VeronicaChaos said:
zippypinhead said:
JoleneBrody said:
I will be genuinely surprised if you don't understand how this is rude,
I'm sorry to say, but this still sounds to me like a lot of miscommunication, and not a guy who is trying to lord his wealth over you or otherwise be manipulative or dickish. I understand your point of view, now, but I still don't agree with your conclusion -- at least not based on how you've presented this scenario. An inquiry is simply not the same thing as an offer.
Would you go up to an artist's booth at say a convention, buy a print, and then ask "what can I get for 300?" And then if the artist offers a print of everything they have at the booth, which is worth more than 300, and even something that's behind the counter and not displayed, instead of buying them, hanging out with them and admiring for several hours all of the prints you're not going to buy, even though you have the money, and even though you're getting a deal? What did they want, a fucking blowjob on top? It's insulting. Why even ask? Everything for sale is right fucking there. Use your damn eyes for fuck's sake. Not to mention the question itself is pretty tactless.
I'm one of those guys manning the booth. Don't fool yourself; it happens.
OFTEN. It happens at art fairs. It
really happens at comic conventions. Maybe that's why I don't see this as a matter to be too concerned about. After so many years of dealing with this sort of interaction, I'm jaded to it. I understand that it goes with the business of working in a competitive market. People pull this shit all the time. Yes, it's tactless, and it is annoying, but there is an incredible amount of people out there who don't know any better, on both sides of the table. Their real crime is that they're ignorant and uncouth, and that's likely to never change, so one gets used to it.
I suppose that questioning the way Jolene feels about such an interaction is what has turned me into the asshole in this thread. All I can say is that I'm also entitled to feel the way I do, based upon my own experiences, even if I happen to go against everyone else. I'm not one to kowtow to popular opinion, simply because it's popular. I see a lot of parallels between the work that cam models do and the work I've been doing for the entirety of my adult life. As such, my experiences are obviously going to color my take on these discussions. I'm an artist who regularly loses at the money game. Being treated like shit by unaware buyers is my milieu. I am not successful enough to be pissed off by every guy who comes up with a $20 bill clearly visible in his hand as he looks through my work and chats with me, only to walk away with that $20 fully intact. It's too common an occurrence. I suppose it's the good fortune of Jolene and most of the rest of the ACF models that this is such an uncommon occurrence that it does get under their skin. It means that you all live in a world where the transactions are generally straightforward and positive.
But I guess that's the trap that I take issue with, here. The money is not yours until it is in your hands. It does no good to treat those tokens as money lost because they were never yours, whether he showed them to you or not. In the meantime, since you've treated it as money lost, it has caused you to dismiss the 600 tokens that were gained. It's ultimately your choice to treat him as the guy who was nice enough to give you 600 tokens or as the guy who withheld 3000 tokens. I think it's wise of you, Jolene, to mitigate negotiations as much as possible, but in this case, you found yourself in a negotiation, whether you want to identify it as such or not. He inquired, you made an offer, he refused the offer and gave no counter. That was a negotiation. It was a shitty negotiation, to be sure, but it was a negotiation never the less. It was also your choice to put the onus of that interaction on him, but you willingly participated. You could easily have said, "check the board, check my profile, do a little math, and get back to me." But you didn't.
You broke your own rule, and you got burned for it. It's not his fault you made concessions. He didn't ask for them. If this is your first interaction with the guy, how is he supposed to know that you're bending the rules for his sake? You had expected too much from this guy, and when he failed to meet those expectations -- even though he was never informed of what those expectations were -- it's his fault. Even though YOU didn't stick to your guns, it's his fault. He's "dangling" tokens in your face and freeloading while you struggle to meet your goals. I just don't see that as playing fair, or at least, you had your part in this, for which you are not taking full responsibility as a seller. Yes, you are entitled to feel the sting of disappointment in a failed deal, but no, I do not believe you are entitled to foist all the blame his way, and color him as some sort of a "bad" member, not when he had come into the situation on good terms and you played your part. If you give the advantage, people will gladly take it. You can continue to approach this as an emotional issue and feel raw about it, or you can shrug it off as a lesson learned in the dirty business of doing business.
Now, I don't expect for anyone here to agree with what I've just written. I don't expect that I'll be taken as anything more than the smelly asshole that I already seem to be for my dissent. I just thought that I should better define where I'm coming from in this, so that you all know that I'm not trying to troll you. As I'd already stated, I understand where Jolene is coming from, but I do not agree with her conclusions. Yes, you are entitled to your feelings on this. However, it has been my experience, as a person who has undertaken to do business in a market that trades personal expressions on the cheap, the further you can distance yourself from emotion when making a deal, the less disappointed you'll be when it doesn't go through.
That's all I got. I won't be back to this thread, so feel free to tear on into me.
