OK as long as he didn’t hock his family’s favorite heirloom, only to find himself at Maynard’s junk store, already thinking about the sweet sweet heroin he’ll inject once he gets 50 bucks for the watch Grandpa wore in his ass in WWII. (Not to be confused with the Junkie here, who always figured he was OK as long as his post count was zero)

I always figured there was someone worse off than me. Someone who always had more posts than me. Someone who always spent more time online than me. Someone whose life was more intertwined with SportsJournalists.com than me.

Even when I overtook Dooley for the no. 1 spot, I figured I was OK because, well, at least I hadn’t hit 20,000 first. Even when I left him in my rearview mirror, I figured I was OK because, well, at least I don’t rank in the top 10 in time spent online (hi Sportschick!). And plus, he’d beaten me to 20,000, so I wasn’t that bad. Even when I hit 25,000, and became a senior member, it was like ehh. It’s not a truly round number. I figured, hey, it could be much worse. After all, I’d taken a few breaks along the way. So I wasn’t that bad off.

But now, here I am: Post no. 30,000. The fat guy is crapping in his bed and the junkie is shooting Grandpa’s most treasured item into a vein in his toe.

How did I get here? It begins, like most stories, at the beginning.

True story: Back in 2002, I delayed signing up for SJ because I was worried that—get this—I’d get addicted to posting and let people rile me up and get me using motherfucking curse words. It’d already happened to me on another message board and I said I was done with that crap. I’m going to be a productive member of society, not someone who spent all day pecking away at his keyboard communicating with complete strangers.

But then the New York Post wrote Mike Piazza was gay and Wallace Matthews wrote that the Post sucked for that and the Post fired Matthews for that and Matthews came over here and posted it and now I knew there was a message board called sportsjournalists.com. Oh man I had to visit that place, I thought to myself. I’d learned from my mistakes at the other place. I’d be fine.

Except of course I wasn’t. I posted, just as anonymously as everybody else. But then a miracle happened: SportsJournalists.com went down. It was like a bar closing down just as a boozehound walked in. Productivity would be my middle name!

So imagine my surprise when the instant message popped up that brisk October day: “Sportsjournalists.com is back up!” wrote my friend.

I read the board for a couple weeks. Lots of threads about the business, lots of posts about ‘80s-era nostalgia, lots of posts by a guy named Mizzougrad96 lauding some fucking studs and falling in love with the ellipses. I kept observing, wanting to post but knowing I couldn’t trust myself not to get re-addicted to a message board.

Finally, on Oct. 22, 2002, I could resist Lucas Wiseman no more. I came up with an anonymous-sounding email account at Yahoo. I pondered a screen name. The business had long ago made me bitter. I wanted to some day drive a cab. And I figured that a board for sports journalists would be filled with many people older than me. So at 29, I figured, sure, I was still young.

At 3:53:37, I hit “submit.” And BitterYoungHack was born.

At about 3:53:39, I became the recovering lardbutt who stops for just one Frosty at Wendy’s or the alcoholic who figures one beer can’t hurt. One Frosty turned into a gain of 150 pounds. One beer turned into a never-ending bender. And one post turned into 30,000

How does one put into perspective such wastefulness? Figure each post is 15 words. And that’s a generous assessment. That’s 450,000 words. That’s like six books. Or one Rokski post.

And as of this posting, I have been logged on for 118 days, 12 hours and 23 minutes. That’s just over 2844 hours. Do you know how many times I could have satisfied made love to my wife in that time?

1,279,800 times.

I’m no dummy though. Despite my healthy post count lead, I know I’m not indispensible or some wizened team leader. On most teams, you have to earn street cred before you can make fun of the guy who’s been there forever. Here, you earn street cred by mentioning I never satisfy my wife.

I’m not Brett Favre, untouchable to the point where he doesn’t even have to co-exist with his teammates. I’m the guy in the corner, rocking the mullet, listening to his Walkman and touching himself to a picture of a 1989 Belinda Carlisle, at whom all the newbies try to avoid making eye contact.

“Come for the discussion,” the sign above me reads. “Stay for the freak.”

