This is going to be a long one, so please pour yourself a nice, warm glass of milk before reading.
Before I begin my Unibomberesque manifesto, I should point out that the moniker of “Bald Mike” is not completely accurate. I'm not technically bald, as I shave my head by choice. If I wanted to, I could grow some totally sweet Hulk Hogan hair. Rather than hold on to those scraps (or pay the money to get all the hair on my back transplanted onto my head), I go the way of the Bic (although to be honest, it is a Gilette Fusion, as Bic shavers are pretty ghetto).
Now that we have that issue out of the way, I suppose I have some explaining to do. First off, the Poolcuenews.com blog is not owned by PoolDawg. It is owned by me personally. It was not created for SEO purposes, as all the links that were pointed at PoolDawg from Poolcuenews.com were encoded affiliate links which effectively kill the passage of any link juice (Mr. Barton’s explanation of how linkbaiting and SEO work though was pretty spot on). That said, strong opinions and controversy do get people reading and talking, which was part of the goal. At times though, my posts went beyond strong opinions and delved into the realm of personal barbs, and for that I do apologize.
The PCN blog was created for a few reasons. First and foremost, the purpose was to find interesting things to write about in order to learn more about the industry. While I have a long track record of working in the dotcom and ecommerce realms, this was my first foray into the world of billiards. Journeying into the subculture created a desire to write from the unique perspective of being both an insider and an outsider. 99% of the time, it was my personal opinions about things I either found to be extremely cool or things that I needed to vent about.
Over the years, I’ve had countless people come to me and ask me to write on a topic that they don’t feel comfortable writing about themselves for fear of reprisal. If I was able to check the facts and see the issue, I wrote about it. While my methods were at times unprofessional and admittedly juvenile, many of the topics were then and continue to be extremely important to the billiards industry. For an industry that is as small is billiards is, there is far too much sniping and backbiting between power players and organizations. This represented the vast majority of my venting (except for the petty clique stuff, which I’ll touch on later). A large part of this was simply to bring some of this to the forefront in order to hopefully get people to see the counter productiveness of a lack of unity and leadership.
As to the focus on the WPBA and the regional players working to join the tour, let me say that this is an organization comprised of some amazing women. They work hard, they are open and approachable with fans and they don’t get nearly the level of attention here in the US that they should. In addition, many of them clearly break the stereotype that we all know exists when it comes to women who play pool. The whole “hottie” thing was not some desperate or creepy plea to stalk. It was simply a means to show people that there are a number of beautiful women who play pool. The extension of this in the form of “snappy answers to stupid questions” was created to show fans and readers that these women are also quite funny and charming. In addition, considering the fact that PoolDawg is currently and has been a sponsor of the WPBA, regional women’s tours and women who play pool professionally for the past several years, bringing more attention to these women and women’s professional pool made sense for the sponsorship. I cannot tell you how much it saddens me to see the WPBA in its current condition, as a sponsor, as a fan and as a friend of several of the players.
Specifically regarding Liz Ford and Sarah Rousey, I just got a huge kick out of both of their blogs and found them to be nice people, so I decided to give them both some extra focus and attention. Despite what has been said by others, I had no interest beyond raising awareness of these two fine women, as I am quite content with my wife of the past 18 years (and yes, she is fully aware of the blog). I couldn’t be happier for Ms. Rousey and her upcoming nuptials and wish her the best with her future endeavors.
As for Nathan and Justin, I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Both are clearly quite talented videographers. While I do not personally agree with the promotion of the gambling aspect of pool, I do recognize that both men do as good of a job as any when it comes to production and online streaming. Things were said on both sides and I will say that some of the personal swipes I took were over the top and uncalled for, especially considering the fact that Justin eventually took the high road and disengaged. Cleary, I don’t know you other than from the Big Tony videos (which were pretty funny). As for the Mezz Breaker thing, true story, but I wasn’t the protagonist. That was something that was told to me by a customer in our booth, who then said he was going on our site to buy a BK2 instead. I have no axe to grind with Mezz USA, as we have sold Mezz products for years and Caroline is one of the sweetest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in this business.
I could write for pages and pages talking about the blog, things I regret, things I wish I’d written more about, yada, yada, yada, but I doubt it will change anyone’s opinion of me or the blog. In closing, while some of you may dislike me for what I’ve written, all I can say is that I hope you don’t take it out on my dog Checkers… err… I mean Frank.
I won’t be checking this thread, as I’m currently in the middle of the ocean and internet access from Carnival is shockingly expensive. If any of you have any questions for me, feel free to send them to mike [at] pooldawg.com and I’ll be happy to reply to them when I get back in the office on June 7th. If you see me at a show and have questions or want to talk, please feel free to approach me as I am more than happy to have a dialogue about the issues in the industry and my opinions.
In all seriousness, the mission was always to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the industry in a lighthearted way. Unfortunately at times pettiness got the best of me causing me to behave like a catty little girl. Clearly feelings were hurt and things went sideways and for that I do apologize. If you made it to the end of this 1200 word treatise, thank you for reading.
That's all I've got. Out.
You people are so damn fickle.
