Saturday, August 1, 2009

I've been banned --- yet again

I'm not sure that I am actually been blocked from the Queen of Thorns site but in her usual manner she has told me to f... off. One of her favourite words sadly which to me in my old worldly thinking shows a certain lack writing ability and limited vocab.

So this is the fourth or fifth site that I can remember. The first was years ago when discussing one of my hobbies of the time 'G Gauge model railways' and answering a post from an Australian I said something about convict decendants. The Site owner told me not to answer back after the Aussie protested, I did in the most innocent way, pleading it was meant to be humourous, and was banned. These days I make sure to insert " :-) " hoping that will soften the reaction.

About that time my interests moved from model railways and other engineering subjects, I'm a Life Member of my local Model Engineering Society, to digital photography and I became really enthusiastic about the new medium. This got on the wick of a very successful American running a MSN site. He was a professional getting upwards of US$5000 a wedding most weekends, such is today's wedding photography, when I did it I usually just got a pound to cover my expenses in getting there and commission on sales, but that was decades ago. Anyway he got very upset that I promoted the advantages of digital over film, probably I was a bit carried away though I had too shot film for several decades professionally and for home use and welcomed the new option. So he banned me. Organising it so MSN blocked me from his site. So I invented a 'new' me and returned to the site and contributed a comment or two. But the funny thing was that inbetween banning me and my return he too had picked up on digital for his work and was waxing on about how wonderful it was ... oh well, what the hell :-)
I left the site then becuase I was sure that by expressing my views he would tumble to me becuase a leopard doesn't change his spots.

Years ago as part of my english training as a photographer the class went to see the annual exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society. This was 1952 and it showed soft fuzzy 'artistic' work which to the class's eyes was very poor trained as we had been for the commercial world of crisp results. So I had a certain 'thing' about Photographic Societies and the people who take part. I related this on a NZ photographic website and raised the wick of a rather pompos gent from Tauranga who asked why vermin such as me should be permitted to infest the site. I was a personal aquaintance of the site owner and respect his work and I resigned before he could push me.

Banning or telling somebody to f... off if you don't like their opinions is really rather childish though I could see the point of a site owner with few members concerned that others would leave becuase of one member's comments. There are so many sites, and so many individuals, that wandering off is common as muck with the internet. One Aussie site used to boast it had grown from 700 to 7000 members during my membership before a new owner started to cull the membership, becuase of the 7000 I doubt if more than a hundred participated. the other 6900 had visited once or twice, most just to look, and moved on.

1 comment:

BLiP said...

You're in good company.