Twitter stinks, Indy 500, Cloud Nothings and Blossom Time in Chagrin Falls… While We’re Waiting

It’s the Friday before a holiday weekend and I feel like a teacher that knows everyone’s mailed it in with their minds on the sunshine and cookouts and cornhole. Anyway, try to stay with me for just another 20 minutes. 🙂

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Twitter stinks… for many many things. The more we’ve become comfortable with Twitter as a communication medium, the more we’ve come to realize its limitations. Twitter and it’s character limit and rapid style make it an inferior method for having any kind of in-depth conversation. It’s a good way to share links and aggregate content and experience events together, but the minute a topic gets even remotely deep, it must be abandoned. Mark Cuban’s comments are just the latest example.

Mark Cuban’s comments got quoted, headlined, and ultimately tweeted and it was a travesty to the conversation. ABC News’ headline was “Mark Cuban Admits He’s ‘Prejudiced, Bigoted’ in Candid Interview.” The Washington Post preferred to comment directly in their headline saying, “Mark Cuban goes ‘full Mark Cuban,’ talks about Donald Sterling, his own prejudices”. And of course, with just that, people started forming their opinions.

Meanwhile, I don’t even know if I’ve seen the entirety of the interview Cuban did yet, but even the longer clip I saw was four minutes long. In our modern age with unprecedented access to information, we’re also given this unfettered access to communicate and opine in public. The ease of opining has now become easier than it is to consume the media. Twitter is the perfect example of this where it’s much easier to spout an opinion even before reading anything more than the headline.

This happened about a month ago with Chris Mad Dog Russo and the Washington Post. Russo got into a conversation with a caller about the lack of diversity on his staff. Over the course of four minutes, he talked on his radio show about the topic, but a writer at The Washington Post decided to post the video and then “summarize” it.

Ugh.

If you can’t bear to listen, the summary is as follows: Russo said there are no black radio hosts “worthy” of doing the job.  He later backtracks and said that no black radio host worthy of doing the job has applied. Needless to say, perhaps, Russo’s slight rewording did little to remedy some of his listeners and, especially, social media’s outrage.

I admit Russo’s comments sounded a bit awkward as he and a caller were talking over and around each other, but in the end, he didn’t say anything close to what people thought he said based on the author’s one word quote.¹ Yet there was Twitter for people to consume less than an infinitesimal piece of the story before dropping intellectual bombs.

I love Twitter. I love tweeting. I love communicating with fellow Cleveland fans that way. Still, it’s really important to understand the limitations of the technologies you love.

You can summarize this post on Twitter and in tweets incorrectly by saying CRAIG LYNDALL SAYS TWITTER STINKS.

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I dislike racing, but I married a girl from Indianapolis… so I’ll be paying a tiny bit of attention to the Indy 500 this weekend. I didn’t get racing at all until I went to an Indy 500 one year. That let me understand just why racing fans love it as much as they do. It didn’t convert me into a racing fan, but it gave me a level of respect for it and allowed me to pretend once a year that I do, in fact, have even a tiny amount of rooting interest in auto racing.

With that in mind, I found Tommy Craggs’ post at Deadspin titled, “How To Watch The Indy 500 If It’s The Only Race You’re Going To Watch,” very interesting.

Since 1911, the Indianapolis 500 has been an American Memorial Day tradition. Like the Kentucky Derby and horse racing, it’s the one event where people who don’t even care about the sport end up watching. The difference? The damn horses don’t go 240 MPH.

So, yeah, you should watch it. This is easily the most entertaining, accessible, and exciting race to watch on Memorial Day weekend. Here’s what you need to know to enjoy the 500 to its fullest.

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Blossom Time… Of course, if you’re not in Indianapolis this holiday weekend means a lot of things here in Cleveland. For me it means Blossom Time in Chagrin Falls. I split my time as a youngster between Blossom Time and Chesterland’s famous “Wine and Cheese” festival, which they’ve since rebranded in order to de-emphasize the alcohol, I believe. These are some of the initial beacons of summertime though. When you’re in school, it signals the thawing winter and maybe even trying to make new relationships with a girl as you head into a summer of teenage love and dating.

These carnivals actually stink in so very many ways because they’re kind of low rent and the carnies who work them are weird. But it’s not about the rickety rides or the ripoff games that steal half your wallet. It’s about gathering together with your friends, classmates, neighbors, or whatever. I know that’s a really cheesy paragraph, but I couldn’t be more excited for the weekend and all the cheesiness that these carnivals will deliver because I’ll see a whole bunch of people I know and probably some that I haven’t seen since the weather turned to snow last fall.

And who knows? Maybe this is the year where my kids get to learn the tough lessons of life and death via prize goldfish. 🙁

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Last but not least, I’m a broken record on Cloud Nothings… I’m still on a music high since I saw Cloud Nothings a couple weeks ago. That in mind, I’m going to include this video because I can’t get this band out of my head still.

Have a great weekend guys! Stay safe!

1. Also, I can’t prove it, but I swear the second part of that paragraph changed from the one I initially read. [↩]