(Pardon the bad language) "Holy shit, your site is bad. Please stop." Well, the picture was first, which was welcoming enough, and that was the first sentence of an article I saw on WordPress. The blog "whatimhere4" decided to take the time to explicitly state their apparent extreme disgust for The Odyssey. Since I'm an Odyssey writer it's no surprise that I'm biased in favor of my co-workers. As pointed out in my last article, "In response to: 'I Am Offended By Political Correctness'" everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm open to criticism that will help myself and fellow writers get better at our craft. However, this is not the goal of "whatimhere4".
The beginning of their first paragraph says, "Sometimes when I scroll through Facebook and see one of the articles from The Odyssey, I consider snapping my laptop in half, or finding the tallest building and jumping off. I mean, the site is really bad." If you're getting that riled up about some college aged people expressing their feelings and sharing their experiences with those around them, then you need some serious professional help. No one is forcing you to read or even look at any Odyssey articles. If someone shares one of them you can simply unfollow that person, problem solved.
One of the most interesting aspects of your article, strange WordPress blogger, is that you rip on the ‘About’ section of The Odyssey and don't even have one yourself. Our about section states, "Odyssey is a social content platform that discovers and shares a chorus of millennial voices, amplified organically through social media. The platform empowers its thousands of writers to contribute and share what matters to them, and enables content to find its most relevant audience organically." The blogger complains that this is redundant, which I kind of agree with. The restating of social media or social content multiple times is kind of unnecessary and although I understand what it means by "organically" I feel like a better word could be used. After reading their critique, I was curious about their own 'About' section. This is what I found, "Nothing found. It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help." If this isn't the very definition of hypocritical, I don't know what is.
The most annoying portion of this very poorly written article is, "The biggest problem I have with the site, is that most, if not all of the writers come from the same background. The site’s writers are basically early 20s privileged white college students. Basically, if the cool kids in high school took to writing, about nothing. There is no culture." Have you met most of The Odyssey writers and found out what class they come from? Probably not. You say we have no culture yet you're throwing a temper tantrum in your article about some thoughts of college age people. How old are you, four? If anything is without culture, it's your article. In response to an Odyssey quote, "The U.S. is now respected as a soccer country, that should never be the case." You say "No the fuck it is not." You're lacking so much culture and general decency, that you felt it was absolutely necessary to swear.
What's even more laughable is your flawed logic in the very next paragraph. "The MLB generates more revenue than any other sports league in the WORLD besides the NFL. Soccer was supposed to be the sport of the future in the ’70s – soon to take over the United States, yet here we are, 40+ years later, not a soccer country. Major League Soccer generates a laughable $400 million a year in revenue compared to Major League Baseball’s almost $10 billion a year revenue." Well of course it does! The United States of America is one of the most developed countries in the world and baseball and football are its most popular sports. Even though soccer is a major sport in most of the world's countries, it isn't big in first-world USA so of course it isn't going to make as much money as the bigger sports.
So what if we aren't always the most experienced or the most cultured writers. Why are you so upset that people in their 20s have a place to publicly state their opinions and feelings? Before I became an Odyssey writer I thought it was a great way for young people to be expressive and put themselves out there and I still think that. It's not too hard to avoid Odyssey if you're truly that abhorred by it. All you have to do is never type http://theodysseyonline.comin the URL bar or just don't click on one on Facebook; it really is that simple I promise you.