I’m not here because I bring a lot to the table. I mean, shit, there’s not a lot of variety in my posts. Here’s an unscientific breakdown:

5,698 posts about my lack of sexual stamina or responding to posts about said lack of sexual stamina
5,287 posts about the ‘80s
3,826 posts about Beverly Hills 90210
3,383 posts about the Prancing Billy Series
1,187 posts quoting The Simpsons
1,082 posts mocking Almost_Famous
1,029 posts that are otherwise self-referential in nature
961 posts calling Spnited an old man
961 posts responding to Spnited calling me a fucking dickhead
872 posts ranting about the JRC
786 posts with only the word BLOGS!!!!
615 posts telling Simon_Cowbell (or any of his other pseudonyms) that he’s a fucking know-nothing fuck for thinking baseball needs a salary cap
615 posts telling Simon_Cowbell (or any of his other pseudonyms) that he’s OK because he likes Freaks and Geeks
542 posts mocking Jay Horwitz
450 posts calling far-right Republicans names
415 posts riffing on Monday or lipstick on walls
412 posts about my fantasy teams
365 posts telling Chuck~Taylor he’s a know-nothing shit
345 posts about what I want to do to Rachael Ray
341 posts mocking Norm MacLean
327 posts mocking Hondo for hating Vince Young
165 posts on the NIAFL board
129 posts about how I hate George Mason
98 posts about how Mikey’s never getting laid
52 posts about Terry Haute
32 inside jokes about high school with Storm Surge
15 posts telling Pallister to walk on home boy
5 Christmas-themed posts riffing on “It’s A Wonderful Life”
3 posts about how I have writer’s block (even though I have 30,000 posts)
2 posts of actual relevance about journalism

I’m more like the long snapper the team tries to replace every year, but can’t. Every year, the team brings someone in to try and replace me. And every year, a promising newbie looks like he’ll give me a run for my job, until he, you know, gets a life.

But maybe this is my year. Good Doc might already be here if not for his hiatus. Mike311gd has posting talent few of us have ever seen, plus a complete inability to make love to another human being. Maybe DyePack will reappear and inspire invective-laced posting from Shotglass. And fuck, it’s an election year. So Fenian_Bastard might bring some class to the no. 1 spot that disappeared when I overtook Dooley.

So with my first 29,999 posts in the rearview mirror, I thank you all for making this oddly self-contained world of ours so much fun to visit on a daily basis. And I am here to wallow in who I am: The junkie who has hit rock bottom. There’s no way around it. 30,000 posts qualifies me for a doctorate in looserdom.

I leave you with this thought: I took two days to post no. 30,000 mostly because I was actually busy (no, really, I was), but also because I wanted to make sure I put some thought into the milestone post. I didn’t want to waste it riffing on the overrated hotness of Cameron Diaz, or my downstairs neighbors smoking and filling up our driveway with their junked plate-less cars, or by ranting about how much Ryan Seacrest sucks, or on how ironic it is that WalMart sells condoms because at any given time 94% of the people in WalMart are there because someone didn’t use birth control or by simply posting COCK SHIT BALLS!

So perhaps now, that I’ve hit 30,000, I’ll be more judicious in my posting. Not every Fast Times thread needs a reply. I don’t need to make fun of Jim Nantz on a football thread. I don’t need to riff on every Simpsons I’ve seen or riff on every cool video I see on BYH Classic or post about the minutiae of my boring-ass suburban life.

Fuck that. Yes I do. See you at 40K, motherfuckers.

 

You suck, dickhead.

 

It's a date. See you next weekend.

 

Who's the friend whose ass we need to kick?



Hell, that post of yours equals the length of all my posts combined. Congrats looser amigo.

 

Fuck you, Doc, and catch up.

 

For me to reach 30,000 anytime soon, I'll have to go on an indefinite posting binge of Flash/RokSki proportions. I don't see that happening.

 

COCK SHIT BALLS

Just for the hell of it

 

In that order?

 

CONGRADLAYSHUN ByHH YOU TRU CHARMION

 

BYH...it could be worse. You could have 30,000 on villarrealsports.com.

 

solid. damn solid.