Originally Posted by
Perriwen
I have to say, I'm not terribly sorry to see it go.
One thing I have noticed on many photography/spotting sites is how vicious people can be to a different opinion. And the better the photographer, the more vicious. I remember when I was a teenager on the old ICAS forums, I posted an opinion, and many people took 'great offense to it and declared me an enemy'. One very popular photographer (a name I am sure everyone here knows) for years has gone off onto cussing/insulting rants anytime he sees me post on just about any site, it seems. Even into the ASB days, if you didn't have the 'US military is an absolute flawless force that can never ever do any wrong and every other country on the planet sucks' attitude in your posts, people would declare you enemies and attack you at levels that would be equal to or below gradeschool. The same people would suck up to performers to try and gain favor and access..
That's another thing, access gets you the blind eye. On the Houston Spotters forums, we had this one guy who would go on rants you wouldn't believe. He even at one point told me to kill myself, then deleted the post and tried to pretend I was making it up. They never did a thing about him in his attacks or rants because he could get people access. But me...I was banned for...get ready....mentioning a participant at a fly-in they claimed would not be there and I was giving out false information, but then it turned out that participant was in fact there. I since figured out and had it confirmed they simply did it to maintain favor to the person that wanted access from. Also, there was an incident when it was talking about security at airports, and I just casually mentioned amature spotters didn't have a business card to show as credientials. Oooh, that HAD to mean that I was bitter at the 'professionals' and they even tried to arrange face-to-face arguments.
Thank you NYC aviation for being the first mature aviation forum I could find.
So, yeah. As useful as ASB could be, it was also quite a cesspool.
/rant