This has come up in discussions a couple of times of late and I thought that I would put my thoughts down in one place, once and for all, because I’d rather have somewhere to point people to if they’re curious, rather than having to go over the same ground time and time again.

I’m really dissatisfied with modern social media when it comes to the things that I do. Here’s why and here’s what I’d like to see instead. If anyone has any ideas where I can go for these things, I’m all ears.

Of course, this is hardly the first time I’ve complained about this and the situation hasn’t really gotten any better. Most social media today is aimed at the young and the young, well, the typical young and immature aren’t what I’m looking for, especially when it comes to my hobbies. I’ll separate this up a bit because each of the the individual spaces that I’m looking for, they’re slightly different, but here we go regardless.

Board games:

Here’s something that I don’t talk about much around here, but I am a hobby board  game player. I’m just not a fanatic, which seems to be what the hobby caters to. Years and years back, I abandoned specialty forums like BoardGameGeek, specifically because they cater to a group that I specifically dislike: the Cult of the New.

So what is that? It’s the belief that you have to buy every single new game that comes out, play it once or twice, and then get rid of it or stick it on the shelf because you have to keep up with the constant flood of new releases coming out every week. I wish I was kidding, but I have been told on numerous occasions over the years that if you’re not supporting every single Kickstarter you can, you’re somehow not a legitimate part of the hobby.

That, or “have you bought the newest game by this designer that looks and plays just like the last 10 games they put out, just with a different skin?”

Yeah, screw that. It’s why I walked away from the social aspects of the hobby a long time ago. I used to listen to board gaming podcasts like The Dice Tower every week. Now? Forget it. They push the cult and I have no interest whatsoever in being a member.

I’ve tried, over the years, to find forums or subreddits that are worth looking at and I’ve come up completely empty because they all seem to be like that. They’re all pushing the cult. You can’t find anywhere that you can just talk about playing games, discuss  tactics in games or just enjoying interacting with other people who like games like you do. Nope, it’s all “have you spent $500 on the latest Kickstarter so you get the gold-painted minis instead of the regular ones painted silver? You’re not a real hobbyist unless you get the gold ones!”

Yeah, hard pass. I don’t think there’s any hope for this one either.

Stamp collecting (or any collecting really):

This one is both the worst and the best, depending on where you look. So let’s look at the overall expectations first, then I’ll explain why I rarely get there.

I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I’m not an expert by any means but I’m not remotely close to a beginner. Yes, I know that everyone begins somewhere and I am absolutely happy to help the dedicated, interested amateur along as best as I can. That said though, I’d much rather spend my time around people who are as knowledgeable or more so than I am. It’s the only way I get to learn anything.

That said, and I’ll limit this to Reddit for the moment because Reddit is primarily the problem in this regard, but virtually everyone there acts like they just saw a stamp for the first time in their lives and now, they’re hooked. That or, they just want to dump stamps they found for a huge profit and we’ll get to that in the end because it applies to all of these topics.

Like I said, I’m cool with trying to help you, but the modern world seems filled with people who are terminally lazy, who don’t want to learn anything, who don’t want to make an effort, they just want to post their problems online and let complete strangers do all of the work.

No thanks.

This isn’t just a problem in stamp collecting, it seems near universal that modern kids are just lazy and expect others to tell them what to do, but the second I see someone asking questions that a simple Google search would solve, I stop being that interested in helping out. This is especially true when those people only want the answers that they want, right or wrong. They’re not interested in the reality, just the fantasy in their heads. We’ll come back to that soon.

Luckily, this is pretty easily solved by just staying off of places like Reddit. There are a number of decent stamp collecting forums like Stamp Community Forum and The Stamp Forum where people with vast sums of knowledge hang out and chat. The issue, of course, is that because these have limited appeal to those who aren’t clueless, they don’t get a ton of traffic and some of the discussions get rather esoteric, but for a collector like me, that’s what I want. The latter, not necessarily the former, but you take what you can get. This is where I’m generally satisfied with the situation. Therefore, let’s move on.

Writing:

This is probably my biggest issue and one that I have no clue how to solve. This requires a bit of a story, so strap in.

Now I’ve been writing for more than 40 years. Again, as I said with collecting stamps, I’m not a beginner by any means. I’ve got books out there for purchase and I do reasonably well at it, although that has never been my aim. As I’ve told others before, I write because if I don’t, the stories in my head will drive me insane. It’s an outlet for my creativity and always has been.

