Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: dreed on December 16, 2014, 07:28:31 pm
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For some geeks, the name Dr Dobbs is synonymous with computing - it has been around for as long as I can remember. Now the online only version of Dr Dobbs is closing down because it is no longer profitable.
From the DrDobbs article:
In one word, revenue. Four years ago, when I came to Dr. Dobb's, we had healthy profits and revenue, almost all of it from advertising. Despite our excellent growth on the editorial side, our revenue declined such that today it's barely 30% of what it was when I started. While some of this drop is undoubtedly due to turnover in our sales staff, even if the staff had been stable and executed perfectly, revenue would be much the same and future prospects would surely point to upcoming losses. This is because in the last 18 months, there has been a marked shift in how vendors value website advertising. They've come to realize that website ads tend to be less effective than they once were. Given that I've never bought a single item by clicking on an ad on a website, this conclusion seems correct in the small.
Interesting that it has taken vendors so long to work this out.
Given that advertising supports so many "free" websites out there, "what next?"
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Not surprising.
Back in the late 1990s I was getting about £1500 per quarter from click-throughs from my websites to Amazon using their affiliate programme. Today that is down to about £30. The reduction has been fairly even over the 15 years or so - something I had put down to almost everyone now knowing about Amazon and going straight there rather than clicking-through from my sites.
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Given that advertising supports so many "free" websites out there, "what next?"
I'm not sure there's an answer. There is precious little I would ever consider paying a subscription for, because even if it's A-plus content, with a little bit of searching I can find free, B-plus level content online ... and in most cases that is good enough.
I think ad-blocking software has dramatically lowered the value of ads. Free plug-ins at that. I could not imagine going back to browsing the Internet as I used to have to look at it.
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I'm not sure that web advertising really was that wonderful anyway, it was more a bandwagon that the geeky were urging us all to jump aboard. I have yet to see any real figures for how companies, other than those dedicated to online shopping, derived any great benefit from it. As for the dreaded FB then that to was always a waste of time and I have always maintained that it is not an effective way of reaching or expanding your customer base, not on this side of the pond anyway. Seems like others are coming round to the same view -
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/11/17/brands-are-wasting-money-on-facebook-and-twitter-forrester-says/
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This is intreresting. I was just reading a paper on this topic yesterday. Strange to come across it again today. I was under teh impression that many vendors had streamline operations and the only people making real money were those involved with ecommerce websites. I've just signed up to 1&1 (https://www.1and1.com/ecommerce-website) for the same and hope I can make a go of it selling hard to find vintage camera parts. I really wanted to avoid advertising anyway since I know how much it frustrates me when browsing.
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I am surprised that it took the advertisers this long to figure it out.
It is a shame for there are some really good sites out there that will probably go under.
The alternative is to start charging the customer just like in any other business. Unfortunately, there is this expectation of getting "free" stuff off the Internets Tubes that will have to be overcome.
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I am surprised that it took the advertisers this long to figure it out.
It is a shame for there are some really good sites out there that will probably go under.
The alternative is to start charging the customer just like in any other business. Unfortunately, there is this expectation of getting "free" stuff off the Internets Tubes that will have to be overcome.
Yes, you are right there, and that's the problem with stock today too: ridiculous expectations that bear no relationship to the real cost of production. In my own, final experience of it as investment, the short version runs thus: £ 2000 for a week/ten days shoot that included one girl, maybe 60-70 Kodachrome cassettes, flights, food etc. etc. I actually did the shoot as a final test of viability around '86 or '87 and it took me almost exactly two years to get back the capital, never mind go into profit. It only wiped its nose because of two sales, one that gave me my 50% as £ 1500 and another as £ 750 or so, both from one transparency. The rest hardly did a thing. You can't plan it out, though agencies used to try to claim that you could if you followed their guides, which were based on 'now' needs, not what you could deliver a month later.
Basically, I think it was two things messed it up: political correctness which had already damaged my calendar production quite badly, and also the fact that downturns in the economy are felt very early on by advertising, way before the public realises how it, too, is going to get hit. For a while I imagined it was something I had done, then slowly, others began to tell similar tales and I understood it was across the board. Which is scant comfort.
And that was still film. With digital and the flood of shamateur input, driven both by the difficulty agencies themselves also faced/face trying to charge their clients a reasonable sum, only non-pro material could be afforded for the most part, and that set the price structure for everyone. If I couldn't make it pay, living on location as it were, how could somebody in London, Paris, NY or elsewhere fly out to the sands and do it any cheaper? You just had to leave the marketplace.
Please, no false analogies about buggies and whips.
As for paying to be with a good photographic site - yes, if it kept out the assholes: one chance, and then you are history.
Rob C
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We forget that advertising has two purposes, at least.
The first it to directly sell things. The second is to manage brand identity. Nobody every saw a BMW ad on TV and said 'man, I gotta pick up a beemer next time I go shopping'. That's not what BMW's television ads are about. They're about creating the impression that the BMW is a superior driving machine, and that it's worth extra money because of that and a bunch of other things loosely rolled up under the aegis of "luxury."
The web has actually proven pretty good at the former. Your anecdotes about how you never buy anything by clicking an ad are irrelevant. Advertisers can and do track exactly how many sales they're closing as the result of an ad, and ads are priced accordingly. What's gone is the days when people were simply throwing money at it because it was new and awesome and surely all good things would come. Now they can measure success, and price accordingly.
There is a secondary problem in that ads are typically priced by clickthroughs, not by sales. So you measure your sales per clickthrough rate, and pay accordingly. This places the outfits that sell ad space in a pitched battle with people who operate robot click farms. Increasingly, clicks are robots, so the sales per click is in fact decreasing, but not because people don't buy. The rate is decreasing because robots are doing more clicking, and robots never buy.
Advertising was always a terrible model. The global advertising spend is only so big, which places a hard limit. Everyone is scrabbling around in the same pond, chasing the same dollars, and that's not a healthy environment. Silicon Valley isn't changing the world, inventing new anythings. They're simply releasing more, stupider, fish into the same pond to compete for the same dollars, and then making bank selling Sushi Futures.
But all this leaves the branding side of the equation, which was always the more important one, wide open.
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We forget that advertising has two purposes, at least.
The first it to directly sell things. The second is to manage brand identity. Nobody every saw a BMW ad on TV and said 'man, I gotta pick up a beemer next time I go shopping'. That's not what BMW's television ads are about. They're about creating the impression that the BMW is a superior driving machine, and that it's worth extra money because of that and a bunch of other things loosely rolled up under the aegis of "luxury."
The web has actually proven pretty good at the former. Your anecdotes about how you never buy anything by clicking an ad are irrelevant. Advertisers can and do track exactly how many sales they're closing as the result of an ad, and ads are priced accordingly. What's gone is the days when people were simply throwing money at it because it was new and awesome and surely all good things would come. Now they can measure success, and price accordingly.
There is a secondary problem in that ads are typically priced by clickthroughs, not by sales. So you measure your sales per clickthrough rate, and pay accordingly. This places the outfits that sell ad space in a pitched battle with people who operate robot click farms. Increasingly, clicks are robots, so the sales per click is in fact decreasing, but not because people don't buy. The rate is decreasing because robots are doing more clicking, and robots never buy.
Advertising was always a terrible model. The global advertising spend is only so big, which places a hard limit. Everyone is scrabbling around in the same pond, chasing the same dollars, and that's not a healthy environment. Silicon Valley isn't changing the world, inventing new anythings. They're simply releasing more, stupider, fish into the same pond to compete for the same dollars, and then making bank selling Sushi Futures.
But all this leaves the branding side of the equation, which was always the more important one, wide open.
An interesting summary and I love the line about stupider fish, but I am not entirely convinced by the brand management argument. You still need viewers to dwell upon the ads even if they don't click on them, and if they are simply ignoring them anyway then I can't see any benefit in trying to build or maintain brand awareness through online ads.
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Doing branding on the web is, I think, still in its infancy, and it's definitely NOT done by placing clickable ads all over the place.
A lot of it is being done by managing relationships with influencers, by placing viral videos, and I suspect by product placement in more subtle and less talked about ways. It's a heck of a lot harder to measure the effectiveness of it, though, so they're feeling their way.
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Doing branding on the web is, I think, still in its infancy, and it's definitely NOT done by placing clickable ads all over the place.
A lot of it is being done by managing relationships with influencers, by placing viral videos, and I suspect by product placement in more subtle and less talked about ways. It's a heck of a lot harder to measure the effectiveness of it, though, so they're feeling their way.
Who or what are these influencers, who do they influence and how strong is that influence?
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Depends on the market segments, of course.
I've been watching the Zeiss show lately, and they seem to think their influencers include Ming Thein and Lloyd Chambers, and as far as I can tell their market they influence is money-is-no-object DSLR owners. Michael Reichmann is an influencer in the money-is-no-object landscape shooter market. Both are pretty narrow slices of the high end, but they're quite real, and there's money being made.
No idea how strong the influence is, there's money and effort being spent by the manufacturers here, so apparently they think it's strong enough to be worthwhile.
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`Influencers' can literally make (or break) a business. If you can access a copy read the section on Hush Puppies Shoes in Malcolm Gladwell's `Tipping Point'. He describes the effect very well. I guess too that we are all `influencers' in a small (or in some cases not so small) way. I'm influenced by what I read on this and other similar sites, particularly when I believe that what I'm reading is based on personal experience and/or relatively objective analysis. I'm influenced positively by people I respect (either individually or collectively) and, to a lesser degree, negatively by those who are known to `prostitute' themselves. It's a form of trust I guess but it can be fragile - I can't see myself buying another VW for a while!
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`Influencers' can literally make (or break) a business. If you can access a copy read the section on Hush Puppies Shoes in Malcolm Gladwell's `Tipping Point'. He describes the effect very well. I guess too that we are all `influencers' in a small (or in some cases not so small) way. I'm influenced by what I read on this and other similar sites, particularly when I believe that what I'm reading is based on personal experience and/or relatively objective analysis. I'm influenced positively by people I respect (either individually or collectively) and, to a lesser degree, negatively by those who are known to `prostitute' themselves. It's a form of trust I guess but it can be fragile - I can't see myself buying another VW for a while!
The greatest equipment 'influencer' I ever came across was the late equipment writer for the British Journal of Photography: Geoffrey Crawley. He truly knew his stuff, and I followed his test results for Nikon's products and was never disappointed. It was his reviews of the 2/35 Nikkor and 2.8/35 Nikkor that indicated that the 2.8 would be the better option for me. I bought the 2.8 and used it a great deal over the decades, right until it went mad on a cruise and decided to create its own unexpected major vignettes and 'exciting' focus shifts. I stick one of the last images from it below.
I bought the 2/35 version just a couple of years ago, and it isn't as good: a lot of curvature that has to be corrected in post, resulting in the loss of edge info that I hate to sacrifice. Both optics are manual, of course.
Rob C
(http://www.roma57.com/uploads/4/2/8/7/4287956/5627723_orig.jpg)
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What's broken is the entire internet business model and it started with the greatest of the modern robber barons, Steve Jobs stealing the music industry to sell iPods and eventually phones.
Apple needed the content to sell the hardwear so took the value from the content by making it free and easy.
Next was films and TV.
Where the model will eventually fail is the free or nothing culture that is the current internet will have nothing left to eat but itself.
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What's broken is the entire internet business model and it started with the greatest of the modern robber barons, Steve Jobs stealing the music industry to sell iPods and eventually phones.
Apple needed the content to sell the hardwear so took the value from the content by making it free and easy.
Next was films and TV.
Where the model will eventually fail is the free or nothing culture that is the current internet will have nothing left to eat but itself.
So true.
But what will be left by then?
Rob C
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What's broken is the entire internet business model and it started with the greatest of the modern robber barons, Steve Jobs stealing the music industry to sell iPods and eventually phones.
Apple needed the content to sell the hardwear so took the value from the content by making it free and easy.
Next was films and TV.
Where the model will eventually fail is the free or nothing culture that is the current internet will have nothing left to eat but itself.
Agreed. The whole WWW is an edifice built on what exactly? Of course one of it's main props is the sheer number of people with an interest in keeping the show going but take that away and the web as we know it will soon crumble.
We are constantly bombarded by new and better things, ways of doing stuff, or doing stuff that we never thought we would want to do! And if we don't like it, don't care to accommodate ourselves to the latest fad then it's us, the individuals who are in the wrong. We will be told that we don't know, don't understand, not clever enough etc etc, beaten into submission by those with who think they are some sort of herald entrusted by the great God technology to spread the word amongst lesser mortals.
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Another factor may be that ad-blocking software has become more efficient so most of us now never see the ads that are directed towards us.
