It’s been an amazing 72 hours as players are moving everywhere, and often to places you would last expect. Tony Amonte to Calgary. Bobby Holik to Atlanta. Sergi Gonchar to the Pens. Chris Pronger to Edmonton? As the mad dash for news flames across the internet, people everywhere are looking to scoop each other to earn prestige and power on their respective discussion forums.
This leads me to one of my greatest pet-peeves about this lockout and the internet. I’ve bit my tongue for long enough, as I have finally gotten tired of this evil plague that has spread across internet discussion forums unabated.
This plague is Eklund, the false hockey god.
Eklund is just like John and myself, and every other blogger on the net: A bunch of people posting their opinions, generally not worried about whether others care. Eklund has somehow amassed a following that would have shamed David Koresh.
Despite the fact that his rumors site is batting about .010 in the accuracy department.
Make no mistake about it folks, Eklund is a plague, and you are the carrier. In these hectic days of free-agent orgies, Eklund’s “rumors” – usually lifted off of legit news sources, and usually posted AFTER they appear elsewhere – are being posted everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. He’s infected Hockeyforums, letsgowings, Calgarypuck, Scout.com, even Hockey’s Future (would link, but their server sucks and the site is unreachable… but that is another rant.) I could go on, and on, and on, and on.
And while I rant against Eklund, I also have to say I am impressed by him. Despite the fact that he is incorrect nearly 100% of the time, he has hundreds of loyal zombies refreshing his site every minute, desperately hoping to spread the virus to their home forums. All the while, he collects money from banner ads and from direct donations. One cannot help but to be impressed at how well he controls the sheeple that follow him, and how easily he has used them to fatten his own pockets.
Me, I refuse to follow the herd. I have never visited his site, and I will never visit his site. For the sake of every message board on the internet, I hope anyone reading this does too. He’s gotten fat of the naivity and ignorance of hockey fans long enough. Let this phenomenon die already. The internet will be better off for it.
