Drop into my MB, demand advice, snark at ME for giving advice you don't like? Uh huh.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

I hang out at a very small hobbyist forum. Call it the SneakerTossers. You can do SneakerTossing by yourself, but it’s more fun to do in a group. It’s a very small world, everybody knows everybody, and we’re the only SneakerTossing forum on the Internet. (And no, it’s not dirty, you should be ashamed of yourself…)

And we get a certain number of people who sign up only to come in and ask, “How can I find a SneakerTossing teacher where I live?” They generally assume that it’s merely a matter of looking in a big SneakerTossing teacher’s directory, or maybe just getting a lead to it, or maybe someone on the forum will say, “Hey, I just happen to live in your neck of East Podunk! I’ll be happy to be your SneakerTossing teacher!”

However, SneakerTossing is a fairly obscure hobby, and there IS no big teacher directory, and the SneakerTossing teachers are too busy teaching SneakerTossing to be hanging out on an Internet message boad.

So, to these people we give the same response: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Here is a list of groups in your area that we know have SneakerTossers in them; contact them, ask around. That’s how it works. Good luck.”

And most people are fine with that.

But every so often there’s one clueless idjit who DOES expect it to be like Dial-A-Teacher, and who is mightily miffed that we can’t simply cough up the name and address of a SneakerTossing teacher in his area.

And I had one this morning. I spent 20 minutes looking up a list of groups in his general area that I knew all had SneakerTossers in them, gave him the standard advice, posted it–and came back after church to find myself being flamed for not telling him what he wanted to know, for the fact that apparently half the groups are on the other end of the state from where his house is (completely ignoring the fact that it’s all about NETWORKING, someone at one of those groups probably knows someone who knows someone who teaches SneakerTossing in his town), and finishing up with him going on to beg the REST of the forum, “Is there anyone ELSE out there who can help me?”

Which is laughable. Hon, if the Google Queen can’t help you, you can’t be helped.

So to this person, I would to like to say, because I can’t over at the SneakerTossers…

Fuck you.

AND the horse you rode in on.

Thank you for listening.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@Duck Duck Goose

Fuck you.

AND the horse you rode in on.

Aw, lay off the horse – it’s not the nag’s fault he’s got an extra ass to tote around.

[shamrock227]

I think it was very irresponsible of you not to Google his address and find the Tosser Teacher that lives right next door to him. Gosh, all he wanted was for someone to help him out. :rolleyes:

Dude sounds like a real dipshit. And if this hobby requires any kind of patience or has any sort of learning curve, doesn’t seem like it would be a good one for him. Maybe you should find the teachers in his area and warn them to turn off the lights and hide behind the couch when he comes a calling…

[DragonAsh]

Am I the only one who really wants to know what this obscure hobby is?

[Hung_Mung]

@DragonAsh

Am I the only one who really wants to know what this obscure hobby is?

Dwarf Tossing.

[Richard_Pearse]

I’m not the Sneaker Tosser,
I’m the Sneaker Tosser’s son,
I’m only tossing sneakers
till the Sneaker Tosser comes

[MrDibble]

@DragonAsh

Am I the only one who really wants to know what this obscure hobby is?

Well, let’s try and guess.
We do know S-Ts are a subset of a larger group, as there are groups that have plain STs in them, not exclusively S-T teachers.

mm, groups that have subgroups… Obscure hobbies…need more info…

Goose, are you in the SCA?

[iamthewalrus_3]

Am I the only one who read most of the way through the post, missing the original mention that it wasn’t actually the tossing of sneakers that was to be taught.

I was alternately thinking that I’d figured out what was up with all those shoes thrown over electrical lines and wondering why it was that anyone would need to go on a message board to learn how to do that.

[Martin_Hyde]

Why couldn’t he just tell us the hobby?

It made the whole OP awkward to read and really just made me lose a lot of sympathy for the OP because he decided to put a stupid term like SneakterTossing in his post and then repeat it multiple times.

Or hell, if for whatever insane reason someone would be too ashamed to just say their own hobby, why not just refer to it as a hobby instead of using a stupid-sounding and annoying phrases?

[Otto]

@Martin Hyde

Why couldn’t he just tell us the hobby?

Because it’s a small hobbyist community in which everyone knows everyone else and it’s the only forum for these hobbyists on the internet.

