Your Hobby/Specialist Message Boards - Wars over Gear-Bragging?

[WordMan]

@Busy_Scissors

Without knowing anything about guitars, I suspect they have a lot in common with road bikes when it comes to discussing them online. Certainly acoustic guitars. Both items appear to be basically done, in terms of humanity’s design and engineering them. They’re not a work in progress, there’s no differences of opinion on how they should work at any fundamental level - they’re both in the trophy cabinet of great stuff mankind has made and invented.

So one might think that this would lead to sterile agreement on how things are. Instead you get the opposite, with us all discussing how many angels fit on the head of a guitar or bike-shaped pin. Enormous arguments on the minutiae of design, or wish fulfillment nonsense like how the 3 grand frame you just bought gives such a compliant ride. It seems like the great refinement that has gone into these items over the years serves to define the terms of debate in a very rigorous way, so that people can easily position and differentiate themselves when talking about such things.

Yep - all true. I would add that the folks most likely be passionate and involved online fall into a few major categories:

• Complete guitar newbies, regardless of age
• Blue-collar guys - many of whom are gigging players where the gig income matters and is part of their working wages
• Hobbyists - often folks with money, and who enjoy a cool guitar
• High-end collector/acquirers

I can see where a motorcycle board might have a similar convergence of blue collar diehards, white collar hobbyists and richer aficionados - I’m sure others do, too. While in many ways the diversity is great - sometimes it stirs the pot; see references to boasting, bitching and but-hurt-itude.

Please note I am not slamming any one group - everybody has their pros and cons. But the mix - especially on an over-modded place like the Acoustic Guitar Forum - can lead to a lot of deleted threads…

[Algher]

On the Mustang boards I used to read, you listed your car (and sometimes mods or rebuild status).

It helped when reading threads to make distinctions:

Concourse level restorations of classics
Resto-Mod classics
Daily Driver classics

Then all of the people with the newer cars - which often had a completely different type of discussion.

Finally, a few people would list that they are between cars, and what they were looking for

The fights were usually against board trolls (Chevy guys, or kids into the modern stuff (with the added term of “Ricers” tossed around a lot).