tnyr5
Tony
( Disclaimer - I live in PA, so my only experience is with the swaps in PA, OH, NY, and NJ)
Has anyone else noticed that manners and common courtesy have gone out the window at frag swaps lately? When I started going to these things almost 10 years ago, the only thing you ever had to worry about was finding a parking place. Everyone was friendly and welcoming; you could walk up to a complete stranger and have a 20 minute conversation about keeping an sps reef and, ( & here's the kicker) when you were done, you still liked each other!
Fast forward to 2012 and the forums for my local club are nothing but for-sale threads. Aside from a few good friends, you can barely get people to engage in a conversation unless you're selling something. If they do engage, they are often rude, opinionated, and expecting of adulation. As for the swaps, some are better than others, but here's what I've put up with in the last year:
- people requesting things they don't even want just so other people can't request them
- people sending me e-mails asking to be bumped ahead of other people in line for a frag
- people sending me e-mails demanding a discount for a single 10-15 dollar frag just because they think I should give them one
- when I give freebies to paid members of my local club, I occasionally get people pretending to be club members just to get freebies
- I had a person send me a message once informing me that he/she was buying the mother colony of the frag in the picture for the price of a frag and I should be ready to deliver it to his/her business on such & such a date ( they were TELLING me this, not asking)
Then there's the rudeness at the actual event!
- people have refused frags they requested even after telling me they wanted them in an e-mail the night before
- people trying to make off without paying once they have the frags in their hand
- people handing me a pile of money & then taking off quickly before I can count it because they intentionally short-changed me
- people opening my cooler and going through the corals inside while I'm not looking
- and finally, of course, theft. Last year I had a watermelon chalice stolen from my cooler while I was in the bathroom.
So, I ask you, members of one of the friendliest reef forums, have we let our hobby become too impersonal? Has what was once an erudite and magnanimous gathering of minds been reduced to nothing more than a flea market? Has the difficult, expensive, and collectible nature of our hobby, coupled with the potential for enormous praise from fellow reefers when one gets it right attracted a massive following of narcissists? I'm not really sure I know, but I do know that frag swaps just aren't fun anymore. :-(
Has anyone else noticed that manners and common courtesy have gone out the window at frag swaps lately? When I started going to these things almost 10 years ago, the only thing you ever had to worry about was finding a parking place. Everyone was friendly and welcoming; you could walk up to a complete stranger and have a 20 minute conversation about keeping an sps reef and, ( & here's the kicker) when you were done, you still liked each other!
Fast forward to 2012 and the forums for my local club are nothing but for-sale threads. Aside from a few good friends, you can barely get people to engage in a conversation unless you're selling something. If they do engage, they are often rude, opinionated, and expecting of adulation. As for the swaps, some are better than others, but here's what I've put up with in the last year:
- people requesting things they don't even want just so other people can't request them
- people sending me e-mails asking to be bumped ahead of other people in line for a frag
- people sending me e-mails demanding a discount for a single 10-15 dollar frag just because they think I should give them one
- when I give freebies to paid members of my local club, I occasionally get people pretending to be club members just to get freebies
- I had a person send me a message once informing me that he/she was buying the mother colony of the frag in the picture for the price of a frag and I should be ready to deliver it to his/her business on such & such a date ( they were TELLING me this, not asking)
Then there's the rudeness at the actual event!
- people have refused frags they requested even after telling me they wanted them in an e-mail the night before
- people trying to make off without paying once they have the frags in their hand
- people handing me a pile of money & then taking off quickly before I can count it because they intentionally short-changed me
- people opening my cooler and going through the corals inside while I'm not looking
- and finally, of course, theft. Last year I had a watermelon chalice stolen from my cooler while I was in the bathroom.
So, I ask you, members of one of the friendliest reef forums, have we let our hobby become too impersonal? Has what was once an erudite and magnanimous gathering of minds been reduced to nothing more than a flea market? Has the difficult, expensive, and collectible nature of our hobby, coupled with the potential for enormous praise from fellow reefers when one gets it right attracted a massive following of narcissists? I'm not really sure I know, but I do know that frag swaps just aren't fun anymore. :-(
