Why discussions generate into personal affronts...
Hello to all... I am a new-be in comparison to those who have thousands of inputs into forums/discussions.
I find it disappointing that in reading inputs, I have to waste time in members sniping at each other. Half the time it simply is a difference in opinion that breaks down into nasty idiocy, and half the time I need some type of reference to past verbal battles fought about in other topics/forums.
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO IMHO? Many times spewing personal dogma against each other just confuses simple people like me who are just looking for guidance - not miracles. We all view another's opinion with reservation - nobody's got a doctorate on audiophile experience; if I was to listen to and obey the professionals, I would never had experimented with 12g solid core copper, vinyl-jacketed wire, twisted and used bare wire no connectors -WHICH I AM VERY HAPPY WITH ...
SO: SOMEBODY fill me in why knowledgeable people generate into nastiness in discussions...
Pride of product, pride of opinion, low self esteem, jealousy, ignorance, all work well in producing the posts to which you object. Personally I just ignore those threads or posts. Life is too short for me to waste my time on them. I doubt that there is anything to learn from them worth the effort.
You may note that most of the truly knowledgeable folks here rarely participate in them. They are usually helpful and courteous when they find a reason to post.
You will quickly identify those folks/threads to ignore.
"SOMEBODY fill me in why knowledgeable people generate into nastiness in discussions..."
We are giving advice for free, we don’t charge a consulting fee for all this knowledge, in fact its the sparring and blatant rudeness that pays US back in spades! :-) Matt M
Most of the fireworks seems to occur in threads where one group fervently believes in tangible, significant, sonic improvements resulting from some change in their audio system that is ancillary to the main components or speakers, such as a wire, fuse, connector, or tweak, while the opposing group just as fervently believes any perceived improvements are imagined and are not supported by science, or that any sonic differences are so slight as to be insignificant. The other answer of course is that those involved have nothing better to do at the time.
Insearchofprat - my analysis of why multiple discussions get nasty some time is due to ‘clash of egos’ - no more no less. I try and read threads that I am interested in for the goal of improving my stereo system sound. I work hard to ignore the sniping, and glean the ideas I can afford to try in my Stereo System and leave it at that. Life is short - the odds of changing people’s interactions on this or any forum / company e mail etc. is ZERO.
life is short - I have improved my two home systems via the ‘knowledge I have found here’ to an amazing level. Just ignore the trash!
It may take time, but after awhile you'll be able to self-select what threads to read by ignoring those where certain posters names repeatedly appear. When you master this trick you'll find that Audiogon is a peaceful place filled with well informed and curious hobbyist who treat each other respectfully.
Humility no longer has a place in our modern day culture. Most people would rather be self serving and beat their own chests to make a point. Being kind,compassionate and loving today is a buzzkill for the uninitiated. In other words...immature and self righteous attitudes along with suppressing others humanity is now the norm.
I do hope that forums will become better and not worse over time but I am not sure that will happen soon unless there are new mods and mabye new rules.
I'm pretty active on 2 forums, Sony and Oly Compacts, on DPR photo site since 2012.
It shows up mostly from people who have a strong need to be right, and it comes and goes in waves.
When I first joined, late 2012 when Sony rx100 1" sensor revolution started, my first impression was awful, a few trolls, and people who strongly took the bait, added a lot of negativity. I could skip posts from those people, except, the people who took the bait, and the people who need to be right often do know a lot, so I took the good from the bad.
Then the trolls disappeared, it got quite good for a long time,
then, as a result of newer 'better' models, a few new, quite knowledgeable people joined, but stiff, my way or the highway ... I discovered, peoples professions sometimes set them up, they need/ed to be critical to succeed, then it becomes a life long habit. To the point of telling people not to post their photos.
Oh baby, private messages ensued, ... new understandings were found, ....
Eventually all audio forums dry up like lake beds in the Kalahari. Take a gander at Stereophile or Audio Asylum. They’ve become ghost towns. I come from the future where there are no audio forums. I only come back here for the jokes. 🤡
Well geoffkait: whatever the reason, I have found that when you get that out of your system - and you hunker down to more pure HO and experience- led wording, you are a creditable inputer. Don't blush...
I dropped out of this forum years ago because of nasty postings and only recently came back. I'm still on the fence about continuing to participate but the majority here seem helpful and courteous. I've gotten many good ideas from this forum and especially enjoy the tube and music oriented posts. Elizabeth did make some very good points I agree with.
Please take it on the road - or to some stand-up, late-night comedy venue. I'm sensing most who are replying into this topic are worn out by snideness; so with be relevant or be quiet.
Threads that decay into back and forth bantering with in-jokes or jokes which most people don’t get are also tiresome. Eg this one Ginger, Mary-Ann...?
Humor. After a few reactions to a few posts, I learned it is not a good idea to think people will understand your humor. After many years, many know my humor, but there are always new people, so, I try to anticipate how a stranger might 'get' it.
Drink: I learned, I used to go to live music at bars, come home a bit loose, then perhaps write a reply to something. Noooooo, wait till morning.
It's the same mentality in every forum. It's the nature of the web, it makes it easy to say things without repercussions. I avoid politics like the plague, but even in photography forums (my main hobby and p/t job), they get crazy as well. . Most people don't talk like that to others in person, mostly because it would become a fist fight, then again some people are just buttheads. I'm learning quite a bit just by reading reviews, the forum conversations, thanks for the knowledge and entertainment guys, girsl or whatever pc pronoun you prefer.
Oh, where would we all be without a smile and/or chuckle during the course of our day? The OP asked his question and was able to answer it himself before this thread got rolling good in his retort to a poster that he didn't get the humour in. I say get over it, it's an audio forum, if and when we disagree, let it be about music and the audio driving it to us and not politics, religion or any other facet that has nothing to do with either. Enjoy the music.
After noting that I had used the wrong word for humor in my above post, I looked up the word I used, humour, WOW nothing funny there but then I found that funny.
I agree with the OP, that rudeness is a problem. I have been on Audiogon for over 20 years and personally, I don't feel it is getting worse. This site is by no means the worst, some UK forums are positively incendiary and we are supposed to be exemplars of good manners.
I think if you offer your opinions as opinions, not facts everyone should agree with, then you rarely get sniped at. I can only remember one instance, where I suggested I wasn't a Magico speaker fan, after several long auditions at shows. The gist of the response was that I had no right to offer an opinion unless I'd had a long audition in the home, which is plain stupid.
So if you offer an opinion, expressed as an opinion, you don't abuse other users and stick to the thread, not hijack it, I don't think you should have or deserve, abuse.
Anyway, who gives a c--- what ill mannered people think about you, life's too short to give a dam
It's the nature of subjective disagreements. They are by nature different and inaccurate because humans are different and inaccurate - and passionate about subjective beliefs that are important to them. The solution is to discover objective answers. There's no ownership of objective data. It just is what it is. It narrows the disagreements to methods of determining objectivity. However, there are not always ways to find objective answers because one of the variables in the subject is humans. That's why the stock market can never be conquered. You have to look for probabilities instead. But where the human is scattered all throughout the stock market, making it impossible to have great predictability, in audio the human is only at the beginning and end of the chain. All other components in between can be measured objectively. And since one beginning source can be used for comparison, the probability of what a human will hear can be predicted with much greater probability. As has been done at Harman.
So generally, the more subjective the forum, the more "human" it is.
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