Last Sunday, a Travel Golf writer named Chris Baldwin posted an entry on his blog titled "Replacing Justin Timberlake with no-talent Taylor Hicks shows how far Bob Hope Chrysler Classic's faded." In the blog, Chris gave his opinion that the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic golf tournament had sunk to a new low by replacing Justin Timberlake (who was a part of the tournament in 2006) with Taylor Hicks.
"Yes, that Taylor Hicks. The prematurely gray-haired moron from American Idol, the worst show in the history of television. How low can the Bob Hope people go?"Needless to say, Chris' blog entry riled up the Soul Patrol in a big way. At the time of this writing, 155 comments have been left behind, the overwhelming majority of which slammed Chris with both feet. The previous 10 entries in Chris' blog averaged 7.7 comments.
So Chris Baldwin did the only thing he could do in this situation. He posted a second blog entry about Taylor two days later, this one titled "Taylor Hicks' Soul Patrol of imbeciles no match for us Wie Warriors." This time, Chris took direct aim at the Soul Patrol.
"When you write a golf blog as pure as the first fresh snow like I do, you learn a few things along the way. This week for instance, I discovered that an American Idol hack named Taylor Hicks has a small band of overweight desperate housewives for fans who call themselves with much third-grade pride the Soul Patrol. These are the kind of people whose husbands always play 36 holes and never want to go home."Chris struck gold again, this time with a whopping 201 comments. In the five blog entires following, he has averaged 3.3 comments.
The second blog entry created quite a stir on the TOSP forum. No, not because he called us "overweight desperate housewives" (though, for the record, I do want to say that I'm not desperate, I'm not a housewife, and after I get back from the gym I'll tell you I'm not overweight). The stir was created because many people felt that the only reason Chris wrote the second blog entry was because of the huge comment response he had gotten the first time.
Most bloggers thrive on the comments that are left behind by their visitors. It doesn't matter whether these comments are positive or negative. All that matters is that comments are left behind. When a blog subject results in a higher-than-normal number of comments, chances are another blog entry on the same subject won't be too far behind.
And that's exactly what happened with Chris and his blog. The first entry about Taylor resulted in a 2000% increase in the number of comments being left, most of which were negative towards Chris. So he made a second blog entry, this time attacking the Soul Patrol directly.
So would Chris have made the second blog entry if the Soul Patrol had not left all of those comments behind? More than likely he would not have. He would have gone on to the next topic and not given it a second thought. And that is why there are a group of Soul Patrollers who strenously, and repeatedly, encourage their fellow Taylor Hicks fans to not leave behind a comment on a blog that attacks Taylor. These Soul Patrollers say that when you do, you only encourage the writer to post another negative blog entry about Taylor and/or his fans.
What do you think? Should the Soul Patrol not leave behind a comment on a blog entry that attacks Taylor? Could you restrain yourself from typing the first thing that comes behind when you read a blog entry like the one that Chris Baldwin posted?
Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Who knows..... if enough comments are left, I might just talk about this again.
Tags: Taylor Hicks, American Idol, Birmingham, Alabama
