Is it ok or is it creepy to talk to younger people about music here?
 

Continuing a hijacked thread, what do you think? The contention from at least jwb is that our attempts to educate 14, now 15-year old Eleanor Rigby in a thread where she asked for music recs is evidence that we were all grooming her, or trying to. Who feels this is correct? Do you worry about approaching those younger than you here, for fear of being accused of being a perv or a creep? Particularly with young girls of course. Or is there enough of a demarcation line for you in your behaviour between innocent chat about music and attempts to divert your conversation into more personal areas? Wonder what everyone thinks about this?

I think we just need to let this one go.

Me thinks thou do protest too much, TH. I think that's how you say that phrase.

The internet is weird. One thing I will agree with jwb on is under most circumstances, you'd never find yourself (assuming you're older) chatting with random 14 year olds in real life. You ever watch those vigilante predator catcher Youtube videos, the ones that are like DIY-Chris Hansen Dateline NBC videos? One of the excuses that the chomos will often use is: "Oh we were just chatting as friends, we have a lot of common interests, we were just gonna hang out and maybe watch a movie..." to which the retort is usually: "Oh yeah? You [some scraggly looking 36 year old creep] have a lot in common with 14 year old boys/girls? What the **** were you gonna talk about, how annoying biology homework is?!", etc.

Of course, the internet puts us into contact with everyone, and sometimes we don't even know the age. If I had my druthers, we'd only allow 18 or older on the site, but we don't, our sign-up guidelines state you need to be 14 years or older.

If we were to consider that this wasn't the internet - and we were all a group of adults who had regular in-person meetups to talk **** with each other, would we be okay with some unaccompanied 14 year old joining in with us? I don't think so.

If you had a 14 year old kid, would you allow them to go on message boards talking with random strangers? I wouldn't. I mean, look at some of the dialogue we have here - some of the jokes we tell - some of the things we talk about. We have a lax moderation policy regarding most of this (which I like), but is it really an appropriate place for kids? Often times, I'd say no.

When I was 15/16 and working my first real job - I'd often talk with some of the older guys I worked with about classic rock. But of course, work was a very structured and supervised environment. I don't think strictly talking about music and exchanging opinions about music with younger people is weird, but a lot of it depends on context.

I think it's actually, "Me thinks thou doth protest too much" :D

I knew I was ****ing it up somehow.

Voted "As long as it remains only about music" because I don't think it's de facto pervy merely to recommend music to a 14 year old. However, needless to say, not everyone can be trusted to maintain that boundary - and there lies the problem.

^ Totally agree. But how to prove "18 or older"? Another problem.

Absolutely not. I've always been strict about closely supervising my children's internet use; but the issue is, you can't be everywhere all of the time. I would never in a million years knowingly allow my child to be on this or any other internet forum chatting to strangers.

Not saying anyone here has bad intentions (and especially not Trollheart, who is a good person), and no disrespect intended - but I think allowing underaged girls or boys on here is inappropriate and potentially dangerous.

I'm also voting a qualified "Yes" because I assume that conversation across generations is innocent until shown to be otherwise. It's one of the most natural ways for children to learn, and I was hoping to list situations where it was safe for children to talk to trusted adults. Unfortunately my list, which began "family/ school/ church/ work" , ran into problems straight away because of the way these institutions have allowed predators to operate. So we clearly need tighter safeguards to protect children against a minority with sinister intentions.

In MB's favour is the fact that contact with younger members stays in the realm of typed messages, and I hope stays in the open on these boards. AFAIK children are now taught from quite an early age about safe internet behaviour, so that as long as people are following the usual internet constraints about sharing personal info, I can't see that any serious grooming can take place here, and anything approaching the inappropriate is likely to be picked up by the mods.

^ One bad thing about MB is this: as SGR reminds us, the forum is open for anyone to read, from a 10-year-old to your grandmother, but we don't usually consider that, either in the heat of an argument, or in a volley of joking insults. How many innocent lurkers are we all unwittingly corrupting, just by our regular chat?!

On a lighter note, without looking it up, I'm pretty sure "methinks" is all one word, and to the question "Is it ok to talk to younger people?" I have the counter-question, "Well, who else can I talk to here?" ;)

Is it okay if I tell your kids to listen to Cannibal Corpse?

Of corpse. ;)

My son likes The Ramones and The Stooges - so I must have done something right. :cool:

Yeah I don't think it's right to subject innocent children to Batlord's music taste. I think grooming them to think ICP is cool is almost worse than anything OH would (allegedly) do.