Living in Scotland (UK) I never watch any television channel live if it carries advertising. 90% of the time I watch BBC. On the rare occasion that I want to watch a programme on a commercial channel, I record it and then fast-forward through the adverts. Same with websites - if I was unable to block the adverts, I would switch to a different site (or none at all).
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Another factor may be that ad-blocking software has become more efficient so most of us now never see the ads that are directed towards us.
Living in Scotland (UK) I never watch any television channel live if it carries advertising. 90% of the time I watch BBC. On the rare occasion that I want to watch a programme on a commercial channel, I record it and then fast-forward through the adverts. Same with websites - if I was unable to block the adverts, I would switch to a different site (or none at all).
I watch Sky News or France 24 in the mornings with breakfast. I swear at the screeen a lot. I enjoy the Irish guy, Holmes, but can't stand that other chap who takes over from him. Such a wimp. Vegetarian, I think. Starts everything with 'shall we' which I can see coming and that's when the language gets choice. That Asian girl who does the weather some mornings would be fine if she learned to choose her clothes better. However, she speaks rather well. Used to be a blonde girl a year or so ago sat along with Holmes - quite cute, but she left for some other station... Odd that I can't remember any of their names. Guess it marks their status in my life. But, as they don't know me either, I guess we are quits.
France 24 covers a lot more international news, but repeats not only during that particular day, but even from a week or two ago; must be working on a shoestring - Sky is so parochial it hurts, or, alternatively, it latches onto a U.S. story like a dog with lockjaw and runs with it for days...
Ads: there should be a gadget to weed ads out of live tv broadcasts! Was a time in the 60s/70s when the ads were great; suntan lotions, cigars, booze; today, they are an insult to one's intelligence and oh, so dull!
Rob C
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The greatest equipment 'influencer' I ever came across was the late equipment writer for the British Journal of Photography: Geoffrey Crawley. He truly knew his stuff, and I followed his test results for Nikon's products and was never disappointed.
My dad was an avid BJP reader, and built his late-life Nikon F3HP system around G. Crawley's recommendations. (Accurate rangefinder focusing became harder for Dad in his 80s, so he reluctantly "went SLR.")
I have to say my SLR camera & lens choices in the '90s were very much influenced by Mike Johnston's writing, both in print and online. He's the guy who clued me in to Contax SLR gear, specifically the lenses.
In both these cases I'd say there was a form of advertising involved, but it was of the "this is what I use…if you're interested you should check it out" variety. This I have no problem with. But I find more blatant forms of advertising to be not only not persuasive but counter-persuasive. What are the metrics advertisers use to gauge the number of potential customers driven away by annoying, imbecilic marketing techniques? (TV ads for instance. So intrusive and utterly inane I DVR nearly all commercial broadcasts I watch and FF past the damn things. During the occasional live baseball or hockey game the ads get muted while I get up & stretch my legs.) I doubt there are any…
-Dave-
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I find the discussion a bit strange. Everybody is talking about commercial sites and, indeed these need to be financed one way or they other.
But are all web sites necessarily commercial? The web made publishing extremely cheap, thereby empowering normal users to run their own sites out of pocket money. Forums like this one, for example, used to be non-commercial as a rule and quite a few still are.
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My dad was an avid BJP reader, and built his late-life Nikon F3HP system around G. Crawley's recommendations. (Accurate rangefinder focusing became harder for Dad in his 80s, so he reluctantly "went SLR.")
I have to say my SLR camera & lens choices in the '90s were very much influenced by Mike Johnston's writing, both in print and online. He's the guy who clued me in to Contax SLR gear, specifically the lenses.
In both these cases I'd say there was a form of advertising involved, but it was of the "this is what I use…if you're interested you should check it out" variety. This I have no problem with. But I find more blatant forms of advertising to be not only not persuasive but counter-persuasive. What are the metrics advertisers use to gauge the number of potential customers driven away by annoying, imbecilic marketing techniques? (TV ads for instance. So intrusive and utterly inane I DVR nearly all commercial broadcasts I watch and FF past the damn things. During the occasional live baseball or hockey game the ads get muted while I get up & stretch my legs.) I doubt there are any…
-Dave-
Nice to know somebody else appreciated Crawley's work! Actually, he was also a Leica fan - I think I remember him relating having dropped a lens for it off a small boat and getting it back. Can't remember though, if it worked again! Jeanloup Sieff had an M4 drenched in the sea; it sat 'rusting', he wrote, on his shelf as he penned his final book...
I've just been watching the Texas F1 GP and shooting the screen through a Vaselined flter; looks interersting on the back of the camera, tomorrow will show me if there's anything I can do to make a couple of pix out of it. I wonder what on Earth the © situation is there - not that I'd dream of doing anything commercially of course, strictly for fun!
Rob C
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I find the discussion a bit strange. Everybody is talking about commercial sites and, indeed these need to be financed one way or they other.
But are all web sites necessarily commercial? The web made publishing extremely cheap, thereby empowering normal users to run their own sites out of pocket money. Forums like this one, for example, used to be non-commercial as a rule and quite a few still are.
Good point. The history of the web is outlined here, although it is only a precis -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web
What started of as an information exchange system for those interested in computing very quickly became commercialised, as could only be expected, which has lead us to where we are today, a giant machine for selling you stuff. In fact I rather think it's now drowning in its own excesses, or is certainly moving on from a desktop based resource to a gadget/mobile focused channel with a corresponding drop in quality of content as everything has to be lighter and fluffier to fit on a smaller screen. News is now broken up into a series of single sentences, tedious white space predominates and adverts have to be squeezed in there somewhere and the only way to do that is to make them look like editorial content.
One so far unrecognised effect of this is that companies now think that all content is advertising and are getting a lot fussier about what is said about them across the whole of the media. Printed publications are not immune and the objectivity and independence of many periodicals is seriously compromised.
I blogged about it here a couple of weeks back - http://inkplusimages.com/wp/blog/2015/10/09/is-marketing-killing-the-media/
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I imagine that online advertising will contine, but become more sophisticticated as the people running it realise that it isn't the same thing as any other medium. In particular, I see the greatest change being to do with cellphones. These are of such small screen dimensions that they are hardly the most comfortable way of watching anything.
Sometimes I switch on to LuLa during breaks between courses at lunch, wherever I happen to be eating that day. It isn't the most pleaseant experience. I have constantly to magnify, make smaller, and muck about just to catch some form of continuity and readability in the process. Watching any commercials is not going to happen; reading what I want to read is pain enough.
(And no, it's not my eyesight. Was a time after 44 that I needed glasses for reading; now, since the advent of glaucoma, I do not, but my earlier, excellent distance vision now requires glasses - on and off, some days on and some days off.)
However, watching teenagers and younger play with their cells tells me another story: they hold them so close to their noses that what's small but legible to me at twelve inches must appear perfectly normal to them at four inches. But do they have any disposable income, so to whom does one aim the ads?
Rob C
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Rob C.
Luminous-Landscape is designed to reformat for mobile devices. If you are seeing our regular page and not the mobile version which is a lot easier to read then you may want to check the setting on your phone browser. Most likely you have show web page version selected. The site detects what kind of device you are on and reformats for it unless the option to show as normal web page is selected. I hope that makes your viewing of the site easier on your phone.
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But are all web sites necessarily commercial?
That would depend on how you would define commercial in this context. Not all websites are designed to bring in money.
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Rob C.
Luminous-Landscape is designed to reformat for mobile devices. If you are seeing our regular page and not the mobile version which is a lot easier to read then you may want to check the setting on your phone browser. Most likely you have show web page version selected. The site detects what kind of device you are on and reformats for it unless the option to show as normal web page is selected. I hope that makes your viewing of the site easier on your phone.
Hi Kevin,
I can't find anything on my cell that seems to indicate the settings of my browser. Or I'm incapable of recognizing them, which wouldn't surprise me at all.
The unit's a Samsung GT-55830; Android Version 2.2,1.
Perhaps it's too old for these advanced things?
But thanks, anyway.
Rob C
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WTF happened to micropayments? Click here to read this article: $0.01
Forget subscriptions and paywalls. If the item is valuable to me, I'll click and pay.
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WTF happened to micropayments? Click here to read this article: $0.01
Forget subscriptions and paywalls. If the item is valuable to me, I'll click and pay.
But you are not going to know the article is valuable until after you read it. :)
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Good point. The history of the web is outlined here, although it is only a precis -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web
What started of as an information exchange system for those interested in computing very quickly became commercialised, as could only be expected, which has lead us to where we are today, a giant machine for selling you stuff. In fact I rather think it's now drowning in its own excesses, or is certainly moving on from a desktop based resource to a gadget/mobile focused channel with a corresponding drop in quality of content as everything has to be lighter and fluffier to fit on a smaller screen. News is now broken up into a series of single sentences, tedious white space predominates and adverts have to be squeezed in there somewhere and the only way to do that is to make them look like editorial content.
One so far unrecognised effect of this is that companies now think that all content is advertising and are getting a lot fussier about what is said about them across the whole of the media. Printed publications are not immune and the objectivity and independence of many periodicals is seriously compromised.
I blogged about it here a couple of weeks back - http://inkplusimages.com/wp/blog/2015/10/09/is-marketing-killing-the-media/
I agree with your post and also with the blog article: if the web is nothing but advertisement and advertisement disguised as content, the readers will simply go.
I believe that this is what already happened to paper magazines before the web. We read everywhere that the web killed paper magazines, but the truth is that their circulation was already down in the late 80s, before the web gained traction. And their circulation was down because, already at the time, their "articles" were written to please advertisers and not their readers. Readers started to stop buying them, because they were little more than catalogues. I know I stopped buying them around that time.
I actually stopped at a newsstand on my way home before writing that message. There was not a single magazine that appeared to have actual content.
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I like the more personal ads.
http://www.picturesof.net/_images_300/Man_Wearing_a_Sandwich_Board_Royalty_Free_Clipart_Picture_081011-020804-887042.jpg
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I think that the problem for magazines is simple: cost of production. You have to sell a lot of advertising to break even, and then you also have to contend with a falling number of buyers of the product (the magazine).
But it's nothing new, and I think there's another factor has to be borne in mind: the demographics of the buying public. For example, when my wife was a teenager she used to buy perhaps two women's magazines every week. But, as she herself became wife and mother, she realised that the content of all of the magazines was much of a muchness - a cycle of seasonal fashion tips and cooking ideas, dating advice (?) and nonsense like that. She stopped buying. Now, with the dropping birth rate in some key constituencies, the natural market for this pap vanishes to the point where you need more and more prepaid ads and less dependency on kiosks and/or subscriptions, and smaller print runs mean higher unit costs, and a constant dumbing down to find more and more daft people to buy your crap...
And don't forget that paper itself now costs an arm and a leg, another factor that constantly drove my calendar market overheads the wrong way. Eventually, you find fewer and fewer clients who can dig deeply enough into their business pockets to take advantage of what you do. Was a time in the mid-70s that a small run of 3,000 units was doable; by the mid-80s that was a forgotten source of work, and you were looking for maybe 10,000 units to make it possible. So, those small clients had to resort to printers' offers of choosing from a number of standard formats and ready-made stock picture pages they held, with a cheap overprint of your company name.
The higher the basics cost, the greater the number of units you have to shift to stay accessible.
How the Internet ever makes any money from selling ads I don't know: I do all that I can to avoid having them on the monitor, and see them as an invasion of privacy. But then I see a lot of things in that light, so perhaps I'm not the typical punter that they seek.
Rob C
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There's still a huge business in catalogs and junk mail. I know. I get the mail every day and give it to my wife. That's also a huge reminder that there's still a very big market for pro photographers. All those gaments and stuff have to be photographed for magazines, catalogs, the internet, TV and other media. That's something that amateurs don't do and a reminder for those interested in getting into the photo business. I would guess that fine art, landscapes etc are a smaller portion of the overall market.
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There's still a huge business in catalogs and junk mail. I know. I get the mail every day and give it to my wife. That's also a huge reminder that there's still a very big market for pro photographers. All those gaments and stuff have to be photographed for magazines, catalogs, the internet, TV and other media. That's something that amateurs don't do and a reminder for those interested in getting into the photo business. I would guess that fine art, landscapes etc are a smaller portion of the overall market.
https://www.shopdirect.com/home-page/company-page/about-us/history/
They used to produce millions of thick catalogues every few seasons.
Today it's all web-based.
As for photographers, there were always far too many of them for them all to make a good living. If anything, it's got worse, with only the extremes of up and downmarket existing, the middle a wasteland.
It's reflected in the life of every pro I know personally.
Rob C
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There's still a huge business in catalogs and junk mail. I know. I get the mail every day and give it to my wife. That's also a huge reminder that there's still a very big market for pro photographers.
