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Why has Audio (and maybe all hobbies) become so hostile?

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North_Sky

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Unclevanya

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Back to the original title... My thoughts:

Anonymity - no one knows who we are (or so we think)

Lack of homogeneous sources of authority. (The days of few news sources are long gone)

Isolating and seeking biased confirmation of views. (Self fulfilling prophecy is all too real)

A general distrust of science and elevation of pseudo science to peer status.

An erosion of the editorial process partly due to the 24x7 news cycle and the fight for your eyeballs in real time. And partly due to the democratization of information distribution which allows almost anyone to state opinions as facts without a balanced force verifying standards before publication.

Feedback loops with unintended consequences. Facebook as an example couldn't care less about your feeling, they just want your eyeballs and your value to advertisers etc. So they show YOU what YOU react to. This spirals out of control depending on your behavior which is manipulated to feed your interest like an addictive drug. Again the intent is eyeballs and clicks, but you get polarized insulated groups who don't question their sources adequately.

A general lack of understanding of how manipulation of data, people, and ideas can radically change the view of "the public".

There's more but I'm tired...
 

krabapple

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Oh man it was absolutely viscous! The tribes divided up quickly and it was never ending sniping between the "objectivists" and the "subjectivists."

I mean, there was lots of good conversation too, but it was really muddied by both ideological and personality conflicts on that board. It got very personal between many of the main players.


Absolutely. All the online pathologies we are all too familiar with in 2020, were on display on Usenet decades ago. *Trolling* started on Usenet!

RAO was no exception. There were some truly nasty characters posting there.
 

eeeper

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I am both into audio and photo. So I look at both, audio and photo forums. And my impression is, that audio is much nicer as we do not write about our own music, but just about our impression of other people’s music played through “our” system. Photo is brutal in comparison as it is all about photos taken by people themself, and photographic fidelity (=equipment) and processing (DSPs) is suddenly much more personal. Compared to that, audio forums are a treat...
So true. Photo forums are painful to read anymore, first it was Canon/Nikon fans crapping on everyone else until Sony went mirrorless and destroyed (nikon and canon) in dynamic range, then autofocus speed, then speed; did people start realizing Canikon aren't the kings anymore. It was the focus peaking and the ability to "see" the end result that I jumped to Sony for that reason. My wife went from being frustrated with Canon's DSLR's to over the moon with Sony for this reason. After dealing with Canon/Nikon snobs saying Sony is not a real wedding photographers camera for years (yes, there are some people that won't hire you if you don't shoot Canon/Nikon) that is until you show them the end results. There is a reason Canon and Nikon are now almost all mirrorless, because Sony showed it can be done well and produce high quality results. Since technology moves so quickly I learned to continually re-evaluate my biases - sometimes a gem comes up where you least expect.
 

Killingbeans

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Not necessarily. Education and application actually stifle harmful actions and even desires if its … wait for it …… effective moral education and application. Intellectual education as you implied does indeed have that limitation. Example. Ran into a guy in my volunteer work. Middle of the conversation tears well up. He confessed he was on his way to kill a man when we met. He right then and there decided to not kill. Topic was advantage of forgiveness and patience as a solution for revenge. It was effective non-intellectual education. Smart guy incredibly upset. Brief moral education; moral education applied. Now a hopefully smarter guy with options...still incredibly upset yet his desire to kill abated. Most importantly at least one, if not more lives were saved. Of course your example wasn’t revenge based but it illustrates the writers point. Education and application are very much underestimated as a solution for many many illls. Not all the worlds problems agreed, but the majority of especially interpersonal ills could be drastically reduced. Just think if kindness (admittedly an area of improvement for me) respect, empathy, patience (many in this forum are well educated here), and wait for it...humility...the acceptance that everybody is better than I at something (shockingly many are here with this quality) would storm the audio hobby forums. Who could question this education when applied would not crush hobby aggression in minutes? At least repeat offenses. Life does require practice for measurable improvement.

I agree that social skills and self control is something that can be strengthened through determination and/or life experience, but IMO you can't teach empathy. You either have it or you don't. A high-functioning psychopath don't give a rat's ass about anyone other than him/her self, but have just been taught not to give that impression. Moral, that has been rehearsed or is enforced through fear of repercussions, is noting but acting. It can give (temporary) stability, but never harmony.

World wide harmony is a bit like cold fusion. They both disregard some very fundamental truths about reality.

But I get what you're saing. Some people just want to see the world burn, but it shouldn't stop the rest of us from actively improving our manners :)

I think it was Dostoevsky who wrote that if man actually achieved the perfect socialist utopia, the first thing he would do is burn it to the ground because it bores him. Great minds think alike. Perhaps you should write a novel!:D

I've never read any Dostoevsky. Maybe I should. Just hope it won't inflate my ego :D
 

steve59

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these are some opinionated times.
 
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CDMC

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Pick any hobby where there is a degree of fetisishm mixed with exotic sounding tech and pseudo science. As well as actual science.

Cycling

to name but a few

Nah. Aside from carbon v aluminum rims, there is little (on the mountain side, I stay away from road nowdays). The most common response to things like SRAM v Shimana is “pick a brand and be a dick about it.”

 

steve59

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I am on the persono thread giving hate because the personis don't measure good
 

North_Sky

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This thread is like a study on human social psychology, demography, geography and culture.

Forget phono, forget mono, forget stereo, forget photo, forget auto ... it's all in the ego, like a kid playing with his Lego.
 

Tks

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I wonder how much more civil it would all be if we were required to post under our real names and addresses.

S

Only fear I have of that isn't actually lunatics coming by and doing something, the bigger issue is web scrappers mass harvesting such and having such data given out to spam bots and spam mail listings (or such other annoying plagues of modern society).
 

North_Sky

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Yes that ^ above (Tks, post #213), plus the Russian, Chinese, Korean and Iranian hackers.
 

steve59

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I am on the persono thread giving hate because the personis don't measure good


That didn't come out right but if you want an example just go to the active persona thread and read page 3. Now please explain to me why it's beneficial to go out of your way to tell someone that's already made their decision they're wrong? Then this person waves the measurements around. I'll say it, I think Revel makes decent ht kit but is awful at stereo and the ultima's were the worst soundstaging speakers i've ever owned and the bass was mia. That said I don't stalk the revel forum telling everybody my opinion.
Because they sucked in my room with my gear to my ears doesn't invalidate your impressions and if you guys like the stuff enjoy it.
 

Sal1950

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I am on the persono thread giving hate because the personis don't measure good


That didn't come out right but if you want an example just go to the active persona thread and read page 3. Now please explain to me why it's beneficial to go out of your way to tell someone that's already made their decision they're wrong? Then this person waves the measurements around. I'll say it, I think Revel makes decent ht kit but is awful at stereo and the ultima's were the worst soundstaging speakers i've ever owned and the bass was mia. That said I don't stalk the revel forum telling everybody my opinion.
Because they sucked in my room with my gear to my ears doesn't invalidate your impressions and if you guys like the stuff enjoy it.
So your going to come here and start it again?
Please Don't
 
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