FanPost

RECLAIM THE FANSHOT!

I was immediately taken with Amazin' Avenue when I learned about it in 2010. Here was a site with great writing, a strong point of view, and a friendly and informative commentariat--things that are all too rare on the internet. I was particularly intrigued by the FanShot, a feature wherein regular old users could post basically whatever they wanted, and it was guaranteed to be seen by a fair number of people. The MS Paintz, the GIFs, and all the other weird, creative fan-produced content helped to give the site a unique flavor. On what other site could you find something as fun and wacky as the Dickeyface contest?

But over the past couple years, the FanShot has endured a sharp decline--the type of FanShot to which I refer above, at least. Surely the SB Nation redesign of a few years ago has been a major contributing factor to this phenomenon; the FanShot no longer occupies the prime real estate it did in this site's previous layout. But the real problem, in my view, is that the FanShot has seemingly been taken over by Amazin' Avenue staffers who re-post the content of others: tweets from the Mets official account; players' Instagram posts; official game highlights. These posts usually include a caption of a few words, and then are cross-posted on Amazin' Avenue's Twitter and Facebook pages. This strikes me as a rather cheap way of generating clicks. If you disagree, why, then, are user-created FanShots not similarly cross-posted? When the FanShots are posted by the same people who handle the external social media accounts, it creates an unfair advantage.

I'm not suggesting this kind of post be outlawed entirely. For, even in the heyday of the FanShot, users would post links to articles, videos, etc. But the degree to which it's executed presently ought to be curtailed. When you're posting 8 to 10 FanShots per day, you effectively bury the sorts of posts for which the FanShot was originally intended. This, then, reduces the enticement for creating them in the first place; if I have an idea for a FanShot, but I know it'll only be buried, why should I bother posting or even creating it?

This is why I'm calling on the Amazin' Avenue community to take up arms and Reclaim The FanShot! I believe its glory days can return again, but it'll require our efforts, as well as the willingness of the staffers to reduce their own output. A tweet of the Mets starting lineup is simply not worthy of a FanShot.

P.S. I know, arguably, that "This should be a FanShot!" but what are the odds you'd ever see it if it were? ;)

This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any vetting or approval process.