You are right. I know some pro photographers working for this market and they do quite well.
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There's still a huge business in catalogs and junk mail. I know. I get the mail every day and give it to my wife. That's also a huge reminder that there's still a very big market for pro photographers. All those gaments and stuff have to be photographed for magazines, catalogs, the internet, TV and other media. That's something that amateurs don't do and a reminder for those interested in getting into the photo business. I would guess that fine art, landscapes etc are a smaller portion of the overall market.
A lot of that can be termed production line image capture, certainly for brochures where there is no background required. The lighting, once set up, varies little and it then just becomes a question of wheeling the product on and off. At several hundred different items a day the brochure is soon filled.
On the other hand there are companies who think that any old snap will do and you can argue 'til you are blue in the face that they need to get their photography sorted, but to no avail, the boss's wife has got a fancy camera and that's that.
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You are right. I know some pro photographers working for this market and they do quite well.
The trouble is that it's not as many as there used to be.
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I think that the problem for magazines is simple: cost of production. You have to sell a lot of advertising to break even, and then you also have to contend with a falling number of buyers of the product (the magazine).
But it's nothing new, and I think there's another factor has to be borne in mind: the demographics of the buying public. For example, when my wife was a teenager she used to buy perhaps two women's magazines every week. But, as she herself became wife and mother, she realised that the content of all of the magazines was much of a muchness - a cycle of seasonal fashion tips and cooking ideas, dating advice (?) and nonsense like that. She stopped buying. Now, with the dropping birth rate in some key constituencies, the natural market for this pap vanishes to the point where you need more and more prepaid ads and less dependency on kiosks and/or subscriptions, and smaller print runs mean higher unit costs, and a constant dumbing down to find more and more daft people to buy your crap...
And don't forget that paper itself now costs an arm and a leg, another factor that constantly drove my calendar market overheads the wrong way. Eventually, you find fewer and fewer clients who can dig deeply enough into their business pockets to take advantage of what you do. Was a time in the mid-70s that a small run of 3,000 units was doable; by the mid-80s that was a forgotten source of work, and you were looking for maybe 10,000 units to make it possible. So, those small clients had to resort to printers' offers of choosing from a number of standard formats and ready-made stock picture pages they held, with a cheap overprint of your company name.
The higher the basics cost, the greater the number of units you have to shift to stay accessible.
How the Internet ever makes any money from selling ads I don't know: I do all that I can to avoid having them on the monitor, and see them as an invasion of privacy. But then I see a lot of things in that light, so perhaps I'm not the typical punter that they seek.
Rob C
Simply put the internet doesn't make the money for advertisers that its supporters claim. I have asked many times elsewhere, of all sorts of business types, just what sort of return can be expected from online advertising or spending hours on social media and the silence has always been deafening.
When the web started getting all sophisticated with grand ideas about taking over the world you could earn a few cents per click on an advert on your site, now I believe its a cent per x thousand number of clicks before the site owner gets anything. I set up a bikers site three or four years ago with banners, side ads etc, all via Google, and never made a cent (cue those telling me I did it all wrong or whatever). I have also seen many others with the same idea come and go.
As far as I can see, and generally speaking, if you want a web based business then that has to be your main focus, you have to spend an enormous amount of time, money and energy on getting it running and keeping it going, the web is by no means an easy fix for firms that are either struggling or wishing to expand, some will make it but the majority won't. The web can be an important part of your marketing strategy but it must never be the only string to your bow. It's easy to look back now and remember the innocence of so many photographers as they rushed into digital and websites thinking that they were all going to make a fortune, but how many actually did?
As to your point about magazines they do tend to come and go, but it's interesting to note that they are still out there despite the dire warnings of their imminent demise that we have been regaled with over the years. Not all magazines are alike, up market lifestyle mags will spend the money on photographers, penny dreadfuls delight in using any old tat because it lends them an air of authenticity. Somewhere in between there is a small reward for folk who can handle a camera, but there's no point in thinking that the majority will employ a photographer to take some pictures and then go home, it doesn't work like that anymore, you've got to write the article as well.
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https://www.shopdirect.com/home-page/company-page/about-us/history/
They used to produce millions of thick catalogues every few seasons.
Today it's all web-based.
As for photographers, there were always far too many of them for them all to make a good living. If anything, it's got worse, with only the extremes of up and downmarket existing, the middle a wasteland.
It's reflected in the life of every pro I know personally.
Rob C
Rob You're closer to this than I. So I respect your knowledge. But don't web sites require photographers too? And many companies do both web sales and brochures. Macy's, LL Bean etc plus all the Christmas sites that sell everything from chocolates to cheeses. Someone is taking the photos and I doubt if they're from amateurs. I assume that many photographers are employed by ad agencies who provide ad services including photos. So the pros aren't working their own business in these cases.
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Rob You're closer to this than I. So I respect your knowledge. But don't web sites require photographers too? And many companies do both web sales and brochures. Macy's, LL Bean etc plus all the Christmas sites that sell everything from chocolates to cheeses. Someone is taking the photos and I doubt if they're from amateurs. I assume that many photographers are employed by ad agencies who provide ad services including photos. So the pros aren't working their own business in these cases.
Yes, of course pictures are still being shot; however, I think that the polarization already happened a long time ago, with the really big guys still getting the cream today, with the other cats licking the sides of the sticky bowls. A few top NY, London, Paris or Milan stores don't need many shooters to get their pix shot; much photographic stuff, other than for local sales, comes direct from the fashion houses anyway, with the same few stars getting the work in both cases. I used to get manufacturers' seasonal fashion shoots to do, twice a year, and then that over, it was dead as a dodo the rest of the year, with only last-minute fashion photography for city stores to promote items they hoped would be hot for a week or two. That was mainly why I moved to calendars: I didn't need to wait for some ad agency or mega store manager to be kind to me; I created my own direct clients and productions. Paid a helluva lot better and, best of all, I tended to have a tiny bit more control over what happened to my stuff.
I didn't know any ad agency that employed is own snappers; why pay somebody yourself, when you can make an independent pro wait the three months until you get paid before you pay him? You make money on his money, as well as on that of all the others you use, lying in your account... at least, you did when banks paid interest! Anyway, no guy worth his salt wants to work for anyone else; you never earn anything as an employed photographer - at least, not when I was one trying to learn the ropes!
No, I agree, amateurs won't be getting much glamorous work, and the pros who do what the others don't want, may or may not manage to find enough volume to pay the rent that way. Survival's a tough deal - always was in this business, possibly because few of us saw it as one, which is one trap into which most of the surviving stars never fell, often because they were grabbed by good agents or business partners. But good agents can pick 'n' choose...
Rob C
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Basically, I think it was two things messed it up: political correctness which had already damaged my calendar production quite badly, and also the fact that downturns in the economy are felt very early on by advertising, way before the public realises how it, too, is going to get hit.
Blaming 'political correctness' for something that occurred before the term really became used is a stretch even for the usual daft anti-PC comments.
It's a good exercise to replace the term 'political correctness' with 'treating people with respect', as that's what it it really means.
Ads: there should be a gadget to weed ads out of live tv broadcasts! Was a time in the 60s/70s when the ads were great; suntan lotions, cigars, booze; today, they are an insult to one's intelligence and oh, so dull!
There is already.
Pause your live TV on your DVR and start watching it 15mins later and you can skip through all the ads for that hour. Use the time to read a book, wash dished, floss teeth have a siesta. Ofr simply set it to record all the shows you like automatically and watch them whenever.
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WTF happened to micropayments? Click here to read this article: $0.01
Forget subscriptions and paywalls. If the item is valuable to me, I'll click and pay.
Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/)helps you support people you value.
But you are not going to know the article is valuable until after you read it. :)
It also helps with this situation, as you pay for future good content.
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I agree with your post and also with the blog article: if the web is nothing but advertisement and advertisement disguised as content, the readers will simply go.
I believe that this is what already happened to paper magazines before the web. We read everywhere that the web killed paper magazines, but the truth is that their circulation was already down in the late 80s, before the web gained traction. And their circulation was down because, already at the time, their "articles" were written to please advertisers and not their readers. Readers started to stop buying them, because they were little more than catalogues. I know I stopped buying them around that time.
I actually stopped at a newsstand on my way home before writing that message. There was not a single magazine that appeared to have actual content.
That seems like complete hyperbole as there are plenty of magazines with interesting content here in the UK at least. However many American mags I found painful to read as they would spread a one page article over 3 or 4 pages to mix them with the adverts, which I never looked at whilst reading the editorial content anyway. Fashion mags also tend to be crammed with ads which looks very similar to the actual content. Was that what you looked at?
American commercial TV I always found unwatchable due to the absurd amount of interruptions. This is one of the reasons why many adverts do not work, they are annoying and intrusive. YouTube ads being a classic example of that as they may obscure or interrupt what you are watching. Which is why so many people use adblockers. The better adverts these days are where people make ads that people want to see.
In mountain biking the standard advert now is a a short film put on YouTube/Vimeo which is pretty and/or inspiring, so people choose to watch them and the sponsor get credits at beginning +end or a logo may be seen in video. Red Bull are the World Champions of this form of advertising as they create events which then get willingly shared online by people as the content is interesting, such as last weekend's Red Bull Rampage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKdtMh_P654&index=6&list=PLnuf8iyXggLGFD7s4ClzfJdh3ZdylJjcY) - watch full screen and hold onto your seat. Their best ad, possibly one of the greatest ads ever made was the Felix Baumgartner's jump from space. You couldn't afford buy the world wide coverage that event of theirs got.
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That seems like complete hyperbole as there are plenty of magazines with interesting content here in the UK at least. However many American mags I found painful to read as they would spread a one page article over 3 or 4 pages to mix them with the adverts, which I never looked at whilst reading the editorial content anyway. Fashion mags also tend to be crammed with ads which looks very similar to the actual content. Was that what you looked at?
American commercial TV I always found unwatchable due to the absurd amount of interruptions. This is one of the reasons why many adverts do not work, they are annoying and intrusive. YouTube ads being a classic example of that as they may obscure or interrupt what you are watching. Which is why so many people use adblockers. The better adverts these days are where people make ads that people want to see.
In mountain biking the standard advert now is a a short film put on YouTube/Vimeo which is pretty and/or inspiring, so people choose to watch them and the sponsor get credits at beginning +end or a logo may be seen in video. Red Bull are the World Champions of this form of advertising as they create events which then get willingly shared online by people as the content is interesting, such as last weekend's Red Bull Rampage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKdtMh_P654&index=6&list=PLnuf8iyXggLGFD7s4ClzfJdh3ZdylJjcY) - watch full screen and hold onto your seat. Their best ad, possibly one of the greatest ads ever made was the Felix Baumgartner's jump from space. You couldn't afford buy the world wide coverage that event of theirs got.
Red bull certainly spend a lot of money, but they also charge a lot and they have very cleverly chosen their target audience, what used to be called yuppies but we are now supposed to refer to as millennials. I really don't think their business model would extend much beyond that segment TBH, it's a pure exercise in marketing, how to sell fizzy water with a few magic ingredients stirred in for a much more magical price.
I am not as familiar with the US magazine situation as Landscapephoto but from my time in Canada I'd say he has a point. I'd go into Walmarts and look for something to read in the magazine rack and basically there was nothing really worth buying. The bike mags would have a couple of long winded articles that filled the space between adverts, the car mags were mainly gloss and little substance while the vast array of huntin', shootin' and fishin' publications appeared to be busy tripping over each other in saying exactly the same thing. All a bit depressing really.
The only bright spot was that somewhere, good photographers were taking good pictures of cars, or so one would think, but there is the growing popularity of computer generated images and I rather imagine that these are displacing the poor old snapper as already discussed on another thread on Lula.
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Native advertising is a type of online advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears. For example, an article written by an advertiser to promote their product, but using the same form as an article written by the editorial staff. The word "native" refers to the content's coherence with other media on the platform. Due to its ambiguous delineation from some other forms of marketing, particularly in certain instances of embedded marketing, the precise period of inception for native advertising is still debated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising
27% of the spend on online advertising was in the form of native advertising in Ireland for the first half of this year.
http://iabireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IAB-infographic-2015-V2.jpg
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Blaming 'political correctness' for something that occurred before the term really became used is a stretch even for the usual daft anti-PC comments.
It's a good exercise to replace the term 'political correctness' with 'treating people with respect', as that's what it it really means.
There is already.
Pause your live TV on your DVR and start watching it 15mins later and you can skip through all the ads for that hour. Use the time to read a book, wash dished, floss teeth have a siesta. Ofr simply set it to record all the shows you like automatically and watch them whenever.
