2. misc-audio
  3. 194964-457

Dealer affiliations and attitudes, assumptions and lack of respectful engagement in audio.

When I started in Audiogon 20 years ago it was a different  place. There was pretty civil discussions with fellow audiogoners. There were audio dealers on the site and there were also hobbyists and it wasn’t a big deal.  I been on the dealer side/business side the last 7 years. Here is what I find. A lot of us tend to be quickly negative and nasty to those who disagree with us. We don’t have the sharing of knowledge spirit that we used to have.  A lot of us want to show others how much smarter than we are than them. In addition to that there seems to be an attitude that if you are a dealer you gotta be shilling instead of just telling the truth. More importantly there seems to be an attitude that audio is the only thing you do. I have a firm in my professional life that I have ran for 25 years. I’m smart enough to know you never know who you are talking to. I just think audiogoners have repeatedly started to step over the line and become HABITUAL LINE STEPPERS and not engage with the necessary level of respect.  A lot of us in the hobby just want to meet and have positive audio and music experiences. Not rage debate! WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS EVERYONE? 

calvinj

Showing 2 responses by sns

sns
3,953 posts
 

Car culture people more gentle natured, really. The Alfa Romeo and Mustang forums I belong to can get very competitive and sometimes very nasty. Ducati forum mostly good people, nothing to prove. Nicest group of people I've encountered over many decades are classic Brit car enthusiasts, owners, something about slow cars and gentle people. I've found the faster the car the more you have competition between people, pretty much like high end audio.

sns
3,953 posts
 

I always have to question whether nostalgia is looking through rose tinted gasses. There are times when I gaze back longingly to the days when I had far more person to person contact with audiophiles, no internet. There have always been smug know it all types, you just didn't encounter them as often as you do on this platform they call the internet where one can say whatever at top of mind with a few keystrokes. 

 

Perhaps this may be informative, I work in family business and we developed a business relationship with a furniture maker. Well it turns out this guy formerly worked for many years at one of the top audio shops in the area, this would have been 80's into 90's. My my, this guy had a visceral hatred of audiophiles, years of dealing with smug know it alls had obviously taken its toll! Whenever he related stories to me I could just picture some of the clients he had to deal with and chuckle to myself, got to have a mild temperament and/or thick skin to deal with some people, this guy sure had lost both.

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