Or, as DDG put it in the fourth sentence of the OP,

@DDG

It’s a very small world, everybody knows everybody, and we’re the only SneakerTossing forum on the Internet.

Dumbass.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Otto

Because it’s a small hobbyist community in which everyone knows everyone else and it’s the only forum for these hobbyists on the internet.

Or, as DDG put it in the fourth sentence of the OP,

Dumbass.

Because it’s a small hobby that means he should never tell anyone else about it?

That’s the height of absurdity.

Obviously not everyone knows everyone else or the person he’s pitting wouldn’t exist.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Otto

Because it’s a small hobbyist community in which everyone knows everyone else and it’s the only forum for these hobbyists on the internet.

Before you start calling people dumbass, you spiteful little man, he certainly didn’t say that because it was a small hobby he wanted to keep it secret. Nor did he say he was refusing to tell us his hobby because he didn’t want us all to track down his message board and spam it with hate. He just simply said it was a small group of people.

That was said without any sort of indication that this was the reason he was refusing to explain what his hobby is.

[Guinastasia]

Martin Hyde, DDG is female.

I’m curious as to what it is she does.

[MrDibble]

@Martin Hyde

Before you start calling people dumbass, you spiteful little man, he certainly didn’t say that because it was a small hobby he wanted to keep it secret. Nor did he say he was refusing to tell us his hobby because he didn’t want us all to track down his message board and spam it with hate. He just simply said it was a small group of people.

That was said without any sort of indication that this was the reason he was refusing to explain what his hobby is.

He shouldn’t have to say it, as the “no boardwars OR keep your offboard stuff offboard” rule is a standard Dope one.

[Richard_Pearse]

@Martin Hyde

Because it’s a small hobby that means he should never tell anyone else about it?

No, but perhaps because it is a small hobby, stating the hobby here would compromise her anonymity more than she’d like.

[Martin_Hyde]

@1920s Style "Death Ray"

No, but perhaps because it is a small hobby, stating the hobby here would compromise her anonymity more than she’d like.

And I honestly probably could care less about the hobby if she had just called it “her hobby” and not “SneakerTossing” which is grating and annoying.

I tend to think being too ashamed to mention what your real hobby is is weird but that in and of itself isn’t what was so annoying. She could have just said at the beginning my hobby (and I won’t tell you what it is because I think it would contradict my anonymity) has this message board and so on and so forth. But instead I had to be subjected to SneakerTossing, a most annoying and obtrusive term to have to see repeated over and over again.

[Skywatcher]

@Martin Hyde

I had to be subjected to SneakerTossing

You had to, huh? Who forced you to read it?

[Richard_Pearse]

Well, no one forced you to read it.

[Quint]

Well, in an attempt to end the hijack, I’ll say the person described in the OP stikes me as a right tosser.

[Otto]

@Martin Hyde

Before you start calling people dumbass, you spiteful little man, he certainly didn’t say that because it was a small hobby he wanted to keep it secret. Nor did he say he was refusing to tell us his hobby because he didn’t want us all to track down his message board and spam it with hate. He just simply said it was a small group of people.

Those of us with more intuitive ability than the average turnip were able to figure it out from context. Small group of people, exactly one message board on the internet dealin with it, probably not that many people posting the sort of message DDG described in the OP, even fewer of them being from Decatur.

@Martin Hyde

And I honestly probably could care less

Couldn’t. Couldn’t care less.

@Martin Hyde

about the hobby if she had just called it “her hobby” and not “SneakerTossing” which is grating and annoying.

The only person who’s found it so grating and annoying that he felt the need to hijack the thread to complain about it is you, who is himself grating and annoying.

@Martin Hyde

I tend to think being too ashamed to mention what your real hobby is is weird but that in and of itself isn’t what was so annoying.

There is nothing in DDG’s message that can reasonably interpreted as her being ashamed of her hobby.

@Martin Hyde

She could have just said at the beginning my hobby (and I won’t tell you what it is because I think it would contradict my anonymity) has this message board and so on and so forth.

Why should she have to? The smart kids all figured out why she posted as she did. No reason why she should have to dumb it down on account of the occasional random jackass who didn’t.

@Martin Hyde

But instead I had to be subjected to SneakerTossing, a most annoying and obtrusive term to have to see repeated over and over again.

SneakerTossing.

SneakerTossing.

SneakerTossing SneakerTossing SneakerTossing SneakerTossing SneakerTossing.