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

There are several audio forums where a vast majority of interactions are civil and pleasant. Folks contributing their experience and helping other folks who are in need of some assistance.

To be fair, these tend to be specialized forums (fora?) focused on DIY or on a single brand or some arcane specialty. Even here on Audiogon, you'll find tube-related threads to be rather sunny and tranquil places.

As far as the general-interest threads on here, too many are like this one: just lit matches masquerading as faux outrage.

On the contrary I have found this to be around a thoughtful and reflective thread. My own observation was that the breakdown in common civility began in the 1980s with the rise of Fox news and and other media that, shockingly, encouraged interviews where people actually talked over each other did not politely listen to each other’s comments. At that period of my life I was active with a lot of public meetings and gradually began to notice the same behavior manifesting itself in small town public meetings. People were emulating what they were watching on TV and thinking it appropriate. Ironically I think much of what we have considered common courtesy in modes of address stems from periods when the consequences could be dire. I am thinking of the American West where men commonly were sidearms and earlier in Europe when every gentleman carried a sword as part of his attire. It was important to not give offense unintentionally.

I find the best way to weed out those that do not conduct themselves with respect is to ignore them, however hard it might be. I wrote a dealer selling a pair of magico speakers. I am knowledgeable about different speaker brands but I am by no means an expert or a statistician type that remembers every detail that he comes across. I simply asked if these were the latest model or an older model. His response was "These are not $80k speakers for sale for $15K". That was it. I did not respond or point out that I was a customer in the market for speakers. Since that interaction I have spent $20k on speakers and none of that business went to him.  His loss for being an ass and not a good business model for future success so I guess he will be one of those people out of the business complaining about how hard it is to sell. 

@benjamminva i try to be mindful when people call me for items.  A lot of guys don’t understand you don’t know who is on the other end of the phone.  Respect everyone. 

I haven’t dealt with a brick and mortar audio store in decades. I decided 3 decades ago to travel to all the audio shows (CES, RMAF, and many others) every year to see what’s in the market, look at the technology the manufacturer implemented, and listen to many systems to compare what sounds good. I have a couple of friends that own audio stores and if I was looking at their products, I would be a customer of theirs. We had a lot of high end dealers in the big towns I lived in and many of the owners/employees were terrible to work with. 1 dealer kicked out a couple of our audio club members because he thought they weren’t going to buy anything. Everybody in the club stopped going to this dealer. Dealers  in these threads tend to build up a certain piece of equipment and then the last sentence they would state they are a dealer for this particular brand. Of course they are going to push something they carry.  I attend shows so I can talk to many manufacturers to ask any questions I may have. 
 

I’ve been in a few car clubs and let me tell you, a few of them had many aholes in them. In the Porsche club I was in, the racing instructor in the group came up to a couple of us before we started our go cart session, and told us if we didn’t pull over for him, he would put us in the wall. I put his A$$ in the wall. You know the joke:      ”what’s the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche? The porcupine has its pricks on the outside!”. I’m in a car club now with many high end cars and everybody is down to earth, no issues, a little jabbing each other, much more friendly, maybe because we are older now and most of the testosterone has been depleted.