(Edited on 8/26/16 to make a couple points clearer. Lesson to the kids at home: if you’re on medication, don’t forget to have someone check your work.)
So, an interesting thing happened last week. During a hazy day where I didn’t really feel like doing my planned blog I instead decided to shoot from the hip. Throwing together a blog on a topic I’d recently discussed with friends, I published it and figured that would be the end. Turns out, according to people on Twitter, mentioning Axanar is like yelling fire in a theater. Suddenly there was a swarm of people unlike anything this blog has ever seen before. As I was publishing last Wednesday’s post I looked up to see that a post I figured wouldn’t go anywhere suddenly had more traffic than the rest of my blog combined.
Now, half a lifetime on the internet has taught me three very important lessons about expressing personal opinions. First, never debate people in a format with a character limit, there in lies the path to madness. Second, never jump into the middle of a heated debate in a comments section, they will eat you. And, third, if you do see someone make a valid point, acknowledge and respond to it in a controlled setting. Thankfully, I own the setting.