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Education level & behavior of railfans improving
Author: Inabsentia
Date: 09-27-2016 - 10:00
A post on TO today started out with, I seen...". It reminded me how back in the early 80's part of railfan culture in my area was talking like an uneducated dropout, with phrases like "I seen a train...". I even observed one guy say something grammatically correct, and then change it to be grammatically incorrect so as not to appear educated.
Along with the bad grammar was a culture of hostility, jealousy and hatred. The guys were mostly poor, laid off from lumber jobs, and generally hated eachother. At about age 15 I realized there were better people to hang with, so I left those slide show meetings for good. and never went back.
I see those same people on the Yahoo groups today (like MILW) fighting and still hating eachother. Nothing has changed with those guys in over 30 years.
A good trend I have noticed is that young railfans on TO sound positive, educated and generally nice to eachother. It looks like a pretty fun hobby now and hopefully it is improving.
Unfortunately, I have also seen some egos and bad behavior in a few in recent years. So the hobby still has a ways to go.
Ten or so years ago, one guy was a Boeing employee and put foaming above his ethical duty as an employee by giving out locations of parked airplane fuselages on the internet. I was pretty turned off.
In another episode, when BNSF used one of his photos from the internet in an internal (not public) booklet on crew ops, he had his lawyer friend go after BNSF. The railroad ordered all the covers to be ripped off the booklets. Do you think crews were happy to have books without covers?
Around this same time when this guy was active, I was shooting trackside one day on public property. A BNSF crew saw me and was pissed and notified local security cops. The security people said, "we've been having a lot of problems." I had to think a bad foamer had been there before me and had poisoned the environment. I have not railfanned in 10 years because of that. I got the same feeling I had in the 80's when I was 15: time to find better people to hang with and a better hobby.
The railfan hobby is evolving and the young people seem higher caliber than even 10 years ago. So lets hope the hobby continues to improve and hopefully it becomes one where you don't have to feel ashamed to be part of it.
Along with the bad grammar was a culture of hostility, jealousy and hatred. The guys were mostly poor, laid off from lumber jobs, and generally hated eachother. At about age 15 I realized there were better people to hang with, so I left those slide show meetings for good. and never went back.
I see those same people on the Yahoo groups today (like MILW) fighting and still hating eachother. Nothing has changed with those guys in over 30 years.
A good trend I have noticed is that young railfans on TO sound positive, educated and generally nice to eachother. It looks like a pretty fun hobby now and hopefully it is improving.
Unfortunately, I have also seen some egos and bad behavior in a few in recent years. So the hobby still has a ways to go.
Ten or so years ago, one guy was a Boeing employee and put foaming above his ethical duty as an employee by giving out locations of parked airplane fuselages on the internet. I was pretty turned off.
In another episode, when BNSF used one of his photos from the internet in an internal (not public) booklet on crew ops, he had his lawyer friend go after BNSF. The railroad ordered all the covers to be ripped off the booklets. Do you think crews were happy to have books without covers?
Around this same time when this guy was active, I was shooting trackside one day on public property. A BNSF crew saw me and was pissed and notified local security cops. The security people said, "we've been having a lot of problems." I had to think a bad foamer had been there before me and had poisoned the environment. I have not railfanned in 10 years because of that. I got the same feeling I had in the 80's when I was 15: time to find better people to hang with and a better hobby.
The railfan hobby is evolving and the young people seem higher caliber than even 10 years ago. So lets hope the hobby continues to improve and hopefully it becomes one where you don't have to feel ashamed to be part of it.
Education level & behavior of railfans improving