Whatever the term used at the time, the essence is/was identical. Respect had nothing to do with it: it had all to do with fear. Fear that some secretary somewhere would complain about a calendar on the boss's wall and cause a fuss based on nothing. All the models I used on my calendars were very well paid (some made a helluva lot more money per year than did I), were never asked to do anything 'unpleasant' and I have never shot a pornographic picture in my life: I hate that stuff for the harm it does everyone else trying to make some beauty to brighten this grim bloody world in which we live. I also remember a neighbour's wife, now in her late sixties, saying about the time: "if nobody whistled when you walked past, you began to wonder if you were slipping..." She said that with no resentment, just fond memories.
As I say, nothing to do with respect, all to do with being half-crazy and carrying a massive inferiority complex. It's the final sanction of the girl who thinks, rightly or wrongly, that she'll never be asked on a date. Having said which, even asking somebody out is tinged with the fear of beng called up for 'sexual harassment'!
And you think it's about respect?
Rob C
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It's a good exercise to replace the term 'political correctness' with 'treating people with respect', as that's what it it really means.
I like that. It tends to put it in a different perspective.
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Whatever the term used at the time, the essence is/was identical. Respect had nothing to do with it: it had all to do with fear. Fear that some secretary somewhere would complain about a calendar on the boss's wall and cause a fuss based on nothing. All the models I used on my calendars were very well paid (some made a helluva lot more money per year than did I), were never asked to do anything 'unpleasant' and I have never shot a pornographic picture in my life: I hate that stuff for the harm it does everyone else trying to make some beauty to brighten this grim bloody world in which we live. I also remember a neighbour's wife, now in her late sixties, saying about the time: "if nobody whistled when you walked past, you began to wonder if you were slipping..." She said that with no resentment, just fond memories.
As I say, nothing to do with respect, all to do with being half-crazy and carrying a massive inferiority complex. It's the final sanction of the girl who thinks, rightly or wrongly, that she'll never be asked on a date. Having said which, even asking somebody out is tinged with the fear of beng called up for 'sexual harassment'!
And you think it's about respect?
Rob C
I should think that depends on who you ask, the opinion of the Pope, for instance, may differ to yours, not that I'd agree with him, quite the opposite I should imagine.
With regards to your friends wife then have you also sought the opinion of a women who never got whistled at?
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I should think that depends on who you ask, the opinion of the Pope, for instance, may differ to yours, not that I'd agree with him, quite the opposite I should imagine.
With regards to your friends wife then have you also sought the opinion of a women who never got whistled at?
Ah! Grey egalitarianism again!
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Ah! Grey egalitarianism again!
As opposed to what, snobbish and unfounded elitism?
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I actually stopped at a newsstand on my way home before writing that message. There was not a single magazine that appeared to have actual content.
That seems like complete hyperbole as there are plenty of magazines with interesting content here in the UK at least.
<satire mode on>
Maybe I was exaggerating a little bit, but for your convenience here what I see on my local newsstand:
- a whole collection of magazines telling you what phone/computer you can buy today together with a list of apps that you should certainly buy right now
- a whole collection of magazines telling you what car/motorbike you should buy this month together with a list of cool accessories like wheels or tailpipe customisation that will look really cool if you buy them right now
- a whole collection of magazines telling you (your wife actually) what clothes are so fashionable that you should buy them right now together with what accessoires and shoes are really cool at the moment
- a whole collection of magazines about what hifi/home theatre equipment is really state of the art this month together with a list of what streaming services you could have for slightly less per month than the budget of medium sized countries like, say, Qatar or Saudi Arabia and that includes free high end sports plays! (world finale extra)
- a whole collection of magazines about photo and video cameras you should buy and print services you could use if you had the new lens that is sharp enough so that prints are possible at last
- a whole collection of magazines telling you (or your wife) what wonderful house you could earn if you had more money than Donald Trump together with furniture that will not fit in your rat-hole, you miserable underdweller
- a whole collection of magazines about diets that will allow you to eat less for more money (and I wonder how the readers still exist after losing 10 pounds each month for the past 10 years)
- a section about "people", meaning "people who have more money than you can dream of having in your next 10 lives"
- on the top section, some teenage models with implants who have more sex than you thought possible
So: yes, I was wrong: the last two sections actually have some "content". Sorry.
<satire mode off>
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As opposed to what, snobbish and unfounded elitism?
Nope, just your unavoidable knee-jerks.
I'm struggling to make sense out of "snobbish and unfounded elitism"; I mean, is it founded, or unfounded, and if so, upon what? And elitism? Elite is because somebody finds a young woman attractive? Or is that snobbery? Sorry, but you seem unable to avoid finding yet more verbal triggers upon which to trip yourself up...
You could write another article on those, perhaps? I'm sure we're all on tenterhooks!
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As opposed to what, snobbish and unfounded elitism?
Easy now or it's closing time.
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Easy now or it's closing time.
It takes two y'know.
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Nope, just your unavoidable knee-jerks.
I'm struggling to make sense out of "snobbish and unfounded elitism"; I mean, is it founded, or unfounded, and if so, upon what? And elitism? Elite is because somebody finds a young woman attractive? Or is that snobbery? Sorry, but you seem unable to avoid finding yet more verbal triggers upon which to trip yourself up...
You could write another article on those, perhaps? I'm sure we're all on tenterhooks!
I'd get to bed if I were you me old mucker, you're not making sense now.
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It's a good exercise to replace the term 'political correctness' with 'treating people with respect', as that's what it it really means.
PC is not about treating people with respect. It's about shutting people up who may have a valid point to make about a subject that people don't want discussed, often for political reasons. When someone raises the statistic that out-of-wedlock births and single parent families are creating more problems in black families, the speaker is silenced by calling him a racist. When a university president states that he believes men make better scientists and engineers or at least are more attracted to these fields than women, he is accused of sexism and is forced to resign. Even if people's views are misinformed, they disserve the right to speak their minds. And many views are right on the mark. "Treating people with respect" is a two-way street. Yet the speakers, often people of good will, are silenced due to fear of losing their jobs and having their careers destroyed for not spouting the "party" line.
In a free country, speech that is "damned" creates uninformed, closed-minded and fearful people. It's akin to book burning.
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Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/)helps you support people you value.
It also helps with this situation, as you pay for future good content.
Patreon looks like a good idea, but so far it applies only to a tiny subset of media.
I want paid access to all media, at a price that's reasonable. For example, $5 for a first run movie is reasonable. An article in a web magazine might cost a few cents.
Nodody's even tried to address my question: "What happened to micropayments?" Micropayments were supposed to solve everybody's problems. Even the photographers'.
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I installed AdBlock on my computer because I have been bombarded by American advertising. I live in Australia, the rest of the world probably has the same problem that I have. Why is ad revenue drying up, probably because it is so intrusive and culturally offensive for a global market.
Sorry, I've just been interrupted by American advertising, it's embarrassing
Cheers,
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PC is not about treating people with respect. It's about shutting people up who may have a valid point to make about a subject that people don't want discussed, often for political reasons. When someone raises the statistic that out-of-wedlock births and single parent families are creating more problems in black families, the speaker is silenced by calling him a racist. When a university president states that he believes men make better scientists and engineers or at least are more attracted to these fields than women, he is accused of sexism and is forced to resign. Even if people's views are misinformed, they disserve the right to speak their minds. And many views are right on the mark. "Treating people with respect" is a two-way street. Yet the speakers, often people of good will, are silenced due to fear of losing their jobs and having their careers destroyed for not spouting the "party" line.
In a free country, speech that is "damned" creates uninformed, closed-minded and fearful people. It's akin to book burning.
It's the age old problem of what started out with noble intentions soon got hijacked by those who found it useful in ways that were never intended.
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Patreon looks like a good idea, but so far it applies only to a tiny subset of media.
I want paid access to all media, at a price that's reasonable. For example, $5 for a first run movie is reasonable. An article in a web magazine might cost a few cents.
Nodody's even tried to address my question: "What happened to micropayments?" Micropayments were supposed to solve everybody's problems. Even the photographers'.
I'm sure I came across micropayments being lauded as the next new wonderful thing that was going to set the world right and put humankind at ease, as these things are generally introduced to us by the IT world, but that was only last week and I thought it sounded familiar at the time. Seems someone might be busy trying to reinvent sex again.
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I'd get to bed if I were you me old mucker, you're not making sense now.
That's what happens when people quote you: it doesn't make sense. And you only see that when it comes back from a source other than yourself.
Q.E.D.
(But seriously, let's just ignore each other and do the forum a favour. There never was anything in common, not even in what we euphemistically call 'photography', there never could be, and your disappointments were not mine.)
Rob C
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PC is not about treating people with respect. It's about shutting people up who may have a valid point to make about a subject that people don't want discussed, often for political reasons. When someone raises the statistic that out-of-wedlock births and single parent families are creating more problems in black families, the speaker is silenced by calling him a racist. When a university president states that he believes men make better scientists and engineers or at least are more attracted to these fields than women, he is accused of sexism and is forced to resign. Even if people's views are misinformed, they disserve the right to speak their minds. And many views are right on the mark. "Treating people with respect" is a two-way street. Yet the speakers, often people of good will, are silenced due to fear of losing their jobs and having their careers destroyed for not spouting the "party" line.
In a free country, speech that is "damned" creates uninformed, closed-minded and fearful people. It's akin to book burning.
Absolutely right; and it's spread into educational qualifications, too.
I listen to a Louisiana swamp pop rock station most evenings when I sit at the computer doing something or the other, and last night I almost fell off the stool at a news report: on KLEB-AM they report that a local college is celebrating a much higher number of pass results since lowering the pass levels.
And this spoken seriously. It scares the hell out of me for the future of the western world.
How can people be so blind, so desperate to feel 'equal'? Why the hell do they want to feel 'equal', 'equal' to what, to whom? Isn't it better simply to be who we actually are, and just get on with it?
Rob C
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That's what happens when people quote you: it doesn't make sense. And you only see that when it comes back from a source other than yourself.
Q.E.D.
(But seriously, let's just ignore each other and do the forum a favour. There never was anything in common, not even in what we euphemistically call 'photography', there never could be, and your disappointments were not mine.)
Rob C
Sorry mate, you trying to project your problems on to others smacks of denial on your part. I'll just continue as I see fit.
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PC is not about treating people with respect. It's about shutting people up who may have a valid point to make about a subject that people don't want discussed, often for political reasons. When someone raises the statistic that out-of-wedlock births and single parent families are creating more problems in black families, the speaker is silenced by calling him a racist. When a university president states that he believes men make better scientists and engineers or at least are more attracted to these fields than women, he is accused of sexism and is forced to resign. Even if people's views are misinformed, they disserve the right to speak their minds. And many views are right on the mark. "Treating people with respect" is a two-way street. Yet the speakers, often people of good will, are silenced due to fear of losing their jobs and having their careers destroyed for not spouting the "party" line.
In a free country, speech that is "damned" creates uninformed, closed-minded and fearful people. It's akin to book burning.
No it means exactly what I said it meant above. It however gets misused by idiots and also by those who wish to say deliberately hateful things who then use the mythical fear/supposed censorship of PC to appear as if they are the ones being wronged, when in fact they are being vile people.
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Absolutely right; and it's spread into educational qualifications, too.
I listen to a Louisiana swamp pop rock station most evenings when I sit at the computer doing something or the other, and last night I almost fell off the stool at a news report: on KLEB-AM they report that a local college is celebrating a much higher number of pass results since lowering the pass levels.
And this spoken seriously. It scares the hell out of me for the future of the western world.
How can people be so blind, so desperate to feel 'equal'? Why the hell do they want to feel 'equal', 'equal' to what, to whom? Isn't it better simply to be who we actually are, and just get on with it?
Rob C
Nothing to do with being PC. As I said above swap the very abused and misrepresented phase with 'treating people with respect' gets the true meaning. Lowering the pass mark for good exam results is doing the exact opposite in my view because it's patronising and fake. Anything but respectful.
Using PC to blame for everything is so very lazy and usually missing the point as your rant here and the one above about calendars girls/wolf whistling above demonstrated rather well.
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Nothing to do with being PC. As I said above swap the very abused and misrepresented phase with 'treating people with respect' gets the true meaning. Lowering the pass mark for good exam results is doing the exact opposite in my view because it's patronising and fake. Anything but respectful.
Using PC to blame for everything is so very lazy and usually missing the point as your rant here and the one above about calendars girls/wolf whistling above demonstrated rather well.
Of course, that's just your point of view today, jjj, and I'm sure you could manage to change it completely to suit any argument you choose to join, especially when you feel bored.
