Here’s a post by Tim Marchman on Deadspin addressing the continuing, exhausting Alex Rodriguez saga. It’s one of many that Deadspin has run on the issue. I am in broad agreement with Marchman, with Deadspin generally, and with the site’s many commenters, who side against Major League Baseball and Bud Selig in great majorities. But it’s really an object lesson in the way that relatively small groups can, through the unique powers of the internet, come to misunderstand the popularity or persuasion of their own opinions.

Selig has behaved terribly throughout this process. I find him a hypocrite and, essentially, a fraud. I don’t know what the best policy is for baseball and PEDs, but I know that baseball’s actions are not to the good of the league. But Selig is not nearly so stupid as his many critics think he is: he has always played to the owners and to the casual fans, because the former sign his paychecks and the latter pay for them. Take the 60 Minutes episode that, according to Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky, actually made the case against Selig and MLB. He presents a counter-intuitive argument for why. I find that argument compelling. But then, I was already on his side. And what matters here is that the argument is counter-intuitive: he had to come up with a fairly complex argument that it proved the opposite of what Selig intended. I was able to be convinced, and so was the majority of Deadspin’s savvy, well-read fans. But though Deadspin’s writers are rightfully influential and well-read, and Deadspin’s commenters informed (and funny), they do not represent enough ticket buys or Nielsen households to really matter to MLB. The superficial reading of that piece was entirely to Selig’s favor, and Selig knew it.

Sports are part of the entertainment business, and in the entertainment business, public opinion is what matters. Selig has always understood that. And there seems to just be this disconnect with Deadspin’s writers and most of the commenters. When I read people in the connected set evincing shock that MLB gets away with it, I see people who mistake the opinions of an elite for opinions that have power. Joe Q. Fan is who MLB cares about, and he cares about PEDs, so Selig is getting what he wants. Maybe Deadspin, which enjoys and deserves great influence in the sports media, can generate the critical mass to start to change public opinion. I hope so. But to do it, they have to appeal to a fanbase that deeply disagrees on the fundamental issue, and I’m not sure if any of the writers there are interested in moderating their messages to the degree necessary to do so.

This isn’t just about Deadspin and the ARod saga. It’s a constant dynamic where people mistake the opinions of a passionate and informed online minority for the opinions of the majority or of power. I constantly read people in video game blogs, for example, saying “all of us here are so mad about this– Sony has to change their mind.” No, they don’t. They have to sell a lot of consoles and games, and they do to the millions of gamers who never read a single blog. Or when Dr. Who fans believe that, if they get angry enough, the show has to cast a female Doctor. No, they don’t. They know the people who watch angry will keep on watching. Or in the furor over Seth MacFarlane’s hosting of last years Oscars, when so many savvy internet denizens simply couldn’t believe what the Academy was thinking. They were thinking he would bring ratings, and he did. Or when people wonder why smarm endures, when everybody’s cousins all love smarm, and probably always will.

The online savvy set enjoys a host of advantages and, in some ways, real power. But what they enjoy in influence, they lose in perspective, and they fail to understand how and why they lack power to get the things that, they believe, are so obviously right. That belief, in the self-evidence of their preferences, is why so many of them remain perpetually amazed that the world has failed to meet their standards.