In the past couple months; since I’ve started writing for the Odyssey, I’ve noticed a couple of things.
First, a lot of people are really angry about it. Articles grouping every writer together as anything from “bratty white-supremacist millennial with nothing educated to say” to “entitled kids writing lists”.
These articles personally did not offend me. I found parody twitter accounts like “The Odyssey offline” to be funny.
Second, people like to be angry over very strange things. Like how writing for a publication is frowned upon, but mile long Facebook rants are great.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and while I might disagree with yours, it is still yours.
I have absolutely no problem with people hating the Odyssey.
Many people find it absolutely horrific that a website would dare have the nerve to give people the opportunity to share what they’re feeling.
It is just mind blowing that someone would create a platform for a millennial who doesn’t always feel listened to, to speak their mind.
Each time I open Facebook I find endless rants on why every presidential candidate is more horrible then the next.
Twitter is a stream of angry messages focusing on anything from something Drake did to how horribly *insert team name* played tonight.
Everyone is allowed to speak their mind, they can say whatever they want.
People can try to become fashion bloggers, food bloggers, travel bloggers or photographers on whichever social media platform they chose, and no one says a word.
So what makes the odyssey so different? What is it about this particular platform that gets people so riled up?
Yeah there are a lot of us, and once a week your Facebook feed will be filled with articles we took the time to write and were brave enough to share. But what is so truly horrible about that?
One writer who was particularly upset by the Odysseys writers said,
“This is not journalism, these are not writers, or authors, they are merely cogs in a machine – a machine that I hope breaks, very soon”
According to Merriam-Webster a writer is “someone who has written something” so I’m sorry Steve Benko, but by definition we are in fact, writers.
He’s allowed to write freely for his Wordpress blog and consider that to be journalism, but an organized group of students who are hired, monitored, edited and paid are not.
He goes on to write about how two articles he deems bad sum up the entire publication and how there may be good writers, “but a few voices don’t speak for an entire site”.
Confusing, I know.
Each week when I submit an article, I try and write something genuine.
Many of my articles are from a couple years ago when I the thought randomly popped into my head. None of them were written with any sense of entitlement.
In fact some of them are about how badly I’ve screwed a couple of things up. They’re the words I couldn’t say to people in person, but wish I had. They’re for the people I don’t talk to anymore, or those who I don’t thank enough.
And some of them are just complete jokes, because lets be honest we all need to lighten up a little bit.
As a journalist major, I enjoy writing, and I always have. That being said, I get it. Listicles may seem frivolous and you’re probably over seeing 10 GIF’s of Justin Bieber.
But next time you go to trash a publication with thousands of kids writing for it, think it through. All they’re doing is trying to find their voice, and I hope that you would let them.