;-)
Rob C
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Of course, that's just your point of view today, jjj, and I'm sure you could manage to change it completely to suit any argument you choose to join, especially when you feel bored.
Why not justify you viewpoint rather than being rude and inaccurately insulting Rob.
Being able to debate neutrally, does not mean I'm changing my point of view which is actually quite consistent i.e. don't be racist, misogynistic, sectarian, ideological, bigoted, partisan, hateful etc. It simply means I'm not blinded by my prejudices which is how too many people sadly like to 'argue' their 'point'.
Also do not think that because I do not agree with your cliched Daily Mail style, right wing viewpoints that I am therefore left wing. I actually come from a pretty right wing background, but personally I am in favour of politics that actually work and have zero time for politics of hate. Regardless of which party espouses such things.
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Neither rude nor anything unpleasantly else, jjj: observant. I've known your posts over many a year, and the pattern is clear to me if not to you.
But that's fine: has no impact on my way of thinking, as I know mine hasn't on your's, either. Win - win. I did giggle over the Daily Mail, though - didn't you remember The Sun? It used to have one good page a day for quite some time.
;-)
Rob C
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Villifying "PC" is easy for privileged white guys like ourselves (presumably) to do. We're good at self righteousness. And for sure some folks go overboard in their desire not to hear anything potentially offensive to them. They're good at self righteousness too. But at the core it's not a black & white thing. Along with privilege comes a disconnect, to varying degrees, from the lives other people less privileged than we live. We presume to know more about those lives than we actually do. It's largely this unwarranted presumption of knowledge, combined with the loudness of our privileged voices, that drives PC efforts. As my Aunt Anna frequently needed to tell me when I was an arrogant teenager who knew it all: "Hush up now and listen!"
In an environment where people can listen to and actually hear each other, arrogance and misunderstanding are reduced along with extreme attitudes and behavior. How to foster such an environment when most of us would rather pontificate than listen…that's the question.
-Dave-
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Villifying "PC" is easy for privileged white guys like ourselves (presumably) to do. We're good at self righteousness. And for sure some folks go overboard in their desire not to hear anything potentially offensive to them. They're good at self righteousness too. But at the core it's not a black & white thing. Along with privilege comes a disconnect, to varying degrees, from the lives other people less privileged than we live. We presume to know more about those lives than we actually do. It's largely this unwarranted presumption of knowledge, combined with the loudness of our privileged voices, that drives PC efforts. As my Aunt Anna frequently needed to tell me when I was an arrogant teenager who knew it all: "Hush up now and listen!"
In an environment where people can listen to and actually hear each other, arrogance and misunderstanding are reduced along with extreme attitudes and behavior. How to foster such an environment when most of us would rather pontificate than listen…that's the question.
-Dave-
I think we also have to be careful about blaming PC for all the developments in society that we don't like or go against our interests. The question of images of naked women on posters in the workplace has been raised but I don't think the demise of such displays has anything to do with PC, it's just a fad that has passed and it all seems a little bit passe and perhaps silly nowadays. We all have to accept the fact that the world is in constant flux and adapt to it, or maybe even try and influence the direction in which it is heading if we are really feeling brave.
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Neither rude nor anything unpleasantly else, jjj: observant. I've known your posts over many a year, and the pattern is clear to me if not to you.
So you are consistent in your misinterpretations. That's all.
But that's fine: has no impact on my way of thinking
I doubt anything has since the sixties Rob.
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Villifying "PC" is easy for privileged white guys like ourselves (presumably) to do. We're good at self righteousness. And for sure some folks go overboard in their desire not to hear anything potentially offensive to them. They're good at self righteousness too. But at the core it's not a black & white thing. Along with privilege comes a disconnect, to varying degrees, from the lives other people less privileged than we live. We presume to know more about those lives than we actually do. It's largely this unwarranted presumption of knowledge, combined with the loudness of our privileged voices, that drives PC efforts.
And why is will never be appreciated by those lacking empathy.
I gather than when a man has a sex change and becomes a woman, they more than anyone else realise how very biased society is against women as they genuinely have experienced both sides of the coin.
As my Aunt Anna frequently needed to tell me when I was an arrogant teenager who knew it all: "Hush up now and listen!"
My Mum used to comment, "If teenagers knew so much, why aren't they running the world?"
In an environment where people can listen to and actually hear each other, arrogance and misunderstanding are reduced along with extreme attitudes and behavior. How to foster such an environment when most of us would rather pontificate than listen…that's the question.
The main issue is that when people are listening, they are often hearing nothing is isn't filtered through their own preconceptions and biases. So if so and so said or did whatever, then people all too often incorrectly assume so and so said or did it for the same reasons as they would have. Which leads to so many pointless misunderstandings. I quickly noticed this growing up as people so frequently misattributed my motivation about so many things, so now I do not presume my motives onto others. Way too often people ascribe behaviour on others which is more revealing about themselves that who they are commenting on. Happens here a lot.
A major misunderstanding is that if you are not for something, then you must be against it. People like Rob demonstrated above, do not seem to get that there can be a middle neutral ground.
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I think we also have to be careful about blaming PC for all the developments in society that we don't like or go against our interests.
As I said above, it's a lazy and cliched way of way of bemoaning that things change. My old next door neighbour used to complain that he wasn't allowed to use racist terms and slag off coloured people as "it wasn't PC anymore".
The question of images of naked women on posters in the workplace has been raised but I don't think the demise of such displays has anything to do with PC, it's just a fad that has passed and it all seems a little bit passe and perhaps silly nowadays. We all have to accept the fact that the world is in constant flux and adapt to it, or maybe even try and influence the direction in which it is heading if we are really feeling brave.
The thing that old fogeys like Rob miss when they bemoan the passing of naked women being used to sell things, is not that is anti nudity. The women I know who dislike such advertising have zero problem with nudity or sexuality being shown and are equally likely to object to FB not allowing female nipple to be seen. It's the context that they disapprove of.
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... when a man has a sex change and becomes a woman, they more than anyone else realise how very biased society is against women..
Which raises the question why would they still want to do that? Masochism?
Or they know something you apparently don't, that women have a privileged position in our society...always had, always will.
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Which raises the question why would they still want to do that? Masochism?
Or they know something you apparently don't, that women have a privileged position in our society...always had, always will.
Two remarkably ignorant and inaccurate statements. :-\
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Slobodan, give up now. You can't reach the parts where there are no parts.
(Only two guys in this forum are always right, and we are not those two guys any more than are Michael and Kevin.)
;-)
Rob C
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Rob C : "I listen to a Louisiana swamp pop rock station most evenings when I sit at the computer doing something or the other, and last night I almost fell off the stool at a news report: on KLEB-AM they report that a local college is celebrating a much higher number of pass results since lowering the pass levels."
Rob - this is unfortunate, but entirely predictable. This is the result of free markets in operation in an education system where credentials, and not knowledge, are valued purely for the purpose of getting higher pay. If an employee knows that he or she will get a pay raise for merely presenting a college degree of any content from any source to their employer, of course that employee will go to the college that "guarantees" passing grades for minimal effort. The question should be "why should businesses reward formal credentials over demonstrated skills appropriate to the job"? Much of the time, HR departments use college degree qualification as a proxy for "middle class upbringing", Ivy League / Oxford-Cambridge degree (vs state school / red-brick Uni) as a proxy for "a person the upper management types will feel comfortable mentoring'. It is hard for HR to evaluate a batch of junior-level candidates on writing skills, sales skills, social skills, organizational skills that matter in the day to day job on offer.
Slobodan: As far as I can tell from the outside, knowing a few transgender women on a social / church basis, the trans women have a sense of not fitting in with "boy stuff" from early on, though not all identify as girls at a young age. This is pretty strong stuff, considering that the most common outcome was and is job loss and impoverishment. "Masochism" is way off base, considering that there are easier ways to be masochistic, eg, alcoholism, certain BDSM relationships, some hypercompetitiveness in the gym or elsewhere. I don't "get" transgender identity, but I don't have to, all I have to do is mind my own business and not get nosy about other (non-S.O.) people's genitals.
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Slobodan: As far as I can tell from the outside, knowing a few transgender women on a social / church basis, the trans women have a sense of not fitting in with "boy stuff" from early on, though not all identify as girls at a young age. This is pretty strong stuff, considering that the most common outcome was and is job loss and impoverishment. "Masochism" is way off base, considering that there are easier ways to be masochistic, eg, alcoholism, certain BDSM relationships, some hypercompetitiveness in the gym or elsewhere. I don't "get" transgender identity, but I don't have to, all I have to do is mind my own business and not get nosy about other (non-S.O.) people's genitals.
You can't go saying such sensible and reasonable things in this forum. The old codgers get upset by such statements.
Speaking of which....
Slobodan, give up now. You can't reach the parts where there are no parts.
(Only two guys in this forum are always right, and we are not those two guys any more than are Michael and Kevin.)
You're no more accurate whilst being patronising than when being directly insulting.
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Rob C : "I listen to a Louisiana swamp pop rock station most evenings when I sit at the computer doing something or the other, and last night I almost fell off the stool at a news report: on KLEB-AM they report that a local college is celebrating a much higher number of pass results since lowering the pass levels."
Rob - this is unfortunate, but entirely predictable. This is the result of free markets in operation in an education system where credentials, and not knowledge, are valued purely for the purpose of getting higher pay. If an employee knows that he or she will get a pay raise for merely presenting a college degree of any content from any source to their employer, of course that employee will go to the college that "guarantees" passing grades for minimal effort.
1. The question should be "why should businesses reward formal credentials over demonstrated skills appropriate to the job"?
2. Much of the time, HR departments use college degree qualification as a proxy for "middle class upbringing", Ivy League / Oxford-Cambridge degree (vs state school / red-brick Uni) as a proxy for "a person the upper management types will feel comfortable mentoring'. It is hard for HR to evaluate a batch of junior-level candidates on writing skills, sales skills, social skills, organizational skills that matter in the day to day job on offer.
Slobodan: As far as I can tell from the outside, knowing a few transgender women on a social / church basis, the trans women have a sense of not fitting in with "boy stuff" from early on, though not all identify as girls at a young age. This is pretty strong stuff, considering that the most common outcome was and is job loss and impoverishment. "Masochism" is way off base, considering that there are easier ways to be masochistic, eg, alcoholism, certain BDSM relationships, some hypercompetitiveness in the gym or elsewhere. I don't "get" transgender identity, but I don't have to, all I have to do is mind my own business and not get nosy about other (non-S.O.) people's genitals.
Nancy,
Forgive me for messing up your paragraph into numbered points, it's just easier to answer them that way.
1. Some jobs simply require the applicant to have demonstrated a very exceptional quality of personality and achievement for the clear reason that those jobs themselves are demanding of those special abilities that the students have displayed. Degrees don't always/only reflect parrot ability. The job interview also takes cognizance of the other, additional things that the graduate has done in the pursuit of his/her degree, things outwith the strict requirements of the course, self-motivated interests in branches of the subject that (s)he has done on his/her own initiative. For example, a law graduate who has also excelled in inter-university debate; a medical student who has performed lots of voluntary work in various situations where it's applicable, such as first-aid at sporting events etc. People showing willingness beyond the formal, educational part of whatever they are involved with have that on their CV too... So in answer to the question, a good CV reveals the graduate's wider input and value.
2. But it isn't just about "a person the upper management types will feel comfortable mentoring'' it's also very much about whom the managements' clients will feel comfortable opening up to/with in business and even social situations. If you have top-end clients, you don't want them to feel they are dealing with 'idiots', because those 'idiots' directly represent the company the clients have hired.
Regarding 'junior level' candidates, maybe none of this applies to them. The song Tulsa Time expresses this very well in the line:
"Don't need no more schoolin'
When it's just to walk the line..."
But hey, did you know that some universities in the UK have to spend time with first year students just to bring them up to speed in English, before they can get on with the course? Hardly surprising, then, that written English can be a stumbling block even before we face the thorny question of regional accents!
Much easier a life in photography... I think.
Rob C
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Nancy,
Forgive me for messing up your paragraph into numbered points, it's just easier to answer them that way.
1. Some jobs simply require the applicant to have demonstrated a very exceptional quality of personality and achievement for the clear reason that those jobs themselves are demanding of those special abilities that the students have displayed. Degrees don't always/only reflect parrot ability. The job interview also takes cognizance of the other, additional things that the graduate has done in the pursuit of his/her degree, things outwith the strict requirements of the course, self-motivated interests in branches of the subject that (s)he has done on his/her own initiative. For example, a law graduate who has also excelled in inter-university debate; a medical student who has performed lots of voluntary work in various situations where it's applicable, such as first-aid at sporting events etc. People showing willingness beyond the formal, educational part of whatever they are involved with have that on their CV too... So in answer to the question, a good CV reveals the graduate's wider input and value.
