It's an unfortunate fact of life: whenever you start doing something worth doing, people are going to try to tear you down. People are going to see you trying to better yourself, they're going to see you take advantage of an opportunity, and instead of supporting and encouraging you, they're going to mock you and tear you down. I don't know why. Maybe they have some personal issues, or they're just trying to be funny by being mean.
During my short time with Odyssey as an editor, I've experienced my fair share of haters and part of me wonders why they expend so much of their energy finding fault with their classmates.
This is Odyssey's third week at Harding. We're up to 30-something writers, all writing about topics of their choosing, topics they are passionate about and want to share with their friends. I'm proud of each and every one of them, and I'm ecstatic that I get to facilitate a system where my writers get to write for a national audience. It's really an awesome thing, and I'm not sure why some people see it as an opportunity to gripe and complain.
Yes, all thirty-something of us are sharing our articles on Monday. If seeing our work on social media annoys you, I'm sorry. I don't know why seeing your friends taking pride in their work is a source of annoyance for you, but if it is I have a real simple solution for you: unfriend us.
At Harding we are lucky enough to have a large number of writers. A lot of students that attend Harding have views and opinions they want to express, and I'm more than happy to help give them a platform to express those opinions. That's no reason to make fun of them or crack jokes at their expense. Instead of mocking them, why don't you give it a try for yourself? If it's as easy as you claim it is, then do it. I'd be happy to talk to you about joining the team.
Another common complaint that I hear is about the content and quality. Is all of the content on the Odyssey up to the standard of professional journalism? No, and we never tried to claim that our content was up to that level. When you have 10,000 individual writers submitting an article every week, the quality of the content will vary. Some of the topics may not appeal to you. You may think some of it is superfluous or poorly written. I've got some news for you--you can open up your local, school, or really any newspaper and find articles that are superfluous and poorly written. Again, if you think you can do better, I invite you to come try. Instead of complaining and mocking the people that are putting themselves out there and taking a chance, maybe you should join them and try to improve Odyssey. Finding the worst articles you can find and using them to discredit the whole endeavor is ignorant.
This past week, there was an excellent article written by Wesley Bryant titled "What Do Us Christians Do About Politics?" It was a well-written, insightful piece, and I encourage you to read it if you haven't yet. Of course, some people chose to focus on the grammar mistake in the title (a grammar mistake that I would argue is antiquated, irrelevant, and largely unnoticed by most readers) instead of the message he was trying to get across. Haters used his one mistake, which got past all three of his editors, to mock and invalidate his very valid points. Why? What's the point in doing that?
I have also seen people on Twitter mockingly refer to writing for Odyssey as "selling Plexus." I assume they were complaining about our system of sharing articles so that others can see our writing. To those people, I have a simple question--why are you writing if you don't want people to see it? If you don't share and self-promote your article, no one will know it exists. The Odyssey is providing you with a nationally recognized brand and platform--take advantage of it!
Odyssey has its faults, but overall I think it is a wonderful opportunity and I'm extremely excited to write for them. No other platform gives its writers so much freedom to express their individuality while also offering a national platform on which their voices can be heard. I know there will always be people hating on us or people that think they're too good to write for us. That's their problem. I'm gonna encourage my writers to keep publishing quality material and ignore the haters. Those that hate can't do, and, as Lil' Wayne would say, y'all are peanuts to elephants.
