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The Ringer |OT| Formerly Known as Binge Mode

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spyder_ur

Member
slightconfuse said:
Shea Serrano story,about teaching was great
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Thanks for pointing it out. Great article. Kind of out of nowhere too. It really resonated for me as I taught at a similar age (and timeframe) as him, also in an urban school district, though not for as long.

Love this passage; it's a (more eloquent) version of the advice I give to any prospective teachers:
Serrano said:
Making sure your students know that you absolutely, no question, no doubt, for sure, 100 percent want to be in that particular classroom with those particular kids. If you do that, shit usually works out.
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Didn't figure it out until my second year.
 
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ryseing

Member
Curtis's RNC coverage this week has been fantastic. He definitely needs to write more. Hope he's at the DNC next week.
 
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ryseing

Member
slightconfuse said:
New BS POD W/ Sal, JackO and a AGW writer
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Just finished. Really wish Bill would get off his Hillary is such a crook ledge. He and Jack-O. also missed the point of what Michael Moore was saying. Moore was saying that Trump has struck a nerve with people outside of the liberal bubble and those are the people that will get Trump elected, not that the far-left was going to stay home out of disdain for Hillary.

Deep Dives were great. I think I need to pick up that Bill James book.
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
ryseing said:
Just finished. Really wish Bill would get off his Hillary is such a crook ledge. He and Jack-O. also missed the point of what Michael Moore was saying. Moore was saying that Trump has struck a nerve with people outside of the liberal bubble and those are the people that will get Trump elected, not that the far-left was going to stay home out of disdain for Hillary.

Deep Dives were great. I think I need to pick up that Bill James book.
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Seriously need the 1600 guys on to just wreck Simba and Jacko, and I guess Sal too though Sal is an admitted idiot.
 
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KingKong

Member
So at what point do you think Bill will look at the Ringer and see that it needs to change, or is he too busy with his tv show?

Regardless of my opinion of the site, I think the fact that I haven't seen any articles from it featured anywhere else as opposed to grantland can't be a good sign
 
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Bread

Banned
KingKong said:
So at what point do you think Bill will look at the Ringer and see that it needs to change, or is he too busy with his tv show?

Regardless of my opinion of the site, I think the fact that I haven't seen any articles from it featured anywhere else as opposed to grantland can't be a good sign
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Hopefully soon, I'm losing interest fast. The articles are just far too short, I miss Grantland essays.
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
I've actually seen more pretty decent pieces (or at least topics) recently. But yeah, they don't have nearly the stickiness to where you're going to send them around to friends or see them on longform or some other quality-content aggregator. It's a major dropoff in that sense.
 
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SirClinksAlot

Member
AstroLad said:
Simmons is super into conspiracy theories too, even as a lark it seems most of the time.

JackO pod was OK but as usual I have to grit my teeth through some of the stupid shit he says that Simmons just accepts without question, and Simmons busted out the herpderp both candidates suck just the like Cleveland Browns QB situation analogy. Honestly miss when JackO would keep his shit in check and just mention occasionally how he's a hardcore Republican and leave it at that because I do enjoy his sports takes.
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JackO is a dirtbag. In that podcast he actually gets really racist when talking about immigration basically saying Hillary winning means immigration reform which means the end of the republican party. You know, letting non white immigrants come to this country and vote, how horrible! Him getting upset about Trump is hilarious, too. He seems upset that its not just dog whistling from his party anymore.

Anyway, I think the Ringer is pretty bad as a site. Trying to be a sports buzzfeed when we already have deadspin seems like a bad idea.
 
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Gigglepoo

Member
KingKong said:
Regardless of my opinion of the site, I think the fact that I haven't seen any articles from it featured anywhere else as opposed to grantland can't be a good sign
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How big of a deal is this? I always think it's important but don't know if that's my own bias creeping in. But I really haven't seen anyone share a Ringer column other than Ringer employees. That seems like a huge problem.
 
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Brinbe

Member
Katie Bake's piece on Laurie Hernandez (US Olympic gymnast) was solid/lengthy and the closest thing to grantland-esque I've read on the site in a while. Give it a read https://theringer.com/2016-olympic-...t-star-5e0298acf874?source=featured---------1

More long-form pieces like this would be welcome because other than Jon/Dan on 1600, there isn't too much truly compelling content at the moment. Even Bill (which you'd think would be the main feature) is obviously tied up with his show so it is lacking at the moment. But I think it'll eventually find its footing. But it needs to embrace what made Grantland so beloved. And these shorter fluff pieces weren't it. Quality>>>>>>Quantity, always.
 
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Grifter

Member
Wife watched the entire Aaron Rodgers interview on Any Given Wednesday in case The Bachelorette was brought up. Not making fun, I'm impressed.
 