Yet the problem that I have, constantly, is that every forum, every group, every subreddit out there, apparently, they’re all aimed at people who don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing. Again, that’s fine to a certain degree, I have lots of experience to share if anyone wants it, but the problem with amateur writers is… they don’t. They just don’t.

Oh, they love to complain about not being able to write. They can’t create characters. They can’t write plots. They live in a world of constant writer’s block and they don’t want anyone to tell them how to get out of it unless that involves magic wands and no effort on their part.

That’s really where I have the most trouble in the writing realm, the overwhelming majority are proto-amateur wannabes who think that writing is simple and any suggestion to the contrary, that’s never going to fly.

Now as anyone who has read any of my posts on writing knows, I’ve tried to help. I’ve tried to make suggestions, but the one thing that you realize very quickly is that these people don’t actually want help. They want Dumbo’s magic feather. They want a path to immediate success without having to put in any effort on their own. Instead of learning how to do it properly, they want to be told that everything they’re  doing is perfect and they’re going to make a mint doing exactly what they’re doing.

It doesn’t work that way.

Even recently, on a dedicated writing forum, there was a thread about pantsing vs. plotting and people were posting their experiences and they were being met, by several dyed-in-the-wool pantsers, people who constantly complain they can’t finish a book, with very clear passive aggressive commentary because they just desperately want their method to work, even though, demonstrably, it doesn’t.

I’m not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the seeming majority of amateur writers that clog these forums, they aren’t open to learning anything. They just want it all to magically get better.

I’ve been part of a writing collective for a long time, made up of professional, published authors, trading books for critique before being sent off to their publishers. It’s a great place but the only thing that it lacks is any kind of general chatter. Writers, especially writers on a deadline, don’t have time for it. That’s why I went looking elsewhere because all of my deadlines are self-imposed and I just keep getting faster and more efficient and thus, have more spare time to just chat.

Even forums dedicated to published authors or those who hope to be published, they’re still choked with these ignorant wannabes who are only there to complain. Why aren’t there places without that? That’s what I want to know.

The Huge Problem with Collecting Anything:

Because this applies to a wide variety of things, I wanted to do it separately.

You very quickly learn that most of these groups are filled with those just trying to make a buck off of the hobby. This is true whether you’re talking about stamps, coins, board games or Funko Pops. People will come in, say they found/inherited/were given/stumbled over this thing and now, they’re looking for a huge payday.

It never works out well for them. In the stamp realm, the number of people who show up with incredibly common, damaged stamps and expect to make millions is legion. It far outnumbers the people who just want to talk about them intelligently.

That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, not everyone wants to collect and that’s fine, but so many of these people, indubitably young, they’re also incredibly lazy. Case in point, there was someone just today who showed up with pictures of stamps in an album and every single stamp had a Scott number written under it. So I explained what the numbers meant, I suggested going to the local library or to any number of online sources, looking up the stamps themselves and determining value. I also went over how the values in the catalogs are nowhere close to what you’ll actually get in the real world. I spent a lot of time typing, hoping to help this individual.

They didn’t care. They didn’t want to do any work on their own. They wanted someone else to do it all for them and give them good news. It has to be good news because these people get mad if it isn’t. It you tell them that all of their stamps are common, issued in the hundreds of millions and worth a cent or two at best, they get upset. It’s not my fault that they don’t have anything of value but they want to blame me. Fine, go do the work on your own, find out the truth. Nope, they don’t want to do that either. Somehow it’s my fault that they’re lazy.

I wouldn’t say if this was a rare occurrence but it’s not. This is every single day. People expect to have a million dollars in their pocket change. They think that if they find some Funko Pops at a garage sale, it’ll pay for college. It’s somehow the duty of collectors to give them the good news and, hopefully, offer up a hefty check to take them off of their hands.

Life doesn’t work that way and honestly, after a while, I get sick and tired of even trying. They get mad at that too. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen post garbage stamps, expecting a pay day and when people don’t immediately come back and tell them what they want to hear, they keep spamming the channel until someone does. I don’t get people today. I really don’t. Frankly, I don’t want to either.

Conclusion:

This really shouldn’t be as hard as it is. I’ve tried public groups, private groups, Reddit, independent forums, Facebook, etc. I’m not expecting perfection but there has to be something better than we’re seeing. The only commonality that I’m seeing, in stamps, is that the quality people tend to be older and better educated. You don’t see them spouting memes and misspelling common words. They’re people who have been doing this for a very long time, like I have, and they like talking about it to others of similar tenure. Where can I find people like that for other things?

That’s what I’d really like to know.