Here's The Thing

If you hadn't noticed, h3lx posted in the forum recently. He made this observation:

/PS contest have really fallen off to the wayside as of late, whats up wit dat?

//use to be a good contest three to five times a week, now we're lucky to get a good one in a month... photoshop me disappointed...

I didn't see anybody respond or counter even. I think the topic of the day was dogs, so it may have just been overlooked. But here's the thing: He is absolutely right.

Unequivocally so, in fact.

How did things get this way anyhow? It's only fark of course, but it's still kind of a downer.

If you don't know already, h3lx is one of the old skool fark 'shoppers. So he knows of what he speaks. Since I agree with his conclusion, I obviously also know of what I speak, LOL!

Really, if you're new to the forum (as many are) you should to check his stats. You might also at least try to be aware that going off topic chases away the very people you could stand to learn something from. To be fair, a lot of the fault in this lies with the mods/whatever the hell is up with fark lately. "When the cat's away...".

But I should get back to where I was going. The contests have fallen by the wayside because lately the greenlighted 'O's have been awful. Yes, yes, yes. "A decent 'shopper can do something with the crappiest of 'O's". True. But look at who's choosing to post entries in the recent or upcoming contests. If there's no incentive to put time into an 'O' you get what you get.

I won't name names because that's just stupid. It could be anyone really, it wouldn't matter. I kinda have to surmise that people look at the entry first and maybe have a look at the name. So it's not a matter of personalities, but one of effort.

What's the good news? The decent entries are still winning. And this is all just a cyclical thing anyhow.

You'll see.

Stop Using The Wrong Approach

There is one thing for sure about the Critic; he's mostly right. And where he's wrong really has little to do with what seem to be his main gripes: cliche abuse, sloppy work and general stupid noobishness. He's wrong in his approach.

Of course, who am I to say what his approach should or should not be? From his perspective and very likely from the perspective of his "goons" - they think they're really going to get somewhere with all this.

But really, that's a whole lotta wishful thinking. Bless their hearts, they've obviously not seen or experienced enough about life to know a few of the more basic principles.

Things decay. You can complain about how Fark is degenerating all you want. But only a fool would think that a small cadre of caring souls focused only on the PS threads will achieve anything substantial. The 4chanization of Fark exists beyond the contests. And like it or not, they're our voting audience.

Things change along their way. This fact is absolute. Nowhere will you find a straight root, trunk, branch, twig or leaf. Ever. People being an integral part of nature and a tiny amount of those people being Farkers, there will be those who are at different stages on life's way. Some will never blossom into the 'shoppers we ourselves would someday like to be. Good luck with trying to force that into happening.

Our powers of influence are limited. The Critic is probably above average in intelligence; likely he's very successful in his field of work and has the respect of his meat peers. If not, I'd be very surprised. Judging by his talent to coalesce and shape his pet peeves into his little project alone would qualify him for at least some respect.

But.... he's just not very clever. And if you want to influence people you need to be clever.

Pure speculation here, but I'd venture a guess that the Critic has had a few failed attempts at trying to convince Drew of dropping the hammer on his foes. Surely, the Critic has heard of Farkback. Drew being in charge and the Critic not, his attempts at influencing the circumstances failed. Which explains his frustration.

But his lack of cleverness really shows here: Why doesn't he just come right out and attempt to assemble a consensus amongst the forum regulars? He might not be able to get the level of restrictions like those at Worth, but we might not want to. Perhaps we'd be able to get an expansion of the PS Farq section about what's frowned upon and what's poor ettiquette.

But that's not what we have going on. We have the degeneration of a few good points and the dissipation of any credibility of their proponents. At least the Photoshoptor Doctor has a sense of humour. How does spamming his comment section further the Critic's position? It just doesn't.

So, soon enough, the Critic will hang it up for the year not getting anywhere and not changing a thing. Which is why he'll be back for another go around. Until he/they finally tire of getting nowhere.

Cross-posty Goodness

This is all getting a little out of hand.

I love it!

Critic, you got 176 votes in your favor from the first poll. Why are they all silent? Is the opinionator your only backup? Maybe he placed all those votes him/yourself.

Whatever happened with your hatred of The Fucking "Know-It-All's [sic]"? Why were their names excluded from your hate poll? You got to them pretty early on in your blog they must be a big nuisance to you. And yet, you've never really elaborated on that.

...Much like Brian O'Blivion's work. *BURN!*

Shouldn't that sentiment have gotten him a spot on your hate list? I'm sure you saw his entry in the raft thread. Either he's just suddenly gone all retarded or he's fabricating something for you to criticise.
1) Cliche
2) Crappy matching of source images
3) The rock in the foreground - a b+w engraving? He didn't even bother to color it
4) He's forgotten all about depth of field

Does look like he's pretending to do a faux noob liter shop, ya' think? What's he trying to prove? Or disprove?

I don't think you hate sofa and BOB as much as you've claimed. Do ya' now?

RE: Round 1 Poll Results

Ummm....

The only way that you could vote more than once on my poll is if you completely reset your browser, bookmarks, cookies, stored passwords, and cache.

It's not even as complicated as that which is one of the reasons why I didn't vote in this poll.

No surprise here about the "winners". This poll was rigged like the other one. Just not so much. Even if the poll had been clean it's just plain stupid in it's methodology. Does our Fark Photoshop Boy Wonder really expect that he'll find anyone else worse than Grampy? Of course not. Possibly there is someone he's overlooked? Not even. TFPSTC and his little circle of supporters are out to make an example of him and others who are "detrimental to the community". Which they think they own, BTW.

Let's just cut the crap here, Is there really a need for a second round? Cuz it's looking more and more like the title "hate blog" is appropriate.

Here's a surprise: Everybody hates something. Here's another surprise: Nobody ever starts out with as much experience as the guy who's better than him at it.

Sure, it's easy enough to get all bent out of shape about the state of things but are you up to the challenge? Or are you just going to continue with your semi-annual bitch and moan about Fark session? How are you challenging anybody? Because you're just never going to be able to rule this corner of the internet, get Drew to pre-emptively  ban the crappy photoshoppers or take down Cliche City.

You really just come across like a bunch of drooling & bitter old farts snivelling around for a handjob on Veterans Day.