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Fjordson

Member
My only problem so far is that everything is so short. I'll click on an interesting article hoping for something meaty, only to see the dreaded "3 min read" at the top.

Not that everything has to be super long, but I'm hoping for a bit more than the current average.
 
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Advocatus Diaboli

Member
Fjordson said:
My only problem so far is that everything is so short. I'll click on an interesting article hoping for something meaty, only to see the dreaded "3 min read" at the top.

Not that everything has to be super long, but I'm hoping for a bit more than the current average.
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This, plus I'm already filtering by author. Give me Katie Baker, Shea Serrano, Netw3rk, Mal (where's Mal? we always need more Mal), anything 1600, Robert Mays, Ben Lindbergh, Baumann from Crashburn Alley, and literally no one else, except Claire McNear, whose pieces I invariably love but can't explain why.

Am I missing anyone? Serious question. I just don't want to comb through the debris, so to speak.
 
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spyder_ur

Member
The Serrano piece on the best basketball shot in TV/Movies is absolutely fantastic. The question of why was the Bel Air basketball court so small has haunted me for years. It remains unanswered but I'm glad to see others asking the question.
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
ryseing said:
You wanted long form journalism? Here ya go.

There's also a delightfully trashy piece about Silicon Valley/Hollywood romances that I recommend.
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Grantland used to do bigger, more in-depth stuff like this on the reg. The Ringer just put up a roundtable on breakfast cereals, ranking the Bourne movies, and pitting the entrances of The Joker and Apollo Creed against each other. The Ringer is barely floating above click-bait listicle trash. If this is what Bill Simmons is accomplishing with more money and more freedom, maybe ESPN was actually doing a better job and steering Grantland in a solid direction than we thought.
 
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ryseing

Member
Dr.Acula said:
Grantland used to do bigger, more in-depth stuff like this on the reg. The Ringer just put up a roundtable on breakfast cereals, ranking the Bourne movies, and pitting the entrances of The Joker and Apollo Creed against each other. The Ringer is barely floating above click-bait listicle trash. If this is what Bill Simmons is accomplishing with more money and more freedom, maybe ESPN was actually doing a better job and steering Grantland in a solid direction than we thought.
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... I actually liked the cereal roundtable.

I've been somewhat disappointed thus far but at the same time Grantland took a while to find its groove. Ideally the Ringer would move to where the content is personality driven a la Giant Bomb but none of the new hires have really found their voices yet. If I had one piece of advice it would be to move away from the style Rembert/Netw3rk/Shea popularized and do your own thing.
 
beat

beat

Member
Dr.Acula said:
Grantland used to do bigger, more in-depth stuff like this on the reg. The Ringer just put up a roundtable on breakfast cereals, ranking the Bourne movies, and pitting the entrances of The Joker and Apollo Creed against each other. The Ringer is barely floating above click-bait listicle trash. If this is what Bill Simmons is accomplishing with more money and more freedom, maybe ESPN was actually doing a better job and steering Grantland in a solid direction than we thought.
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As I understand it, ESPN was doing a half-assed job at monetizing Grantland, esp podcasts, but it was barely breaking even. Longform pieces are prestigious but are basically prestige loss-leaders: people don't read them that much and even if they did, how many ads can you put in them? They cost a lot in time and money, too.

Buzzfeed even has a prestigious longform program too, which again, is largely funded by their "clickbait listicle trash". I gotta assume that's what the Ringer is doing.

And at least the Ringer publishes seven days a week, unlike Grantland, which mystifyingly - for a sports and pop culture site - chose to only publish M-F.
 
C

Curufinwe

Member
Dr.Acula said:
Grantland used to do bigger, more in-depth stuff like this on the reg. The Ringer just put up a roundtable on breakfast cereals, ranking the Bourne movies
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Their love for the Bourne Legacy is hard to fathom.

But I agree that Supremacy is the best one. Thanks in large part two a couple of NZ actors.
 
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ryseing

Member
spyder_ur said:
Not a bad article, though I don't really understand what he's doing with the 'Level __' thing.

I always really enjoyed Tom Bissett's video game pieces on Grantland. If anyone hasn't read them, they're worth a read. I'm wondering if he'll chime in on Ringer at all.
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Bissell moved to actual game writing. He wrote Gears of War: Judgement. After him they had a bunch of freelancers including Tevis Thompson but nobody really stuck.

Jason did a couple of pieces but it's clearly a side gig for him.
 
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bigkrev

Member
More long-ish stuff is going up. I almost want to make a thread about Lindzay Zoldaz's (who is quickly becoming my favorite writer on the site) article, Can Millennials Take a Joke?

There are two recurring narratives about “millennials” and comedy. One is that they’re so coddled, sensitive, and easily offended that they can’t take a joke; the other is that they’re so calloused that the only things they find funny are jokes about 9/11, ISIS, and a dead gorilla. Like most narratives about young people, these ideas are in direct conflict with one another, because any generation is much too large to sum up with a simple story.

