Believe It or Not, Social Media and Its Users May Actually Be Hurting Racing Instead of Helping It; Ronnie Johnson, Kenny Gates, Bobby Varin and Tadd Parks Share Their Views on the Relationship of the Internet and Racing
Story By: MATT NOLES / RACERSGUIDE.COM Photos By: DAVE DALESANDRO and MATT NOLES / RACERSGUIDE.COM
SPRAKERS, NY- July 1, 2016- Social media is nothing but a contradiction of terms. In fact, it’s more of a compost pile for morons.
There’s nothing social about receiving messages in the form of text or photos where human interaction is about as frequent as an honest politician. And as far as the media aspect is concerned, the line between fact and fiction is so blurred that attempting to interpret what is true from the constant stream of nonsensical bullshit is utterly maddening to the point of infuriation leaving the negative posts to far outweigh the positive.
What is truly troubling is the amount of drivers that openly trash and degrade speedways, sometimes while they are actually sitting in the pit area of that establishment. Not to mention the amount of fans that find something wrong with nearly every event at every speedway they visit and the supposed ‘media members’ who do nothing more than spew misinformation like a manure spreader. With all the internet racing experts and keyboard warriors, it’s a wonder that there are any speedways in operation or businesses willing to be associated with the sport at all. Sometimes one has to wonder if people would be happier if racing were nonexistent.
It’s almost baffling, really, that a group of individuals consisting of fans and even drivers at times can take something that they claim to love, claim to cherish even and continually run it and its participants into the proverbial mud over and over ad nauseam. Instead of using this tool to benefit something larger than themselves, they’d rather be narcissistic and see how many ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ they can garner. It’s a suicidal trend that has already had unfavorable consequences.
It would be a lie to state that platforms such as Facebook or Twitter haven’t had positive influences in the world of motorsports. They undoubtedly have and there are more than a few examples that come to mind however, as true as that statement is for every good illustration there seem to be twice as many derogatory examples that take its place. If you think that isn’t true, try posting something positive versus something negative and watch the statistics closely.
Third generation racer Ronnie Johnson can see the good, the bad and the ugly where social media is concerned. “It certainly has changed racing at least on the political end of things,” stated Johnson. “There’s a positive side to it and we all know that there’s a negative side to it. People can be sarcastic or spiteful in their own little ways. I’ve seen people get a chance to race that normally wouldn’t have had the chance because of social media and I’ve seen race teams broken up because of it.”
What people fail to realize is that stating fiction as if it were fact can have dire consequences for the parties involved; sometimes to the point of no return. “There are things that take place that aren’t true but they are posted like they are,” continued Johnson. “Then people starting reading these posts and believing them and all of a sudden accusations are being made that can’t be taken back and relationships are ruined because of it.”
Johnson has resigned himself to the fact that this is the way modern society works whether it’s for the better or not. “This is the way the world is today,” Johnson said. “There are people who use social media and try to be positive and factual and there are those who don’t. I just think that people need to respect it and use it correctly to benefit the sport instead of using it to benefit themselves.”
Championship winning pro-stock pilot, Kenny Gates, has managed to distance both himself and his race team as far as one possibly can from social media in the 21st century. “I don’t think social media has done a lot of great things for the sport,” said Gates. “I don’t participate in it that much because I don’t want the controversy around my car and I don’t want it to chase any of my current sponsors away.”
Drivers aren’t just responsible for their car or their crew when it comes to racing; they’re also responsible to their sponsors in the form of a business representative. When people post blatantly derogatory statements or falsify a story, racers face a real danger of losing out on much needed monetary support. Without sponsorship and the patronage of local businesses, racing is pretty much dead on arrival and social media is contributing to this on an almost weekly basis.
“I do think there is some use for it when it comes to posting results and highlighting your sponsors,” continued Gates. “But some of the other aspects are not useful at all. It’s ridiculous to see other drivers openly slamming speedway management for certain things. It’s just not the way to handle it and I’m surprised to see some of these guys doing that and I’m surprised that they don’t see how it has a negative effect on them and how it goes against trying to attract new people and new sponsors to the sport.”
There are times where the phrase ‘common sense’ seems to be invalid. After all, if it were so common then more people would use it and that isn’t always the case. “There are still a lot of people that love going to the races,” said Gates. “But some of these posts drive them away and you would think that some of these people would use a little bit more common sense but unfortunately as we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem to be getting better.”
