Last Tuesday was the NBA draft and it drew me back to one of my least favorite places on the Internet. When something exciting happens to the Boston Celtics my appetite for copy about the team becomes nigh unquenchable and the Internet is so vast it seems the perfect place to provide me with every possible trade, signing, rumor, or injury.

The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald are the obvious places to start. ESPN.com provides general coverage. Then maybe RealGM.com. But such has my taste for content about the Celtics become that I am still not sated. There is only one place that can provide enough fodder for my CNN-MTV-fueled desire to be given some new tidbit every 15 minutes. The message boards await.

Sifting through the pap and pabulum on the ESPN.com Boston Celtics Message Board is a layered and complex experience and the forum deserves a bit of dissection, if for no other reason than its oddly compelling mix of hostility, rampant speculation and rumor seems exaggerated, but not unlike what can be in found in many, more established, media outlets.
Starting with the basics, the room has many things in common with all message boards. For those of us not posting, but just perusing others' comments and posts, it can take on strange, voyeuristic qualities. There are also trolls, those who are only looking to bait and inflame. The New York Times makes members email a forum moderator to get posting privileges on their message boards. The response email says, "This sign-up section of the NYTimes forum was created in response to complaints about posters who would re-register after being blocked (a.k.a. trolls) that distracted from a meaningful discussion." ESPN.com has no such policy. Trolls are booted off for inappropriate posts but they come back under a different name, with the regulars entirely aware who they are, often referring to the reincarnated troll by his original moniker. This makes for a combustible message board.

The ESPN Boston Celtics Message Board also has all the annoying bad habits of people who send lots of email or fritter their time away instant messaging. LOL is common (Why "Ha" is not sufficient in these situations is beyond all rational thought) but much more prevalent is an even more horrendous acronym, LMAO. It took me a few minutes: Laughing My Ass Off. Or, its more emphatic cousin, LMFAO: Laughing My Fucking Ass Off. In context, it is not usually nice laughter. Posters are often laughing their asses off at each other, or bad players, or bad trades, or anything they don't like. Just like the unoriginality and presumption of expressing your thoughts in a fat, meaningless acronym, LMAO drips with scorn and derision. In fairness, it is hardly unique to ESPN.com.

As far as the actual content of the site, there is not anything of substance here at all. After all, none of us who convene at the Message Board have even taken the effort to put together a blog. We are not journalists. We have little to offer except barroom debate about the team. Which is exactly why I go there. Well, that, and the freakish social dynamics. But the postings all too often have subject lines like, "Would you guys do this trade I just made up?" What follows is a vociferous and polarizing debate over something with very little basis in reality. This is, if possible, a step down from sports radio. Of course, it has all the advantages of the Internet over radio, but content-wise, there is even less here. There simply is not enough to know about the Celtics to warrant 25 people discussing the team publicly 24 hours a day.

Those members of the ESPN Boston Celtics Message Board who actually post thoughts are small in number but quite clannish. There are definite factions, mostly divided along the lines of whether forward Antoine Walker is the best or worst thing ever to happen to the franchise. Many of the posters seem to know each other. Occasionally a post will be directed at some one individual in particular. There was in February, literally a discussion about what one of them ought to eat for lunch. Occasionally there will be a shout out for some member to respond to an email or a phone call. At the very least, these people spend many hours swapping thoughts on this Message Board. In short, they know each other.

The mix of anonymity and familiarity breeds and nurtures contempt. Most posters wear their dislike of all those who know less about basketball than them on their sleeve. Add all these elements together and the cotton candy content is suddenly not what draws me to the site. Sure, there are some quality members making entertaining or interesting posts. Rickysarmpitsweat can actually take an insult without losing his calm and, delightfully, told someone the other day he would unleash a pair of wolverines on their mother while she was showering. Greenroom31 offers intelligent analysis from time to time without pitching his tent too firmly in either camp. While knocsucow00 can be a bit harsh, he punctuates well and usually has a point to make. But for the most part temperance and moderation do not have a voice in the forum.

Posts often devolve into two people LMAOing at each other. Posters like greenroom who will occasionally offer up a well reasoned defense of both sides of, say, the Walker debate are quickly ignored. The trolls are trolling and there isn't much else to do but lash out at each other. The personal tidbits that the regulars have accumulated about each other now come into play. Any basketball gaffe or perceived lack of knowledge becomes reason enough to drag a posters lifestyle and personality through the mud. Poor trade suggestions are especially apt to bring out a "You fucking idiot!"

And every now and then, things get truly offensive. A debate about gay marriage will spring up on a site which has, as its ultimate insult, faggot. In February the main NBA message board ground to halt with racial slurs and general nastiness unlike anything I'd seen in a public forum before.

All of this base, disturbing behavior can be compelling in the way reality teevee is compelling. It is, in many ways, much more real. It is not shaped and sculpted by producers; it is just a group of people developing and assaulting their social hierarchy through a series of throwaway interactions. But, like teevee, after a while it leaves me nauseated and wanting need fresh air. The insults are rarely witty, the grammar is so poor as to often strip all meaning from a post, and the various and idiosyncratic uses of upper and lower case letters are bound to rub you the wrong way, no matter your preference.

After several months of popping in on the ESPN Boston Celtics Message Board during key times of Celtics activity (the trade deadline, the playoffs, now the draft) I finally wondered if the problems of the forum were inherent in all Internet sports message boards. They are not. At CelticsBlog.com the forum discussions are level-headed, on point, and rarely hostile. There is the occasional exclamation mark, but it usually follows a compliment. People occasionally write things like, "Man, was I wrong about who would get drafted," which doesn?t happen over at ESPN.

So, what has lead to the lowest common denominator dominating ESPN and the higher quality of the posts at, say, CelticsBlog? Both have community, but only one has the infrastructure of community. The fellows running CelticsBlog moderate their forums, start relevant threads, and generally steer the site. ESPN is not paying some schlub to sort through the roughly 120 team message boards on its site. Also, CelticsBlog has daily Celtics material, often just reflection and speculation itself, but it offers something to reflect on and discuss. ESPN has content on the Celtics less often than it does on Eva Longoria. Literally.

The ESPN message board is essentially anarchy, the results certainly speak to that, but sometimes that anarchy can be fascinating to watch. I worry that I am contributing to the debasement of debate and discussion, just as the political junkie who needs his polling fix is helping lead politics to the focus groups. But what choice do I have? Where else in the modern media can I find someone speculating viciously and wildly about something they know nothing about?

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