A Week of Love and Hate 2 – Why I love it when others write for the Daily SPUF
Well, a Week of Love and Hate 2 is concluding, and the winner will be announced in a bit. But before we do all that, I’d like to write a little thing on the love side of this little event.
When aabicus started writing for the Daily SPUF, I didn’t have much to do with it. I didn’t really write that much, it was just an occasional thing (even though both my first articles were published one after the other). Back then, back in late 2013, SPUF was a much busier forum. SCUD was a new thing and we were a tight-knit community. It wasn’t as hard for aabicus back then to get people to write for the blog. In those days, aabicus and I weren’t at the top of the SPUFer chain.
These days, everything is kinda winding down. SCUD hasn’t destroyed SPUF, but /r/TF2 certainly has, with a more accessible layout (to some at least) that very few people there actually make use of. The message-like structure means that popular stuff leaps to the top, you’re notified if someone mentions you or replies to you and debates between two people are easier to read and never really interrupted. That being said, SPUF is still sitting in its corner, with a new, smaller community. Both more and less tight-knit. I never thought I’d see the day that people saw me as one of the top members of a community. Then again, with my constant posting (9 posts per day on average since December 2010!) and gimmick username (even if that’s not completely true), it was bound to happen eventually.
Of course, with a dwindling community, community contributions tend to dwindle too. It’s not like the TF2 Workshop, where there’s a chance to make a big wad of dosh if you’re very lucky. No one has any reason to sit around answering newbie questions or debating random crits. No one has any reason to sit down and write an article for a little blog in some far off corner of the internet.
That’s the amazing thing though. You do it anyway. You don’t do it often. In fact, sometimes it’ll be Medic-Only week or aabicus-Only Week, or a mix of both of us, but this is the DAILY SPUF, not the Whenever-we-feel-like-it SPUF. So when I see that someone has written an article, it fills my heart with joy. Not because I’ve got a day off from writing, I’ll be writing something no matter what. In fact, so far this year, I’ve written 500+ words every single day (and some of it ends up here…). None of you ever had to write anything at all, but you do anyway, whether it’s a rant or something you want to get off your chest or just something you fancy writing about. That takes effort and time, two things that are often in short supply these days. I really appreciate it. And I truly love reading your opinions and seeing things from your point of view, perhaps even opening my own eyes to new thoughts and ideas.
The Week of Love and Hate is another example of heart-filling. There weren’t many entries this time round, but I don’t blame you, SPUF is about half the size it was last time. But there were still enough articles to have one a day, and have a few left over. One of you though really went over the top, and it thrilled me to see a flurry of high-quality writing, a change from my rambling and aabicus’s click-bait.
So yes, a winner. I said there would be one. The winner of this year’s Week of Love and Hate is SilverWolf. Because holy fuck you jumped up and really got stuck in. Hit me on Steam and I’ll send your prize over to you.
Congratulations, you have won a random game from the random pile of randomness, and an article of your choice, written by aabicus or myself, about how awesome you are.
Thank you to everyone who wrote something, and, as always, thank you all for reading.
