why can't he say the video sucks if he thinks it sucks?
He is free to say the video sucks IF he also includes WHY he feels it sucks.
Criticism without support is simply insult. It's simple to pop about the forum saying that this video sucks, or that story sucks or this poster is vapid. But it adds nothing to the discussion other then a record of one person's displeasure, and their negativity, leading to threads that are generally unpleasent.
This thread has been left untouched as an example of that in action.
Let's review how this creature grew.
It started off as a new user simply asking a question about where a favorite model went. Not an uncommon question.
The producer who worked with that model answered. Seems open and closed. User knows, the rest of the forum is informed. Everyone wins.
Then we got this: She Probably Realized no one is making good videos anymore so she got out of the business.
When I see posts like this I always ask myself "And the point is?"
Well, it's always nice to see user offer possible answers to questions. But it's pretty clear that it wasn't meant to be an informative post. The question has been answered already, and since the user doesn't know the model in question, any suppositions on their part can't be more then personal opinion.
Ah! OK it's an opinion post! But an opinion about where a model has gone? That's odd, why bother? It would be equally valid to say that she has decided to take up cliff diving in Fiji.
It's what I like to call a trojan horse insult post. The point is the insult, everything else is just there to slip it in. The user has an ax to grind, he is displeased with the state of the tickling video industry at this point in time. Current videos are just not doing it for him. That's a 100% valid opinion to have, hold, and express here. It will not produce any problems from me when I see it. So it's not the users position that is a problem. Just wanted to be clear on that.
It's the delivery. He saw a thread, and added a negative opinion to it for no other reason then to advance his core point backhandedly. This rarely works.
We go through a phase of users taking potshots at the poster. Amusingly they use the same trojan horse insult style. Some others support the users point.
The user then clarifies: I wasn't sure if anyone else out there was of the opinion that anymore realtickling sucks, Magic Touch dropped out of the video business, and imagination/fantasy seems to have died completely
Ah better at least we have a supporting reason for the 'sucks' this time. OK. The companies product sucks because it lacks imagination. A valid argument.
but:
in the next post we get: If You Were Priscilla James would you be associated with what passes for Tickling videos these days?
Whoops... back to unsupported trojan insult questions again. I assume the spirit of the post was to try and support the origional point. It would be fun to know what Pris thinks of ticklign videos today. Perhaps she would agree, or perhaps she thinks about them as much as she does the state of the domestic american honey industry. We dunno.
From here out the thread takes it's negative turns. Users taking the first trojan as an insult and nothing more suggest that the poster and his supporters try and make their own stuff if they think the current stuff blows so bad. A valid response, but not the one the poster wanted. He desired to make a point about videos being bad, and hoped that this would prompt existing producers to shape up. But alas, his point was lost in his trojan horse, and all that was seen was an attack. The discussion now jumps the rails into slugfest on why or why not the poster will or will not make a videos. Some posters are pretty damned rude about it. We get some back and forth for a bit.
Then the user steps in again. At first he no longer defends his point, he defends himself, and his contrary position here on the forum. Shifting the argument from videos to speach issues here. Once more we skitter off into another direction. But we return to the topic in the end.
I admire Realtickling is still making videos. I applaud them for it. But the fact is the videos they do put out now suck. And my guess is Priscilla James knows it.
Whoops! It's just the same opinion as before. Better focused though. The videos only suck, not the company. Still we don't know why.
From there out the topic rocks all over the place. Why do the videos suck, how should users behave, more insults, off the wall analogies, more discussion on what complainers should do. All for the most part, surprisingly civil.
The user makes a final strong defense on almost all the topics. And in it we find the real point he has been trying to make all along:
Right now I have far too much going on, AND I want to watch a tickling video to relax. In other words enjoy a fantasy. Why should I work for my own fantasy?
AH! The video companies have failed to meet his needs and expectations. The user expects his fantisies to be delivered in his entertainment. They have not. This has made him understandibly unhappy. We all get cranky when we expect things and they don't come along, moreso if we are depending on them more to relax. Dissapointment of expectation is among the bitterist of feelings. Any of us who bought a video we saw promoed has felt it. We get all exceited over the images we saw, and order. We build it up in our heads, it comes... and... eh. Bummer! One feels like a chump.
So after all these posts and such we finally have the topic.
What should we do when our expectations are not being met by current product?
There are many possibilities. But I'll point out one that doesn't work:
Generic insults are not a path to solving the issue. That you have been constructive elsewhere does not give one a free pass to be genericaly insulting anyplace else. Every post needs to stand on it's own merit.
In other words: Got a bitch about something? You are free to post it. But support it with some real reasons, or it's just another invitation to the type of unpleasent mess we had above, and in honesty, such threads don't make this community meeting place a better one. Constructive ones can and do.
Be well,
Myriads
