Niners Nation After Dark: 49ers (And Other) Fans And The Haterade

We're back for another night of Niners Nation After Dark. As always, make sure and take any discussion here over to the Golden Nuggets when they go up at 3am pacific. And of course feel free to post your zip code and/or city/country in the comments.

I actually wanted to bring up a subject I often find myself thinking about whenever I am reading a blog, whether it be here at Niners Nation or anywhere else. I notice criticisms of players coming every which way a lot more frequently than praise. Patrick Willis will get all sorts of praise, but otherwise it seems like we often see more complaints than anything else about many players. I've noticed that people are more likely to comment when it involves voicing a criticism. Of course, that might also have to do with the long string of struggles for the 49ers as much as anything else.

I bring this up now because yesterday saw a lot of criticisms of Dashon Goldson and Manny Lawson. Goldson came up because of a post I put together so I guess that's my fault as much as anything else. However, I also noticed Lawson getting dumped on a decent amount during the day. I'm not saying he (or any other player) should remain free from criticism. This isn't about the passion people have for the subject. Passion is why we have people posting at this site at midnight during the middle of the week.

However, people refer to a given player as "garbage" without a second thought and that seems to be a bit much. I don't know whether it's the anonymity of the Internet, the personality of the given player (some folks definitely don't like Goldson), or something else. Maybe it's just a personality difference in how we all critique anything in this world. I don't really know. I'm just curious why people bring the hammer with that kind of comment. I'm certainly not going to be banning anybody for anything like that anytime soon. I mean you could burn a picture of me in effigy and turn it into a gif and I wouldn't ban you. I might actually add that to my resume.

However, it just seems like people sometimes go a little overboard in discussing certain issues, players, etc and I just find myself curious as to why people respond like that. Consider it just my random question of the night floating out there in the cosmos.