Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Controversy

I didn’t have my Cupcake (Mel) here today to give me a random topic. Thus I was distraught, and turned to the internet for help. I Googled a random word generator and found watchout4snakes.com. I played around with it for a little while, laughing at the sentences and paragraphs it puts together. Some make sense, others don’t, it’s hours of entertainment. But, then I got down to it. I clicked for a single word, the word that would become my topic for my days blog post and…

Controversy…

What the hell am I going to say about that?

I mean, I had to look the word up. I knew what controversy implied, but due to the media throwing it around like it’s confetti I wasn’t sure. Controversy is a disagreement, usually a public disagreement. It’d be like me bingeing on Reese Cups and my wife deciding to sue The Hershey Company over it. That would be a controversy; it would be a comical one, but a controversy none the less.

Then you have your controversial topics: religion, abortion, politics, sexual orientation, and I’m sure I’m missing a few in there, but you get my point. Now, most of those won’t be discussed here, mainly because I don’t give a flying f*** about them. Religion will come up, but usually in a discussion of mythology (or subject matter, like in Raising Kain). So, I don’t see my blog creating any major controversy. I don’t see my writing doing that either.

Is that a good thing or bad thing?

A little of both, I believe. Controversy can be good publicity. Look at GQ and A&E over the whole Phil Robertson incident. That generated a hell of a lot of attention, and it got people to tune in to see what was going on. People who might never have bought an issue of GQ picked it up just to read the article. Sales go through the roof, and, if the dice land the right way, so do subscriptions.

Another example is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Even though it states quite clearly at the beginning of the book that it’s a work of fiction, people were up in arms about it. Mary Magdalene = The Holy Grail? Christ’s bloodline survives through to this day? Some other major pot boiler plot point that I can’t remember right now. It’s sales were astronomical, and at one point it looked like it might become the second bestselling book of all time (number one is the Bible, if you didn’t know). The controversy around that book created such hype it elevated Dan Brown to literary god status, even though The Da Vinci Code is little more than  formulaic whodunit novel.

I’m not saying it’s a bad book. It’s just not worth the hype.

But, it makes me think. Maybe I should be a little more controversial here and there. Might get me little bit more attention.

I should go pick a fight with a celebrity on Twitter. That might be entertaining as hell.

Later kids.

Ryan

1-28-14

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