2. But it isn't just about "a person the upper management types will feel comfortable mentoring'' it's also very much about whom the managements' clients will feel comfortable opening up to/with in business and even social situations. If you have top-end clients, you don't want them to feel they are dealing with 'idiots', because those 'idiots' directly represent the company the clients have hired.
Regarding 'junior level' candidates, maybe none of this applies to them. The song Tulsa Time expresses this very well in the line:
"Don't need no more schoolin'
When it's just to walk the line..."
But hey, did you know that some universities in the UK have to spend time with first year students just to bring them up to speed in English, before they can get on with the course? Hardly surprising, then, that written English can be a stumbling block even before we face the thorny question of regional accents!
Much easier a life in photography... I think.
Rob C
It wasn't an irregular occurrence when I was at college well over 30 years ago, but that was lads who'd had spoken nothing but Welsh at home, are they as deserving of scorn even though they are as British as you and I?
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... lads who'd had spoken nothing but Welsh at home...
Were they home-schooled? If not, they had 12 years of schooling to learn proper English. Otherwise, I am sure you are familiar with the Tower of Babel concept.
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Were they home-schooled? If not, they had 12 years of schooling to learn proper English. Otherwise, I am sure you are familiar with the Tower of Babel concept.
This may help explain things -
In Welsh-medium secondary schools, Welsh is taught as a subject and most, if not all, other subjects are taught through the medium of Welsh,
http://gov.wales/topics/educationandskills/allsectorpolicies/welshmededuca/prim-and-sec-schools/?lang=en
I'm not sure if that was the situation 30+ years ago but there were those who did struggle with English, thankfully many of the lecturers were Welsh themselves.
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It wasn't an irregular occurrence when I was at college well over 30 years ago, but that was lads who'd had spoken nothing but Welsh at home, are they as deserving of scorn even though they are as British as you and I?
I'm pretty sure that Rob is referring to native English speakers with poor English. Native Welsh speakers taught only in Welsh are few and far between even in Wales - which is where I am from.
My best mate who is head of a University Department has commented many times on declining standards of English with students. He also mentioned that the model degree used to be a 2.2 with 2.1 being reserved for the better students and Firsts just for exceptional graduates. 2.1s are now the modal degree and Firsts are commonplace. This despite the doors being opened to far more students than there used to be. Unis used to take the top 3-4% of pupils now they are try to get 20-25% of folk to go to Uni [and charge them for the privilege]. To hide this dumbing down, A levels are much easier than they used to be with a similar marked increase in high grades.
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I'm pretty sure that Rob is referring to native English speakers with poor English. Native Welsh speakers taught only in Welsh are few and far between even in Wales - which is where I am from.
My best mate who is head of a University Department has commented many times on declining standards of English with students. He also mentioned that the model degree used to be a 2.2 with 2.1 being reserved for the better students and Firsts just for exceptional graduates. 2.1s are now the modal degree and Firsts are commonplace. This despite the doors being opened to far more students than there used to be. Unis used to take the top 3-4% of pupils now they are try to get 20-25% of folk to go to Uni [and charge them for the privilege]. To hide this dumbing down, A levels are much easier than they used to be with a similar marked increase in high grades.
I think we are all aware of that but can't quite put our finger on the proof. The cynic in me suggests that shoveling school leavers off to university keeps them off at the dole at their own expense which is what has been driving admission grades down as much as anything. The extra staff needed to teach them also keeps the unemployment numbers down and since the money is being borrowed from the banks by the individuals to do a lot of this then it's a win win situation for the exchequer.
Having said all that it's good to see more people receiving a more fulsome education, just so long it is balanced and they are taught to question and assess rather than simply told what to think.
I don't know which part of Wales you are from but I went to agricultural college at Aberystwyth, I can assure you that Welsh was the first language for many of my colleagues.
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.... all I have to do is mind my own business and not get nosy about other (non-S.O.) people's genitals.
If only more people had this attitude, the world would be just a little bit better.
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If only more people had this attitude, the world would be just a little bit better.
Absolutely.
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I think we are all aware of that but can't quite put our finger on the proof. The cynic in me suggests that shoveling school leavers off to university keeps them off at the dole at their own expense which is what has been driving admission grades down as much as anything. The extra staff needed to teach them also keeps the unemployment numbers down and since the money is being borrowed from the banks by the individuals to do a lot of this then it's a win win situation for the exchequer.
Having said all that it's good to see more people receiving a more fulsome education, just so long it is balanced and they are taught to question and assess rather than simply told what to think.
It's all a huge pointless con. Prospective students are being told that if you go to Uni you will get a better job and earn more money. Which was only true when the top few percent of people go to Uni, it used to be 3% ish and employers will pay more for the best qualified people. But if a large percentage of population is equally highly qualified, then there is little added benefit to having a Uni education. Particularly if you also have tuition fees the government has now added to the cost of Uni. The number of high paying jobs doesn't increase in line with Uni admissions either.
Giving everyone high grades is also counterproductive as part of the the grades system is to differentiate people - which most people do not realise. Educate people so that they learn and can pass certainly, but still have gradation in the system so you can see who the best people are. It's foolish and basically lying by omission if you do not show that.
The Uni system worked because it was elitist, lowering the barriers to entry and the ease of getting a degree undermines the whole thing. Changing Polys to Universities was also a dumb move, Polytechs offered a different kind of education, one more geared to getting a sensible job rather than being purely academic. Which is far more important for the vast majority of those doing further education.
I don't know which part of Wales you are from but I went to agricultural college at Aberystwyth, I can assure you that Welsh was the first language for many of my colleagues.
The South. More populous, but far less Welsh spoken. An agricultural college also has a quite different catchment from Universities, so I'd expect more Welsh speakers there as farming country is where Welsh is more dominant.
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RobC said:
"Nancy,
Forgive me for messing up your paragraph into numbered points (thanks, looks better), it's just easier to answer them that way.
1. Some jobs simply require the applicant to have demonstrated a very exceptional quality of personality and achievement for the clear reason that those jobs themselves are demanding of those special abilities that the students have displayed. Degrees don't always/only reflect parrot ability. The job interview also takes cognizance of the other, additional things that the graduate has done in the pursuit of his/her degree, things outwith the strict requirements of the course, self-motivated interests in branches of the subject that (s)he has done on his/her own initiative. For example, a law graduate who has also excelled in inter-university debate; a medical student who has performed lots of voluntary work in various situations where it's applicable, such as first-aid at sporting events etc. People showing willingness beyond the formal, educational part of whatever they are involved with have that on their CV too... So in answer to the question, a good CV reveals the graduate's wider input and value.
(Most applicants don't get a job interview. Most businesses' HR departments will have a hard requirement for completed college degree for many positions. Considering my level of education (doctoral degree), I might be inclined to favor strict educational requirements for business positions, but my family history has made me somewhat skeptical. My father had some college, but never completed a degree. He had some manufacturing process management jobs and sales jobs, saved up, started his own business in the early 1960s. He had more business sense than a graduating class of M.B.A.s. If he had applied in the current climate, his application would have been rejected out of hand. Remember, HR types are using Monster and other online services to pre-screen applicants, and "outstanding, but not a college graduate" resumes automatically end up being rejected by computers before reaching human eyes.)
2. But it isn't just about "a person the upper management types will feel comfortable mentoring'' it's also very much about whom the managements' clients will feel comfortable opening up to/with in business and even social situations. If you have top-end clients, you don't want them to feel they are dealing with 'idiots', because those 'idiots' directly represent the company the clients have hired.
That can be rephrased as "top-end clients don't want to deal with blacks, women, smart country kids from fly-over states who were tops in their class at Large State University". This can also lead to completely missing out on markets or phenomena not in the usual world view of rich white boy graduates of Fancy Private Universities.
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It's all a huge pointless con. Prospective students are being told that if you go to Uni you will get a better job and earn more money. Which was only true when the top few percent of people go to Uni, it used to be 3% ish and employers will pay more for the best qualified people. But if a large percentage of population is equally highly qualified, then there is little added benefit to having a Uni education. Particularly if you also have tuition fees the government has now added to the cost of Uni. The number of high paying jobs doesn't increase in line with Uni admissions either.
Giving everyone high grades is also counterproductive as part of the the grades system is to differentiate people - which most people do not realise. Educate people so that they learn and can pass certainly, but still have gradation in the system so you can see who the best people are. It's foolish and basically lying by omission if you do not show that.
The Uni system worked because it was elitist, lowering the barriers to entry and the ease of getting a degree undermines the whole thing. Changing Polys to Universities was also a dumb move, Polytechs offered a different kind of education, one more geared to getting a sensible job rather than being purely academic. Which is far more important for the vast majority of those doing further education.
The South. More populous, but far less Welsh spoken. An agricultural college also has a quite different catchment from Universities, so I'd expect more Welsh speakers there as farming country is where Welsh is more dominant.
Quite.
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It's all a huge pointless con. Prospective students are being told that if you go to Uni you will get a better job and earn more money. Which was only true when the top few percent of people go to Uni, it used to be 3% ish and employers will pay more for the best qualified people. But if a large percentage of population is equally highly qualified, then there is little added benefit to having a Uni education. Particularly if you also have tuition fees the government has now added to the cost of Uni. The number of high paying jobs doesn't increase in line with Uni admissions either.
Giving everyone high grades is also counterproductive as part of the the grades system is to differentiate people - which most people do not realise. Educate people so that they learn and can pass certainly, but still have gradation in the system so you can see who the best people are. It's foolish and basically lying by omission if you do not show that.
The Uni system worked because it was elitist, lowering the barriers to entry and the ease of getting a degree undermines the whole thing. Changing Polys to Universities was also a dumb move, Polytechs offered a different kind of education, one more geared to getting a sensible job rather than being purely academic. Which is far more important for the vast majority of those doing further education...
Strange as it might sound, I actually agree with you on this one.
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RobC said:
"Nancy,
Forgive me for messing up your paragraph into numbered points (thanks, looks better), it's just easier to answer them that way.
1. Some jobs simply require the applicant to have demonstrated a very exceptional quality of personality and achievement for the clear reason that those jobs themselves are demanding of those special abilities that the students have displayed. Degrees don't always/only reflect parrot ability. The job interview also takes cognizance of the other, additional things that the graduate has done in the pursuit of his/her degree, things outwith the strict requirements of the course, self-motivated interests in branches of the subject that (s)he has done on his/her own initiative. For example, a law graduate who has also excelled in inter-university debate; a medical student who has performed lots of voluntary work in various situations where it's applicable, such as first-aid at sporting events etc. People showing willingness beyond the formal, educational part of whatever they are involved with have that on their CV too... So in answer to the question, a good CV reveals the graduate's wider input and value.
(Most applicants don't get a job interview. Most businesses' HR departments will have a hard requirement for completed college degree for many positions. Considering my level of education (doctoral degree), I might be inclined to favor strict educational requirements for business positions, but my family history has made me somewhat skeptical. My father had some college, but never completed a degree. He had some manufacturing process management jobs and sales jobs, saved up, started his own business in the early 1960s. He had more business sense than a graduating class of M.B.A.s. If he had applied in the current climate, his application would have been rejected out of hand. Remember, HR types are using Monster and other online services to pre-screen applicants, and "outstanding, but not a college graduate" resumes automatically end up being rejected by computers before reaching human eyes.)
2. But it isn't just about "a person the upper management types will feel comfortable mentoring'' it's also very much about whom the managements' clients will feel comfortable opening up to/with in business and even social situations. If you have top-end clients, you don't want them to feel they are dealing with 'idiots', because those 'idiots' directly represent the company the clients have hired.
That can be rephrased as "top-end clients don't want to deal with blacks, women, smart country kids from fly-over states who were tops in their class at Large State University". This can also lead to completely missing out on markets or phenomena not in the usual world view of rich white boy graduates of Fancy Private Universities.
That's possibly the case in some places, and I agree that a lot of talent might not get through when it deserves to get through. But, that's life, and other top talent does get through. You can't expect to have different rules for different social classes by decree; that many 'clients' might not like dealing with black people or women is probably perfectly true as well, but that's also life, and to make official quotas based on nothing more than forced selection arrangements smacks of tokenism too. There's a case of what looks suspiciously like that now in Canada with the 50-50 Trudeau government. We'll see how well that works in practice. (Funny, I seem to remember that Daddy Trudeau had a hellish time at the hands of a wife - or was it a girlfriend? - 'twas a long time ago, just as long ago as my memory, and I might well be mixing them up.)
They were hoping that the new, radical socialist leader of one of Britain's opposition parties would do the same, but it didn't quite get there, and tonight's news shows (to my amusement and delight) that the entire party is at internecine loggerheads, though not on that issue which, I'm sure, no party member wants to raise again right now.
