My friend Ukeforever posted a link to my brief commentary on the Uke Wars on the Fleamarket Music BB. I feel bad because I associated Jim Beloff and his Flukes an Fleas with sweetness and light. I hate for this controversy to spill over to that website, although I understand that there have been a few other unpleasantries oozing onto that board.
When I go to ukulele festivals in the area, I am impressed with the overall positive energy that flows freely from one uke collector to another. Everyone there, be they Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or Agnophobic, is ready to put aside their differences for the greater cosmic good of developing one another's ukulelic skills. It is a truly beautiful experience. Even at one uke fest where I thought things weren't so well-run, this positivity still reigned.
But now, there is a disturbance in the Uke Force. Fortunately for them and us, neither Ukeforever nor Uke Jackson are likely to meet. They live on opposite Coasts.
But I have a dream, kind of like the one shared by Haley Mills and her sister, Hailey Mills, in that timeless film "The Parent Trap." I see us all at an international ukulele festival-perhaps in Iceland. Hoards of ukulelists strumming the tune "Little Brown Jug," voices lifted in harmony. At the songs end, individuals in the crowd exchange pleasantries. Zoom in on a gentleman with a ponytail and resonator ukulele. Standing next to him is another gentleman with a pineapple Jenny. They exchange compliments, discover that they both use Nylgut strings, and share techniques for bending notes. They both call themselves "Uke." A friendship ensues that will last a lifetime. One will become godfather to the other's first-born son. The other will donate half of his pancreas for the other's emergency transplant.
It could happen.
10 comments:
Jim posts on a couple of Hammond organ user groups. The same stuff happens there. These guys will get into arguments that last for weeks over technical shit.
Some guys can get pretty passionate about their organ.
It's just like Computer Geek Chatrooms and CB Radio humans. All they do is talk about technical poop and cuss at each other. They're as useless as an IPod.
The trick is, and I'm sure all of us boys will agree, is to get others (depending on your persuasion)to get pretty passionate about your organ.
Oooh... I could get pretty passionate about an iPod.
Oooh... I could get pretty passionate about an iPod.
U.J. blew his stack at UF after UF blathered on like a know-it-all. It was a lame episode, I don't think dwelling on it will make anything better.
Hopefully one day U.J. will take an internet forum anger management course, and UF will try to focus on posting about what he knows from personal experience rather than repeating what other people say. Probably not.
FWIW, I find my iPod very useful - it's a portable 40 G hard drive.
Did I mention that I could get passionate about an iPod? 'Cause really, I could.
(Dang, how did that get posted twice?)
Posting on public forums is a learning experience, isn't it? I've learned a few things from doing this a few years. Don't know if this will relate to your situation but here goes. I'll apologize in advance if I'm telling you something you already know.
You don't really know these people. Most of them are normal, rational people who are polite and respond to normal social cues. But there are always a few who truly don't have a life and need to get their kicks from irritating the rest of us. You can either stick with them and try to reach some kind of understanding or you can leave them the hell alone. Depends.
It is sooooo easy to be misunderstood when using this medium. If someone says something that pisses me off I'll start asking questions (non threatening) just to make sure I understood what they were getting at. Usually, this defuses a potential problem.
Never, ever let on that someone has pissed you off. Always respond in a rational, dispassionate way. That way, they're the ones who come off looking like idiots and you end up looking really, really smart and everyone else will want to be your friend because you're way super cool.
If someone is really being an asshole the best way to deal with them is ignore, ignore, ignore. Don't reply to them and don't refer to them when posting to other people. Eventually they'll give up and go looking for another victim. They just can't persist in the face of being ignored. This really works.
When expressing your opinion, it helps to be kind. You can correct people without attacking them personally.
And now I am going to go buy the world a Coke and keep it company.
I agree with Donita here. I can't tell you how many times I have been in a situation where someone was trying to egg others on ibto an argument. The great thing about the internet is that you don't even have to acknowledge the asshole contingent. One of the shortcomings is that people have gotten so used to those emoto-cons that they don't even know how to read your words anymore without those things placed strategically to tell them that you were trying to be funny or whatever. Most of what is said online is disposable.
UF, personally I really don't think there's much wrong with repeating the things that others say, to some degree it is inescapable. But, there are a group of people (U.J. included) who get really irritated by that kind of thing. Inevitably, those people are the least likely to take the advice of donita.
In the case of the particular post, there was also the a more complicated issue that the particular topic of string nicking is somewhat touchy to sort of nerds who have lost enough perspective on life that they care about things as dumb as whether playing a ukulele with one's fingernails will cause strings to be nicked.
I am afraid I can sink into moments of being one of those nerds. I have nails and use Nylguts, and I know folks who have some serious nails who play the hell out of their NylGuts but never see any nicks on the strings. I and others suspect that those who are nicking their strings must be doing something else, since I have played hard on a set of NylGuts for eight months with my nails and never saw a nick on one of them. I have scratched the surface of my Uke with my nails, but the strings are fine.
U.J. is aware of the fact that the question is not a settled matter, and on top of his other bad history with you, I think that he was irritated to see the meme that nails nick NylGuts perpetuated. My reference to you as a know-it-all (which was probably too harsh of language), had as much to do with the fact that you were repeating the meme, rather than than just that you were repeating something. It is seriously stupid to flame anyone over something as lame as whether fingernails nick NylGuts, but it is one of those unsettled questions that I am afraid I have actually spent time wondering about.
BABOR wrote: Most of what is said online is disposable.
Ahh, but if only it were actually disposed of! One thing to remember is that all your musings on the web are being archived. It's not a bad idea to always consider that everyone you know may eventually read what you have written. I certainly have said a few things in the i-aether that I wish I could retract.
Ever seen the Internet Archives?
Don't expect anything to go away until a great cataclysm occurs...
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