Multi-time championship winning modified driver Bobby Varin has seen a thing or two over the span of his 30-year career. He’s seen life without social media and life with it and more importantly what it could do for the sport if used to promote it instead of degrade it at every turn. “I think it’s an awesome tool that could really work out well for the racing,” Varin remarked. “But there seems to be a select group of people that really want to abuse it and when they abuse it to the extent that they have, it gives racing a bad look.”
Like any tool, social media can be useful if respected and damning when it’s not. “It’s great for race fans that want to get the results from events that they can’t get to,” Varin said. “But then you get the whiners that want to bitch about everything from poor track conditions to ugly cars to track food and on and on. We realize it in everyday life that there are some people that we want to stay away from because of their drama, well, that’s why I pulled out of social media altogether.”
Varin, like other drivers have recently, has taken the road less traveled and moved away from the instant communication and gratification of the digital age. “I don’t have anything to do with it because there are too many negative people out there,” stated Varin. “They do nothing but complain and unfortunately their voice is heard the loudest and that’s bad for the sport. They feel they have a certain sense of entitlement when they really don’t.”
Tadd Parks is a journeyman of dirt modified racing. From begging for rides to the racetrack during his formative years to owning a championship-winning race team, he’s seen it all. He’s also seen and experienced firsthand what social media can do when it’s used to degrade a race team and its driver.
“I was never a big race team owner,” stated Parks. “We’re not like HBR by any stretch of the imagination. I got up and went to work every morning, worked all day and then worked right along with my guys in the shop and some of the people that post things on Facebook and social media in general don’t have a clue what it takes or what we sacrifice to go racing for three or four hours on a Saturday night.”
The duo of Parks and Friesen were a force to be reckoned with weekly for over half a decade and they received their fair share of bad press from so called ‘media members’ that have spent more time behind a keyboard than in the pit area of a modified or in the race shop during the week for that matter. It happened so often that it began to take a toll on the owner of the No. 1F modified.
“I sacrificed so much to put that team together and to be successful,” remarked Parks. “I sacrificed a lot of things in my life to try to win a lot of races. Nights and weekends, family and friends, relationships even and I busted my ass every day and to have someone in the grandstands go home and get on their damn computer and call us cheaters or complain that we were winning too much was unbelievable. I worked for every bit of it and then I got to go home and have people on the internet bash me and my team constantly.”
For Parks, his views on social media are quite simple; it’s bad for racing. “Social media hasn’t helped racing at all as far as I’m concerned,” Parks said. “Everybody has something bad to say and it seems like nobody has anything good to say. Just look at the comments on the post about Stew [Friesen] going to Eldora [Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio] to drive in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series; instead of being proud that one of their own is racing on the national stage, they’d rather tear the guy down. It’s unreal.”
There are legitimate internet-based websites, Speed51, Dirt Track Digest and Race Pro Weekly to name a few, that are run by men and women who are trying to promote the sport and do the job the way it should be done. Alas, they seem to be buried by the weekend warriors with a start-up Facebook page who have no aspirations to support racing any more than they are trying to promote themselves and social media users that can’t seem to get past their own narcissism.
How quickly so called ‘passionate race fans’ are to forget just how easily all of these things can be taken away. Places like Reading and Flemington are nothing more than malls and developments; the speedway at Nazareth is a mere shell and Rolling Wheels is a venerable ghost town. And let’s not forget the destruction of the Mile at Syracuse just a few short months ago. It can all be gone in the time it takes to put pen to paper; that’s the staunch reality of the times we live in.
What’s even more confusing is the fact that internet users would rather trash a struggling race team than support them. More often than not, these individuals are the same ones that end up complaining about dwindling car counts. They aren’t able to rationalize the simple fact that you can’t have it both ways; it’s both misery and irony at its finest.
Facebook and the like have been producing some of the best drivers, promoters and team owners that nobody has ever heard of for the better part of a decade. Maybe it’s time to remind them all that racing is a privilege, not a right. And maybe it’s time the most ignorant amongst us began to treat it as such.
Matt Noles is a contributing writer to Racers Guide, Speedway Illustrated and Dirt Track Digest. He stands behind every word that he writes and can be reached via e-mail at matt_noles@yahoo.com. He currently resides in Sprakers, New York.