Why would I want to associate with a twelve year old juggalo? I'll just get them into Skrewdriver.

Why not just get them into Kanye instead?

Anal beads.

As Woody said in Cheers, "Sorry Dr. Crane, I think it's "I thinks"...
Bolded: this is twice you've used this phrase (yes I'm old): what does it mean? If I had my way? What's a druther??
Bolded: God I hope a lot! :laughing:

Seriously, this refers back to Eleanor as you know, and wasn't a case of one of us approaching her. She asked for recs. So the point is, would it have been preferable to ignore her - go away you're too young and I could get in trouble - or respond to her request?

As far as inappropriate talk is concerned, at least in my case - and I think most other people's - I moderated my own language to accommodate the fact that there was a child present. I think it's better we knew her age, then we could adjust our attitude and speech towards that.

Anyway I thought she was cool and I hope she's all right. It's always fun to get kids into the good music (shut up) for the first time.

I think, too, that kids are not stupid these days, and they will know if someone is being inappropriate with them. It's also up to us, in that instance, to step in and do something about it with the offending member, as was done at the time.

There's no real reason someone who's underage posting here, who wants to learn about new music, should feel left out or ignored. Obviously there should be no personal talk (she spoke about her school work, but that was her own choice) but otherwise I think it would be rude to ignore someone just because they're so young. I think in that case, we risk being kind of moulded or guided by fear and relationships suffer.

Shut up simp.

That's Simpson, to you!:p:

Have I used this phrase twice? You've been keeping count? :laughing:

To be honest, there's an old greybeard I work with at my job who uses it frequently - and while I've heard the phrase before him, it was only after his frequent usage I adopted it for myself.

From Oxford:

druthers noun
/ˈdrʌðəz/
/ˈdrʌðərz/
[plural] (North American English, informal)
​used to say what you would prefer if you could choose
If I had my druthers I wouldn't be going to this meeting.

late 19th century: from a US regional pronunciation of I'd rather, contraction of would rather --> druthers.

It's only now I realized that this is a North American thing. Us Americans get all the cool words since we kicked the Brits to the curb.

Ah I see: I'd rather = druthers. Now I get it. Thought it was one of them Urbany Slangy thing you damn kids use these days.

No it's not that I was keeping count (I can count up to two - YAY!) but the first time I saw it I wondered if you had misspelled something, but couldn't figure what that word would be, and then when you used it now, a second time, I knew it was deliberate. Probably goes back to Dickens' time, I'll be bound! :laughing: "If I had my druthers, every fool who goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!" said Scrooge. "He should!"

"Yo man, you be trippin'," retorted his nephew, unaware that such slang as he spoke would not be invented for another 150 years.

Woah, Trolls. Save that talk for our discussion of Slick The Shocker's albums. :laughing:

Yeah, nah, this is just another one of those weird trans-Atlantic dialogue differences. If y'all just learned American as your first language in primary schools, we wouldn't have these misunderstandings. Replace all that Shakespeare crap in your English classes with analyses of Nas's Illmatic, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Melville's Moby Dick.

Oh god I tried to read Moby Dick once but it was so BORING! I hadn't even a clue what was going on. Left it after about 100 pages. So tedious. And not a whale in sight! :laughing:

Your comment though reminds me of something my brother used to say disparagingly about Americans:

"You don't understand? What's wrong boy: don't you speak American?" :rofl:

I could see how you might get that impression from Moby Dick upon a cursory attempt, but if you stick with it, you'll find one of the most fascinating and hilarious novels in the English language. I read it fully maybe 3 or 4 years ago. I learned from my grandparents that this novel used to be mandatory reading in school which astounds me, just because it's not necessarily an easy book to read. The language is verbose and flowery, the chapters take diversions into the mundane (classification of whales for example, and not even the non-fictitious kind), but yet, it's still a riveting novel.

I'll take Moby Dick any day over the complete snorefests that are "The Great Gatsby" or "The Scarlett Letter". Joyce's "Ulysses" or Lowry's "Under the Volcano" are much more challenging novels than "Moby Dick" when all is said and done.

wtf is going on in this thread. Melville and Fitzgerald are two of America's best. On what grounds do you dislike either?

