Subject:
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Re: Lego Hobby Blues
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Wed, 7 Dec 2005 17:58:17 GMT
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Viewed:
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2091 times
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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.
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. 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.
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.
Bruce
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Lego Hobby Blues
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| (...) 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. (...) I do this kind of thing too!! (...) (19 years ago, 7-Dec-05, to lugnet.general, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Lego Hobby Blues
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| The thrill is gone. There's so much about our hobby that has changed over the last few years and a lot of it has changed for the worse. LUGNET This used to be THE place that the online community got together and talked about the hobby. Now, it has a (...) (19 years ago, 7-Dec-05, to lugnet.general)
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