But anyway, I think that tokenism is every bit as bad as the problems that cause it. And that's where governmental interference intended to 'socially engineer' life and society inevitably leads us: tokenism; an insult to the tokens, too.
I'm afraid that it's been my experience that it's impossible to 'arrange' society at the level that your utopìan system would need (one can't even arrange how a family works); there's nothing to recommend it beyond a political determination to have it so, and as political parties aren't the one's paying the salaries of most of the people getting employed (unless they are state pawns, and even then it's the taxpayer wot pays!), they are best advised to keep their noses out and figers off.
Now, were we starved of very bright young things making it, I'd be pleased to rethink my beliefs, but that's not the case: the case is one of preferring a different set of people to make it rather than the set that does right now. You can't do these things and have freedom. It's terribly easy to over-intellectualize life and cause utter confusion, and I fear that's what this kind of 'fixing what ain't broke' will do. In the end, the cream floats, even if not in the same container as originally expected.
Rob C
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Strange as it might sound, I actually agree with you on this one.
And as strangely, so do I.
Higher education was an option for me, too, but it played no rôle in the life I wanted to lead. I actually wanted to go to art school, but when we moved back from abroad and I found myself in yet another school, the entry interview went aganst my wishes, because my 'qualifications' at that point were too good to 'waste' in art school. Truth of the matter was that the schools, publicly, looked better the more kids they could ship up to university. So both parties lost out: I didn't want uni so the school lost one unit on its score card, and as I wasn't allowed to study art any longer, and found myself doing science (for which I felt nothing), I couldn't go to art school because I didn't have Higher Art, though I did have Higher bloody Science! I blame family just as much as school, but I imagine that both felt it was for my own good... I also note that kids today probably wouldn't accept that situation. So maybe something got better after all.
Yeah, techs are not unis, and we have some of the same fakes up in Scotland too. But, that's egalitarianism, and everyone must feel as good at everything as everybody else, regardless of the reality. Poor old George Orwell... the man who saw too much too clearly.
Rob C
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And as strangely, so do I.
Higher education was an option for me, too, but it played no rôle in the life I wanted to lead. I actually wanted to go to art school, but when we moved back from abroad and I found myself in yet another school, the entry interview went aganst my wishes, because my 'qualifications' at that point were too good to 'waste' in art school. Truth of the matter was that the schools, publicly, looked better the more kids they could ship up to university. So both parties lost out: I didn't want uni so the school lost one unit on its score card, and as I wasn't allowed to study art any longer, and found myself doing science (for which I felt nothing), I couldn't go to art school because I didn't have Higher Art, though I did have Higher bloody Science! I blame family just as much as school, but I imagine that both felt it was for my own good... I also note that kids today probably wouldn't accept that situation. So maybe something got better after all.
Yeah, techs are not unis, and we have some of the same fakes up in Scotland too. But, that's egalitarianism, and everyone must feel as good at everything as everybody else, regardless of the reality. Poor old George Orwell... the man who saw too much too clearly.
Rob C
Indeed, what would he have made of the British police spying on democratically elected MP's, or would that be OK because they are of the left?
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If us lot with our very disparate views on life and politics can all agree on the current state of education, then things must be bad. ;D
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If us lot with our very disparate views on life and politics can all agree on the current state of education, then things must be bad. ;D
:D IMO educational systems have always been mostly rubbish. My mom taught me to read & write before I ever entered elementary school. Genuine education consisted mainly of teachers exposing me to particular authors and books and ideas. Most important were the teachers who encouraged students to think and were good at doing that. Fortunately I had a few such. And advanced mathematics…that was my ticket into the work world. The rest…ppfftt.
-Dave-
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:D IMO educational systems have always been mostly rubbish. My mom taught me to read & write before I ever entered elementary school. Genuine education consisted mainly of teachers exposing me to particular authors and books and ideas. Most important were the teachers who encouraged students to think and were good at doing that. Fortunately I had a few such. And advanced mathematics…that was my ticket into the work world. The rest…ppfftt.
-Dave-
In my website I offer a 'thank you' to my last English teacher; the only memory of maths teachers was getting a wooden rule across the back of my hand...
Part of the deal with my entry, as an apprentice swapping from engineering to photography, into the same company's industrial photo-unit, was that I attend night school. This was an eye-opener: the guys doing the teaching were all employed photographers in local studios, and when one told me that were he to photograph like David Bailey, that he'd quit photography, I realised the place could offer me nothing. I didn't go back. By that time, conscription had been abolished, and I no longer cared if I was kept on or sacked for quitting. I was kept on.
But, that said, the daily usefulness of having got a good certificate in Science is manifest. So far, I have failed to electrocute myself in the kitchen or bathrooms; have realised how little people who, in this modern world were able to avoid the Sciences, are able to cope with domestic problems of any size.
A broad, general education carries with it all manner of benefits not connected with earning one's living. You can't be too informed, unless it concerns photography, where it can stunt and cripple you if you let it.
In my view, "The rest…ppfftt." does not seem logical.
Rob C
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RobC, I memorably got a chalky eraser in the face, thrown at a sleeping me by my 7th grade math teacher. I liked math, and did very well at math, but I liked sleep too. I was and am still pretty cheerful about being the butt of a joke too - after the "huh, what????" moment of waking up, I thought it was hilarious. Apparently, so did my classmates, because this was the anecdote for which I was known.
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Now here's a thing, Rudolf Diesel, Karl Benz and Carl Linde (father of modern refrigeration) were all German and all attended technical schools and colleges rather than arts based universities. Need we remind ourselves which country went on to become the industrial powerhouse of Europe?
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... this was the anecdote for which I was known.
Fast forward, and that anecdote would be the one for which the teacher becomes known... for being suspended, media shamed, and fired.
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Fast forward, and that anecdote would be the one for which the teacher becomes known... for being suspended, media shamed, and fired.
Deservedly fired.
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Deservedly fired.
I still can't figure out what's shorter: a New York minute or the nanosecond you and I managed to agree on something?
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To clarify, do you think it's OK for teachers to throw erasers at kids?
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RobC, I memorably got a chalky eraser in the face, thrown at a sleeping me by my 7th grade math teacher. I liked math, and did very well at math, but I liked sleep too. I was and am still pretty cheerful about being the butt of a joke too - after the "huh, what????" moment of waking up, I thought it was hilarious. Apparently, so did my classmates, because this was the anecdote for which I was known.
My late wife was great at maths; she simply loved the entire concept of deaing with something intellectual, but also (apparently) not open to too much ambiguity. However, she did once tell me how one could prove that 1 = 0 but that was beyond me even then when she was there to replay the method. She also helped me get up to speed for the maths I needed during the short time I attended a tech. on day-release as an apprentice mech. eng.
I'm happy but surprised that you still bother to post; your comment about flying dusters has already sparked off the inevitable testosterone challenges that pretty much everything seems to represent to some unfortunate souls. For my part, I feel lucky to have witnessed some strange goings on, survived them fairly intact, and managed to hold on to my sanity - more or less.
I watched Rick Stein (a tv chef) tonight on Spanish television, and not for the first time, he has inspired me to attempt something new for lunch tomorrow. And here's the thing: few photographers have me wanting to fill their tripod holes, but this chef's jaunts through French Canals has lived in my soul as something that I really owe it to myself to do sometime before it's too late. That tickles me. Next Saturday he's doing a show on Mallorcan food... as I live here, it may open me up to something else, too.
;-)
Rob C
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To clarify, do you think it's OK for teachers to throw erasers at kids?
Certainly much better than the other way around, which seems to be prevailing these days.
At least it was a soft thing thrown (sponge, I presume). My art teacher used to throw her keys, and not just a light key chain with modern keys, but one of those "church front door" type of keys, and plenty of them at that, attached to her key chain. I can tell you one thing: people did not sleep in her class nor disrupted it.
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Certainly much better than the other way around, which seems to be prevailing these days.
At least it was a soft thing thrown (sponge, I presume). My art teacher used to throw her keys, and not just a light key chain with modern keys, but one of those "church front door" type of keys, and plenty of them at that, attached to her key chain. I can tell you one thing: people did not sleep in her class nor disrupted it.
When I were a wee lad blackboard cleaners were lumps of wood with compressed felt attached. Not a lot soft about them.
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At least it was a soft thing thrown (sponge, I presume). My art teacher used to throw her keys, and not just a light key chain with modern keys, but one of those "church front door" type of keys, and plenty of them at that, attached to her key chain. I can tell you one thing: people did not sleep in her class nor disrupted it.
And also should have been sacked for such things. If you have behave like that to get kids attention you are already failing at your job. Not to mention you can be smarter about such situations, resorting to hurting kids is just dumb and lazy. Not to mention kids tend to hate/have no respect for such teachers.
I had a useless and boring teacher who used to throw an eraser at kids not paying attention/dozing off and no it was not a soft sponge. Such erasers are solid lumps of wood with an attached soft bit. Same teacher also punched a pupil after overhearing his nickname [Putty] being said. He wouldn't last long now.
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PC is not about treating people with respect. It's about shutting people up who may have a valid point to make about a subject that people don't want discussed, often for political reasons. When someone raises the statistic that out-of-wedlock births and single parent families are creating more problems in black families, the speaker is silenced by calling him a racist. When a university president states that he believes men make better scientists and engineers or at least are more attracted to these fields than women, he is accused of sexism and is forced to resign. Even if people's views are misinformed, they disserve the right to speak their minds. And many views are right on the mark. "Treating people with respect" is a two-way street. Yet the speakers, often people of good will, are silenced due to fear of losing their jobs and having their careers destroyed for not spouting the "party" line.
In a free country, speech that is "damned" creates uninformed, closed-minded and fearful people. It's akin to book burning.
It's hard to tell if this very amusing video (https://www.facebook.com/joshua.feuerstein.5/videos/689569711145714/) complaining about political correctness gone too far is satire on the idiotic fuss regarding a coffee cup redesign or genuine outrage. The stance of these sort of religious nuts/far right wingers is so often indistinguishable from satire as the Landover Baptist Church website has shown for years. It does appear to be genuine outrage, a literal storm about a coffee cup.
Alan, like you the lunatic in video and others that like to blame PC for something that is nothing to do with the reality. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/first-they-came-for-our-venti-frappuccinos#.llkDj8n8D) need to stop blaming PC for everything you do not like.
What makes this whole complaining about Starbucks by Christians particularly absurd is that Christmas is a pagan festival anyway and snowflakes are a symbol of Winter not Baby Jebus.
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...Alan, like you the lunatic in video... and others... need to stop blaming PC for everything you do not like...
Jeremy, like you, the lunatic PC terrorists need to stop attacking everything we do like.
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Jeremy, like you, the lunatic PC terrorists need to stop attacking everything we do like.
Paranoid much?
You sound like a thief moaning about the police stopping them doing whatever the heck they want to do. Do you want to be able to segregate black people, bully gays and abuse women without censure like in the good ol' days before political correctness spoilt your fun?
Heck if you do get called out for un-PC like behaviour, which I'd say would be quite likely going by your attitude on LuLa. Here's a suggestion, don't be a racist/homophobic/misogynist etc.
As I keep saying PC simply means being respectful of others and if that is something that bothers you then you are not a very nice human being.
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Respect is a wonderful thing, but it only has value when one earns it on the one hand and is freely given on the other. It is utterly valueless if it's the result of a mandate. Dignity is something I assign to everyone until it is proven to be misplaced.
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... Do you want to be able to segregate black people, bully gays and abuse women without censure like in the good ol' days before political correctness spoilt your fun?...
There is a tremendous difference between saying and doing, between words and deeds, between what I am advocating (freedom of thought and expression - which is legal) and doing things above, which is illegal.
...you are not a very nice human being.
That settles it then.
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Respect is a wonderful thing, but it only has value when one earns it on the one hand and is freely given on the other. It is utterly valueless if it's the result of a mandate. Dignity is something I assign to everyone until it is proven to be misplaced.
You are mixing up differents sort of respect. Treating others as you wish to be treated is being respectful.
Respecting someone specifically for say what they have done is a another kind of respect.
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There is a tremendous difference between saying and doing, between words and deeds, between what I am advocating (freedom of thought and expression - which is legal) and doing things above, which is illegal.
So do you think saying hateful things is somehow OK, but doing hateful things is not? You do not seem to be aware of the concept of incitement to hatred or at least not want to acknowledge it.
Or are so so naive you think thoughts and speech have no impact on others? I doubt kids who get verbal/online bullying would ever kill themselves, oh wait that is what can and does happen.
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... As I keep saying PC simply means being respectful of others...