Well for me as I already said Moby Dick was incredibly boring. I wanted to read it but it was too much of a slog. I was totally lost. Mind you, I later saw a TV version and I was kind of glad I didn't; there's some serious ****ing cruelty to whales in that book. I'm not disparaging him, just as I wouldn't disparage any other writer I couldn't get into, but he ain't for me.

And now the thread becomes a discussion on literature. The magic of the internet at work.

Because The Great Gatsby was the Twilight of the roarin' twenties. It's like a precursor to Hemingway's debut novel, The Sun Also Rises. A tale filled with vapid and vacuous characters who you couldn't give a damn about whether they lived or died (and I like most of Hemingway's other material). In fact, in some respects, you often hoped for their death so that you didn't have to hear from them anymore and their empty and pitiful recounts of misbegotten misplacement any longer. And unfortunately, Bret Easton Ellis carried on the tradition of vapid and empty character shells with his debut novel Less than Zero which featured enough unsympathetic drug addicts and junkies to make Hubert Selby Jr.s' charcters from A Requiem for a Dream blush with envy.

Edit: Per Fitzgerald, I'm not criticizing him as a writer, just that one novel, I've never read any of his other works to be clear.

Well ...yeah. It's a novel about whaling - about killing whales. For their resources. Kinda hard to get that without cruelty. Unless there's a humane way to kill whales back then. Despite being outlawed now, I mean, it is a big part of history.

I liked the sun also rises

The protagonist was hilarious... just a hopeless cuck with ambigously mutilated genitals from the war who is following some boyish british broad around while she gets railed by bull fighters. I'll take that over some old cuban c*nt trying to catch a big fish any day.

But I agree with TH about Moby Dick.

Druthers sounds like it should be the name of a British butler.

With a name like Druthers it has to be good.

12 year old single malt scotch?

This is true of me too. I'm not, as I said, disparaging Melville's work (did he do The Sea Wolf too? Man that was a horrible story - again, only saw it on TV) just that the one book I tried to read from him was too boring. Can't get past that. Start off with a writer and be bored by their work, you're unlikely to go further, even if they are a celebrated one. I mean, I loved Les Miserables but had some serious issues with all the, to me, rather unnecessary and overblown stuff about the Napoleonic Wars.
I realise that. I just, for some reason, thought there was more distance, like they harpooned them from the ship or something. it's so down and dirty and visceral. Anyway I'm completely against whale hunting and any form of animal cruelty as per my post about hunting, so yeah, I knew what I was getting in to, but I didn't expect it to be so, well, raw and in your face.
:laughing:
"Druthers! I say man, bring forth that novel from the chap who writes about whales. By golly, I think I'll give it another go, dont'cha know!"

"Moby Dick, sir?"

"No, Druthers: it's a family problem, and I've asked you not to draw attention to it!"

Musicbanter has, once again, disappointed me. (Jump to the 1:55 mark)






As for F. Scott Fitzgerald, how does the closing of Gatsby not show absolute godlike skill?

I wish Gatsby died sooner to save me the trouble of reading the book

Regarding Moby Dick, one of the funniest moments in my memory is when the captain (or was it the first mate?) ordered the cook to go out and yell at the sharks that were eating at the carcass of the whale they took down.

I think it's important to realise that, just as with music, people have different opinions and react to things differently, including authors. There's no argument against either of these people being respected icons of writing, but that doesn't mean I have to like them, and really, you shouldn't be taking offence just because we don't agree with you. It's all opinion, after all. Nobody said - well, I didn't - that Melville was a ****ty writer, nor would I. I recognise his standing. Doesn't matter though if his writing doesn't appeal to me. I'm not saying nobody else should read it.

Yes but it does speak to your moral fiber. Not liking Melville or Fitzgerald means you're probably going to talk to 14 year olds about the Beatles, or steal a car or something.

Can concur. Never read either them and I'm out here plotting to get ribbons' kids listening to Skrewdriver.

Sure it does. :rolleyes:

I'm not going to lie, I originally read your post as "the name of a British butter"

Same. :laughing:

I feel the same way about people who don't like Opie & Anthony

after watching this I feel like the best way I can say it is I don't doubt Moby Dick is a very poetic telling of catching a whale. Problem is I'm just not that invested in stories about catching whales. It's a bit long winded for that topic. I don't doubt it's good for whatever genre that is but I'm simply not the target audience.

Moby dick and great Gatsby are both books I was assigned in high school and opted to cliff note instead. They might very well be great books for all I know. They just didn't pass the ADHD smell test