This week an article on the website of an Australian newspaper circulated round facebook and I watched as the outraged comments started to appear.
"If this dude thinks it isn't a sport then get him on skates and when we scrape him off the track and pick his teeth up we'll see what he has to say" - anonymous enraged derby person.
"He is obviously close-minded as he only lists white middle class things as sports" - Another anonymous derby person.
"Here is his email address. Lets spam him with hatemail so he really gets the idea of how professional we are" - paraphrased facebook group.
I'm not going to link to the article itself as I don't want to fan the flames, in fact in an email to Betty Schnockered of Derby Girls Blog, the author of the article said that already the comments section on his article has been disabled by the site admins. He said that he had had 76 comments before it was closed and has had a number of emails.
I don't know what the original motivation or intent of the author was (although in his email correspondence with Betty Schnockered he explains that his regular article is a "mickey take" and is a "Bemused look at modern life") but there are so many people out there that will use this kind of approach to boost their online profile, get more hits and increase ad traffic to the website or just simply to try and troll. In fact this type of article is not uncommon in the world of journalism as even big household names(in the UK at least) like Jeremy Clarkson use inflammatory articles to get their name into the spotlight just in time for the release of his book...
Ok, Reality Check Time People
This is not the first and will certainly not be the last time someone writes an article which is negative about roller derby, however if everytime one is written we as a community decide to throw our toys out of the pram and start name calling then we look doubly bad. If we as a sport and as a community want to grow we have to learn to use educated responses to articles like this. I realise this is hard to do as everyone involved in roller derby is super passionate about it because we all, everyday make it happen and so when someone does launch an attack we feel personally aggrieved.
So going forward from this what should we do when we encounter something like this? Well first off I will say that we should avoid sharing links to these pages on Facebook as that just multiplies the situation a million fold. We should contact the author with a measured response like that of Betty Schnockered http://derbygirlsblog.com/2011/12/07/mr-roller-derby-isnt-a-sport-wrote-me-back-betty-schnockered/ which is a fine example of the way it should be.
We should not be getting into mudslinging as then we lose the argument. If the author claims it is out of ignorance then offer them free tickets to a local league bout, get them onside and they may then write another article saying how they had been to see it and it is great. They may however, write another article saying it isn't their thing but that's their opinion.
What I'm saying here is, turn the other cheek, realise that some people are not going to "get" roller derby and some people just like spouting off for the effect. We need to be the bigger person and show the world that roller derby isn't a sideshow, it isn't just about the alternative lifestyle or counter-culture. It's a professional and dedicated sport.
Of course this is just my opinion which I am entitled to.