A great comedian is alive to the moment, which means being tapped into its tensions, its injustices, and, most importantly, its contradictions. I agree with the documentary’s many-headed talking head that Lenny Bruce’s 1961 act couldn’t exist in today’s cultural climate. But that is because Lenny Bruce was a brilliant and forward-thinking comedian, and if he were alive today I’m sure he would have developed an entirely new aesthetic and ideology that responds specifically — and searingly — to whatever is going on in our culture right now. It’s a central paradox of comedy, and of all art: You only become timeless by being hyper-attuned to your present.

It’s worth here invoking another Kanye West–ism: “Listen to the kids, bro.” Each generation rebels in its own way; we must learn how to cross the line even as it’s being drawn in chalk in a rainstorm. A culture that forces us to be a little more aware of the world around us, that doesn’t rely on outdated conventional wisdom and thus makes us work a little harder and look a little deeper for a joke, is not necessarily a bad thing. Young people right now are becoming increasingly vocal about structures and abuses of power; maybe a joke that reheats old stereotypes about women or race or AIDS isn’t offensive so much as played out. Maybe “offense,” as this documentary so narrowly defines it, just isn’t that funny anymore. Maybe, to a younger generation, it reeks of the old guard.

By and large, the comedians that are currently striking a chord with millennials are not interested in offending marginalized groups so much as deriving humor from their specific truths. (South Park cocreators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are interesting transitional figures in this debate: Like Christopher Lee, they pride themselves on being equal-opportunity offensive, but the literal cartoonishness of their comedy allows them a distance from those offended by their punch lines. You can’t exactly tweet your outrage at Cartman.) The success of Aziz Ansari, Amy Schumer, Ali Wong, Key & Peele, Chelsea Peretti, Samantha Bee, Jessica Williams, and Tig Notaro all, to some extent, bears this out. In their own ways, each of these comics represents a viewpoint that has been underrepresented in the art form’s history: Bee brings a refreshingly feminist point of view to the male-dominated genre of the late-night talk show; Ansari derives humor from being the American-ized child of immigrants; Wong taped her latest special, Baby Cobra, while seven months pregnant. If comedy is all about boldly confronting taboos, what could be more taboo than giving voice to those who have so often been shut out of conversations?

And the further you get from the mainstream, the less “meanness” and offense seem to signify cutting-edge comedy anymore. Recently, The New York Times’ Jason Zinoman wrote a piece about “sweet-tempered stand-up,” arguing that comedy’s current avant-garde — the fringes from which Lenny Bruce once sprang — is currently experimenting with a kind of radical niceness. “When transgression is the norm, it loses some of its comic punch,” Zinoman observes. He calls Jo Firestone, a comic whose act riffs on insecurity and vulnerability, “the most distinctive experimentalist in New York right now.” You can sense a similar vibe in shows like Broad City — which feels so fresh and subversive because of how much it revels in joy — and Mike Birbiglia’s poignant new movie Don’t Think Twice, which depicts the improv scene with an almost support-group-esque warmth. Comedy that engages with its political moment, doesn’t shy away from tenderness, and dares to suggest that old stereotypes just aren’t that funny anymore? To quite a few people, that just might be the most offensive thing of all.
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C

Cagey

Banned
The urban white millennial Ringer staff has proven to be great at adopting black slang as if it's natural for them to say because they're young hip people.

If one more god damn article has the word woke in the title and a thumbnail of some mid-20s white chick as the author...

Much of the pop culture and non-serious sports writing is painful in a mainstream publication trying to hard to sound "with it" way.
 
A

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Gigglepoo said:
He's got a few more weeks to hide in the shadows. Once the NFL season starts, I hope he does at least two podcasts a week (Sal and House).
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bahahaha dude yeah if he doesn't do that i'll probably unsubscribe at that point since i have my keeping it 1600 sub anyway (i mean, i 1000% expect he will at least have the cuz pod). nothing on team usa even though is impressive. i guess it must be a TON of work to make a middling hbo variety show. too bad as i don't think it's really worth it but w/e
 
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Hasphat'sAnts

Member
slightconfuse said:
Lindbergh and Conception have a pod about no man's sky
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They had a great podcast about Star Wars last year before Jason joined Ringer and I just realized they had an uncharted pod.

I will listen to that now

EDIT: O shit Ben had written a feature on Nolan North for Grantland? How did I miss this?
 
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ryseing

Member
Hasphat'sAnts said:
They had a great podcast about Star Wars last year before Jason joined Ringer and I just realized they had an uncharted pod.

I will listen to that now

EDIT: O shit Ben had written a feature on Nolan North for Grantland? How did I miss this?
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I posted it on Gaming side and it was generally shit on.
 
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