As everyone knows, one of the truly awful things about the internet is that anyone can throw up a website and act like they know what they're talking about. This used to happen in the old AOL days all the time, when some know-nothing would wander in and bleat about screenwriting like their opinion was just as valid as a professional's. If one of the pros told them that their opinion was uninformed, the shit would inevitably hit the fan. It was almost a weekly event. Because they could type, the fact that they'd written a novel/screenplay/pilot meant they were writers.Yeah, way to ingratiate yourself with your readership. It's one thing if you want to disagree with someone's blog. Fine. Argue it out. Prove them wrong. But to invent this whole caste system of those whose opinions matter and those who don't just stinks of fear and insecurity. Maybe if my "professional" credits were Millenium and Dead Zone, I'd feel a bit insecure, too.
It's also interesting that a lot of these "professional" writers are too broke and too working-middle class to actually be able to afford to support the strike. They fear the short term pain. So, apparently it's no better than working in IT. Of course in IT, you're not unionized, so you're just working from contract to contract or severance package to severance package. Either way, at least you're not writing spec scripts for Stargate Atlantis.