The problem with such a seductive, yet incorrect, reduction of what PC is, lies in the definition of respectful.
Would you be surprised to learn that in today's highly ideologically indoctrinated university "culture" saying something like "America is the land of opportunity" is considered disrespectful, non-PC, and labeled as a micro-aggression? That professors, if they dare to say it publicly, during a class, are required to issue so-called "trigger warning" to students before saying so? That students then have the right to leave the lecture and recuperate in so-called designated safe zones, free of exposure to different opinions?
But wait, there is more. The latest drive is the establishment of anonymous helplines for students to snitch on anyone on campus they hear utters, even in a private conversation, such a horrible, racist, offensive words like "America is the land of opportunity."
But wait, there is more. It doesn't stop there, just reporting it. The next step is a disciplinary action against those horrible human beings that dare to utter "America is the land of opportunity." And if the university does not hunt down those who said it, even anonymously, and expels them, there will be protests until the university management resigns.
It is utterly hilarious to watch the left up in arms about government spying on citizens (i.e,, collecting bulk telephone records) and yet simultaneously demanding that universities spy on their students and their anonymous yik-yak conversations in order to find out who said such heretic words like "America is the land of opportunity."
And that is your PC in action, my friend.
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So do you think saying hateful things is somehow OK, but doing hateful things is not?...
Yes.
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Which simply confirms that you are not exactly a very nice person and also explains your at times bullying behaviour on LuLa.
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The problem with such a seductive, yet incorrect, reduction of what PC is, lies in the definition of respectful.
Would you be surprised to learn that in today's highly ideologically indoctrinated university "culture" saying something like "America is a land of opportunity" is considered disrespectful, non-PC, and labeled as a micro-aggression? That professors, if they dare to say it publicly, during a class, are required to issue so-called "trigger warning" to students before saying so? That students then have the right to leave the lecture and recuperate in so-called designated safe zones, free of exposure to different opinions?
But wait, there is more. The latest drive is the establishment of anonymous helplines for students to snitch on anyone on campus they hear utters, even in a private conversation, such a horrible, racist, offensive words like "America is a land of opportunity."
But wait, there is more. It doesn't stop there, just reporting it. The next step is a disciplinary action against those horrible human beings that dare to utter "America is a land of opportunity." And if the university does not hunt down those who said it, even anonymously, and expels them, there will be protests until the university management resigns.
It is utterly hilarious to watch the left up in arms about government spying on citizens (i.e,, collecting bulk telephone records) and yet simultaneously demanding that universities spy on their students and their anonymous yik-yak conversations in order to find out who said such heretic words like "America is a land of opportunity."
And that is your PC in action, my friend.
No that is the sort of made up nonsense and crazy paranoia that people who like behave badly towards others want people to think is PC behaviour. Just like the raving lunatic in video I posted above claiming that Starbucks were anti-Christmas and therefore anti-Christian because there were no no snowflakes on a coffee cup, which obviously was all because of 'political correctness gone mad'. ::)
Every year our nutty right wing press come up with some nonsense story about Christmas activities being banned in case of offending someone. All made up rubbish.
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Which simply confirms that you are not exactly a very nice person and also explains your at times bullying behaviour on LuLa.
Yes, you said that, repeatedly, hurting my feelings. That would be bullying, no? ;)
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No that is the sort of made up nonsense and crazy paranoia...
Are you saying I made up what I wrote above?
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Would you be surprised to learn that in today's highly ideologically indoctrinated university "culture" saying something like "America is a land of opportunity" is considered disrespectful, non-PC, and labeled as a micro-aggression? That professors, if they dare to say it publicly, during a class, are required to issue so-called "trigger warning" to students before saying so? That students then have the right to leave the lecture and recuperate in so-called designated safe zones, free of exposure to different opinions?
It may add something to the discussion if you could cite this. That way others could read about it for themselves.
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Alan, like you the lunatic in video and others that like to blame PC for something that is nothing to do with the reality. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/first-they-came-for-our-venti-frappuccinos#.llkDj8n8D) need to stop blaming PC for everything you do not like.
What is really interesting in that link is the poll: 81% of the people clicked that they don't care about the coffee cups design. And that, of course, is only the tiny fraction of the "don't care" people who actually bothered to click on the poll.
So, in surface, the article looks like there are many people who are outraged for a completely ridiculous reason. There is a flow of comments to confirm the outrage. But, in truth, most of the people who read the articles, found it downright silly, and rightly so.
Probably, this illustrates that the Internet has become vastly irrelevant, just as the paper press and TV in the years before. And, probably, that erosion of relevance has something to do with ad revenue drying up.
I think that is the real answer: the complete subversion of actual content in the medias to an agenda dependent of greed and power, to a clique of managers who intrinsically believe that all their readers are complete morons who will click and buy whatever brings revenue if "content" will yank their chains hard enough has finally completely destroyed mass media.
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It may add something to the discussion if you could cite this. That way others could read about it for themselves.
Sure.
I made numerous claims and there are numerous sources to support it, so here are a couple of those (emphasis mine):
Earlier this year, the University of California system labeled statements like "America is a melting pot” and "America is the land of opportunity” as microaggressions. The school system argues that microaggressions promote a hostile learning environment for marginalized students.
The full article is here: http://www.attn.com/stories/3868/free-speech-college-campuses
Fifty years after the birth of the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley, officials across the UC system are encouraging faculty and students to purge mundane, potentially offensive words and phrases from their vocabularies.
Administrators want members of campus to avoid the use of racist and sexist statements, though their notions about what kinds of statements qualify are completely bonkers. “America is a melting pot,” “Why are you so quiet?” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” are all phrases that should raise red flags, according to the UC speech police.
The full article is here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/the-university-of-california-s-insane-speech-police.html
About "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces":
One last word about the art of taking offence. Nowhere has this art been more assiduously cultivated than on American campuses, where an entirely new culture of trepidation has set out to capture the adolescent psyche. When discussing any of the matters in which the secular dogmas have staked a claim - race, sex, orientation, sexual politics - the professor may now be required to issue "trigger warnings", lest he stray into areas that might trigger the memory of some traumatic event in the life of the student. Visiting speakers with heretical views about feminism or homosexuality are also preceded by trigger warnings. Some campuses even provide safe rooms where the trembling students can retire for consolation should they have been exposed to the contamination of an unorthodox point of view.
The full article is here: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34744432
Another article on the subject of free speech and universities, with good references to SCOTUS cases, is here: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/the-anti-free-speech-movement-at-ucla/410638/
Is there any other statement I made that still needs verification?
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What is really interesting in that link is the poll: 81% of the people clicked that they don't care about the coffee cups design. And that, of course, is only the tiny fraction of the "don't care" people who actually bothered to click on the poll.
So, in surface, the article looks like there are many people who are outraged for a completely ridiculous reason. There is a flow of comments to confirm the outrage. But, in truth, most of the people who read the articles, found it downright silly, and rightly so.
Probably, this illustrates that the Internet has become vastly irrelevant, just as the paper press and TV in the years before. And, probably, that erosion of relevance has something to do with ad revenue drying up.
I think that is the real answer: the complete subversion of actual content in the medias to an agenda dependent of greed and power, to a clique of managers who intrinsically believe that all their readers are complete morons who will click and buy whatever brings revenue if "content" will yank their chains hard enough has finally completely destroyed mass media.
I think that's a reflection of the growth of the internet and IT generally. Many of those those who built it think they are the only clever people around, everyone else is stoopid because they don't do techie stuff! Those who run it are subject to the same myopia and wonder why we are not fooled into buying their stuff.
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Thanks for posting the citations. It helps when everyone can read the same articles as part of the discussion
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I don't know (in person) anyone who is both by nature respectful of other humans and untroubled by intolerance in its various forms. There is for sure a strongly intolerant aspect to the "protect me from microaggression!" university kerfuffles. IMO this is infantilizing and ultimately self-defeating, as extremism always tends to be. I also find the degree to which people are outraged—and outraged by the outrage—to be a good indicator of tribal/political alliance. The greater the outrage the stronger the alliance. This holds up equally for left and right across multiple outrage outbreaks. People who're disappointed by and express regret over this stuff I agree and empathize with. The outragers: ppfftt, I know the stink of politics and ideology when I smell it.
-Dave-
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Thanks for posting the citations. It helps when everyone can read the same articles as part of the discussion
It should be noted I could link to numerous sources about how people are offended by Christmas and why it is going to be banned.
The fact that the source of this this misinformation is actually satirising an anti-Muslim hate group should be noted.
Some idiots somewhere will most probably be objecting to banal phrases in case of offence, but Slobodan using outliers to show that being politically correct, i.e. treating people with respect is somehow wrong is the typical argument used by the bigot/racist. I could justify just as equally that Christianity should be got rid of by linking to news reports about what the Klu Klux Klan get up to. Extremists of any persuasions, left/right, black/white, Jewish/Palestinian should be ignored as being representative of an entire group.
Bigots also like to try and play the persecuted card....
Yes, you said that, repeatedly, hurting my feelings. That would be bullying, no? ;)
Describing your bullying behaviour as bullying is simply descriptive.
For those people do not want to be called a bully, a racist a homophobe or whatever here's a simple tip, don't behave like one.
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... Some idiots somewhere will most probably be objecting to banal phrases in case of offence, but Slobodan using outliers ... Extremists...
Idiots...outliers...extremists...
Jeremy, Jeremy... these are official university policies.
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Idiots...outliers...extremists...
Jeremy, Jeremy... these are official university policies.
So? They not mutually exclusive. Being smart does not mean you are not also incredibly stupid in other areas. Besides once you open Universities to all, you don't even need to be smart to go there.
Besides, the staff who came up with the dumb things are admin folk anyway, so not even the smart folk.
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So? They not mutually exclusive. Being smart does not mean you are not also incredibly stupid in other areas. Besides once you open Universities to all, you don't even need to be smart to go there.
Besides, the staff who came up with the dumb things are admin folk anyway, so not even the smart folk.
So... if I go along with your theory of stupidity (where, it seems, you do have intimate knowledge of the subject matter), it means that stupid people are taking over... universities, national discourse, companies, judiciary, government, etc. Thank you, exactly the point I've been making this whole time, given the tide of PC "victories" recently.
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So... if I go along with your theory of stupidity (where, it seems, you do have intimate knowledge of the subject matter), it means that stupid people are taking over... universities, national discourse, companies, judiciary, government, etc. Thank you, exactly the point I've been making this whole time, given the tide of PC "victories" recently.
Not what I said at all, not even close. You are using the typical bigots 'rationalisation' of deriving generalisations from specifics, as well as completely misreading and misinterpreting what I wrote. You should go and write for one of our rabid tabloid newspapers, they love that sort of 'thinking'.
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Well, Jeremy, since you absolutely have to have the last word, I'll let you. I'll also let readers of this forum decide for themselves the difference between facts, reliable and reputable sources, and opinions in this debate.
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Not what I said at all, not even close. You are using the typical bigots 'rationalisation' of deriving generalisations from specifics, as well as completely misreading and misinterpreting what I wrote. You should go and write for one of our rabid tabloid newspapers, they love that sort of 'thinking'.
Damn right. Anyone who disagrees with you, Jeremy, is a bigot, incapable of independent, rational thought. How dare Slobodan doubt that obvious truth.
Jeremy
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I don't understand why there are some people here that seem to only be able to discuss something on a personal basis with the insults, condescending attitudes, and name calling?
I guess that's the Internets Tubes for you.
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Which simply confirms that you are not exactly a very nice person and also explains your at times bullying behaviour on LuLa.
Does this mean that decent manners will be the goal of future posts from you? If so, I applaud it.
-h
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Damn right. Anyone who disagrees with you, Jeremy, is a bigot, incapable of independent, rational thought. How dare Slobodan doubt that obvious truth.
Jeremy
So you are now drawing generalisations from specifics now too. Only person here I think is a bigot is Slobodan and that is directly because of his not very nice behaviour.
Slobodan has a history of veiled and outright nastiness on this forum, he has been misogynistic, a rape apologist and discreetly homophobic. Never seen anyone post such nasty and bullying things on here as him. He explicitly says above that he sees no problem with saying hateful things (requoted that post below). I find it baffling that he keeps getting away with it when others have been binned for far less.
Such accepted unpleasantness is why I gave up posting on here for a while.
So do you think saying hateful things is somehow OK, but doing hateful things is not? Yes.
What Slobodan does not get is that saying hateful things is in fact doing hateful things.
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We are so done here.
I have had to issue two temporary bans from posting and have locked and unlocked this thread. It will now stay locked
Character assassination will not be tolerated.
Members who repeatedly engage in attacks will receive progressively longer bans.