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Subject: 
Re: Lego Hobby Blues
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:00:30 GMT
Viewed: 
1951 times
  
In lugnet.general, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
   Hey Thomas,

A good and thoughtful post, but I have to disagree with some of the points.

Swanberg - Yes, there is the Michael Jackson factor and we all like to gossip, but I do think there were some relevant questions that did impact the community: Would this reflect badly on our hobby if non-AFOLs saw this on the news? If we bought from his store in the past, did we have some liability in regards to the receipt of stolen goods? Was there any possibility that prosecutors would call for a total audit of Bricklink sales, and perhaps shut down sales from all Bricklink stores while said audit continued? In the end I don’t think any of these fears came to fruition, but they were certainly thoughts I had when I first heard the story.

These are good and valid points. The kind of thing that I totally understand being thought about and discussed. But there seemed an almost “stone him” kind of mean-spiritedness about what I saw online too.

  
How much is too much? - This is a very important question, but not just in regards to LEGO consumption. When I stop by a drive-through in the evening because I just want some fries as a snack, and I see a homeless guy standing there, suddenly I feel like crap. I’m grabbing a snack, which I probably shouldn’t eat anyway, and maybe this guy hasn’t eaten today. What do I do? Do I empty my wallet to him and swear off all non-essential food and eat plain rice for the rest of my life, giving all other money to the poor? Or do I give him my loose change and think that’s enough? Or do I decide to give a certain ammount each month to various charitable organizations? All non-essential expenditures (and by non-essential, I’m including anything beyond two changes of clothes, plain rice for all meals, and the cheapest rathole apartment you can find) comes into question if you push it. I don’t think that that level of sacrifice is required to be a moral person, though. I do think that there is some balance between being charitable with your disposable income, and spending on yourself. I suppose it is between each person and their own conscience whether they are living up to that. Just to take another example--I drink a couple of cans of soda every day. That means that each day I spend one to two dollars a day on something that, quite frankly, is needless; I could easily walk down the hall from my office and drink from the water fountain. Spread over the last five years, this means I’ve spent $2500 on something as stupid as Diet Coke.

I do this kind of thing too!!


If you put it that
   way, it looks horrible. I could have given that money to hunger relief or whatever. On the other hand, no one would really call someone extremely selfish for buying a can of soda. Something similar could be said about LEGO. Yes, over the years I’ve built up a sizable collection, but I’ve done it in bits and pieces, especially grabbing up things on sale if I find them. Now I do think it would be over the top if I decided to buy every set new when it came out, but each person is in a different situation. Other AFOLs here might easily make three times as much as I do each year. What if, unbeknownst to me, they give fully half of their disposable income to the poor? They’d still have more to spend on LEGO than I do, and I don’t think we could call them selfish for doing so. So I can’t go around saying that this person or that is selfish for having a larger collection. It all depends on each person’s situation.

I guess it is best to base it on percentages rather than amounts. I spend a greater percentage of money on Lego than I do giving to charities. I have guilt about that.

  
As to the splitting of the community, this is a topic that has been covered many times in the past. I truly believe that a growth of sites has led to a growth in the number of people involved in the hobby. Yes, it is harder now to know everything that’s happening in the community, but it’s a much larger community. I do think that most things are still on Brickshelf (though some things have never been on Brickshelf - e.g. Eric Harshbarger has never had a Brickshelf account AFAIK), so it’s still possible to see most things that are happening. Simply put, is it better to have 1000 people who post in one forum, for 2000 people who post in five forums? I vote for the second option, but I understand if others prefer the first.

For Lego stuff, the first option is better for me, because I am not going to check five forums regularly. But I see your point.

  
Bruce



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Lego Hobby Blues
 
(...) (snipped a lot of interesting stuff) (...) Look into LENNI.. while it does not allow you to post from a single interface, the aggregation it gives you at least gives you a single view of the many communities that choose to make their content (...) (19 years ago, 7-Dec-05, to lugnet.general, FTX)  

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Lego Hobby Blues
 
Hey Thomas, A good and thoughtful post, but I have to disagree with some of the points. Swanberg - Yes, there is the Michael Jackson factor and we all like to gossip, but I do think there were some relevant questions that did impact the community: (...) (19 years ago, 7-Dec-05, to lugnet.general, FTX)

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