For Your Consideration:
"I think us vintage washer collectors are looked as by the rest of the world as nutty enough, so some of us wince at some of the more offensive sounding posts for the simple reason we would like to put our best face forward."
I'd like to offer something here that I've been struggling with for more than two years.
As some of you know, I'm a magazine writer and editor. I write for three different publications, all of which are about design. On two occasions, I've "pitched" the idea of a story about vintage appliance collecting to magazine editors, who agreed that it sounded very interesting. But -
When you write a magazine story about a collecting field, it's usual to write what is called a "sidebar" - a little guide to resources in the field. The idea is, now that a reader is interested in the field covered by the story, they can turn to the resources listed in the sidebar to learn more and become involved.
Unfortunately, on both the occasions I've mentioned, editors came here - and as part of their visit, looked at this forum. And on both occasions, it just so happened that the sort of heated exchanges that are being seen in this very thread were going on. I think you can guess what happened after that.
It was not a case of editors being shocked to realise that members here are often gay. Very few people have a problem with that nowadays within reasonable bounds of expression. The problem, as they saw it, was extremely heated exchanges that didn't have much to do with appliances, collecting, or fellowship. On the one occasion I've been able to do a story about vintage appliance anything, it was for an essay, where no sidebar was expected.
This site is the public face of this hobby, and I have been both professionally and personally saddened by some things posted here, because as Robert says, we're seen as nutty enough as it is. There's a kitchen pictured in this forum right now I'd love to pitch to a magazine I work for. Can't do it as matters stand.
So far as politics go, half the bloomin' Internet seems to be political stuff, from Daily Kos and Drudge Retort to the sites of Rush and Glenn, to the comments functions of every newspaper on this planet with an online edition. I come here to get away from that stuff, not to read more of it. This is my break from real life, because there is more than enough real life to keep me occupied.
At any rate, that's my take on it.
