Tropical Fish Hobbyist Magazine

[GaryE]

One of the things I like about this forum is you can be slightly social while following your own interests in fishkeeping. I've tried to convince some of my friends to participate, but they've lost the ability to suffer fools, and won't even look at the good online environment here. This is a well moderated forum. Even just a few years ago when there were still lots of forums functioning, the aggression online was not fun. I accidentally met one of the worst fish forum tr#lls I had ever seen in action - a man who launched vicious personal attacks at anyone who said anything he didn't like. He was an old man who was never sober after noon, and thought he was being funny. He was gunning for what he called the fishkeeping elite (I didn't get it. He was attacking self educated working class aquarists, and he owned a local restaurant chain started by his Dad). That man alone chased at least 15 people who were generous with info and knew as much or more than anyone here off the social internet.

Writing for the old magazines where you would have an editor who had seen it all to worry about and question anything you couldn't back up was easy compared to what goes online.

Hopefully there are thicker skinned open minded young aquarists waiting in the wings, and we can get the hard earned expertise and the sharing of information flowing again. It won't be with print sources, or even blogs. What form it takes we can't predict, and maybe the code is unwritten. We'll see, hopefully.

 

[Back in the fold]

@GaryE You have a talent for bringing up alternative viewpoints . You’re right , the new information won’t come from print although I hope print survives diminished as it is. We all need to be thicker skinned as you pointed out. The harmless trolls , such as myself , can be overlooked but the vicious ones , as you gave an example of , are hard to deal with. They are best ignored. They will go away if you don’t feed them. I left Facebook because the verbal poison was just too much. Sometimes the vicious trolls drive others away and I understand your friends reluctance to “suffer fools”.
But , onward and upward , I will enjoy my subscription to TFH and I’ve decided to let the moths out of my wallet and take Amazonas . If print is to die then I will stay on the ship with them until it slips beneath the waves of electronic media. What else would an old printer do ?