Verum: Doing The Right Thing

Discussion in 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' started by Ryanr1987, Jul 17, 2020.

  1. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    @Gaspasser to be clear, I am not going to let him back on here and I can assure you @purr1n is not actually pulling for him now.

    As humans we dream of this magic journey of enlightenment where people emerge as better after learning hard lessons but that is clearly not the case here. In fact, the only thing I see from what Igor is saying is that he's sorry he got caught. Eff that.

    As an aside, I've kept quiet about this, but my company has offices in the US, Ukraine and Russia. None of my Ukranian colleagues who I've asked thought any of this behavior would be acceptable by them or their friends. Passing it off as cultural differences is just looking for ways to excuse shitty behavior and poor judgement.
     
  2. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    There's always the possibility, quantum tunneling and all that jazz. A camel going through the eye of a needle?
     
  3. skem

    skem Friend

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    that would explain his getting a planar right on the first attempt.
     
  4. Dzerh

    Dzerh Friend

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    And to Garuspik: in case you don't understand the community reaction to some of your jokes - imagine an american without a clue making jokes about the war with Russia in Ukraine, different parts of Ukraine.
     
  5. will_f

    will_f Friend

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    He’s banned and that’s too bad, but it’s justified. Next subject?
     
  6. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Not jokes, but commentary on that and specific to Crimea. There's some "complex" history there. On Changstar.

    --

    I find the "it didn't happen on SBAF" or "I didn't do it on SBAF" excuse quite bemusing. SBAF isn't Audio Science Review, willing to look the other way. While I've said that I can only take things at face value, that's only in relation what others have said about me. In my position, I'm going to get shit on /r/headphones, Discords, by Jude, etc. It goes with the territory. Regardless of whether it's about me or not, things are different when stuff has gotten so bad that it's reached my face and gotten my attention. I'll admit to I do not like to get involved with issues between customers and vendors or buyers and sellers. But in this case, it's about bad behavior. SBAF has always banned people for egregiously bad behavior outside of SBAF. We're talking about con-artists, flippers, pyramid scheme guys, etc.
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2020
  7. netforce

    netforce MOT: Headphones.com

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    I have been watching the asr thread ever since that became the only public forum he isn't banned in.

    Going back to the reddit thread that kicked this all off. That was made on July 16th, he a few hours made an account on reddit to double down on his bullshit. Few hours later he is banned here and few hours later afterward banned on Head-Fi.

    July 19th he finally made a post on asr, the same one he basically copy pasted to send to Marv. He gave a "I was trolling on discord and that he is not racist" response. Reminds me a few years back of Youtubers doing racist pranks and yelling "Its a prank, its a prank!" over and over. Let me just say that is lame and shitty excuse. He doesn't own up to his actions and say sorry, he says its because of differences in Western culture. He asks people to judge him by his actions and not his words? His words have spoken much louder than his actions so far.

    Next post, he denies that he sent those PMs to Gaspasser last year and that it was the intern excuse. To his partial credit, the ip addresses kinda leave a slight, albeit unlikely, doubt it was him. But given his words in other screenshots, it most likely was him.

    Next post, following day. Talks about not being racist again, a play, says he won't touch sensitive topics again. Few more joking posts here and there.

    July 24th, boneburglar makes this post:
    https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-magnetic-headphones.4494/page-10#post-465261

    boneburglar is in the same Discord servers as I, knows pretty much the same folks as I. But he along with others also warned Garu long before all this came to light.
    Finally, Garu responds a few hours later where finally gives some sort of apology. July 25th, some sort of apology.

    I don't think anyone is irredeemable. We can and have made mistakes, said things we regret and actions we wish we can take back. Garu can go on his path to redemption but in my eyes, he has to prove it. He shouldn't take 9 days to say sorry in any context. There are stories of skinheads, nazis, extremists, etc. who said and did abhorrent things in the past that they are trying to move on and make amends for. Garu honestly does not seem or feel like he is making that big of an effort to repent for his words.

    It seems like, most of sbaf do not wish to have Garu around again. I would probably say I am in the same boat. He he can prove to me in any meaningful way he is changed and reformed or even remorseful for his hateful words. I might find it in myself to advocate for him to be unbanned. But for now? Leave him banned.

    Garu has freedom of speech, but he does not have freedom of consequences.
     
  8. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    when I was in the 8th grade I was walking down the stairs with a friend, his family Russian Jews, and I made some kind of crass remark, calling him a 'Jewboy'. there was a teacher at the bottom of the stairs who overheard and I was immediately sent to the principal's office. I had no concept of racism besides what a liberal Ministry of Education made part of the public school curriculum. it turns out there was a zero tolerance policy and I received a 3-day suspension, despite my friend defending me to the faculty and stating he took no offense at my statement

    evidently I learned nothing, as two weeks later I would be suspended again for telling a group of Chinese kids bending the rules in a football game to 'go play soccer back in China'. this time 13 year old me was actually angry at the punishment that I felt was unjust - I felt my words were taken out of context and the other kids were saying things much worse in Mandarin, but they got off free. I was even supported by my moderate-conservative immigrant parents, who were upset with me for getting in trouble but not what I said.

    actually, the policies of the public school system did their job. I was a child with no exposure to racist ideology or reason to hate, but these two experiences taught me to be very careful about what I said, who I said it around, and making jokes that society as a whole frowns upon. I learned that racism doesn't actually have to be born of malice or hate, it is enough to believe that there are larger differences between groups of people than there are within groups of people, and jokes which rely on this idea to deliver a punchline can indeed have harm that go beyond intent. I would go on to 4 years of high school without getting in trouble once.

    every forum that is banning Garuspik is actually doing him a huge favor. any short-term monetary loss due to people discovering what he said and refusing to deal with him or loss of community marketing capability is really nothing compared to how his business could suffer if this same behavior came to light in one, two or three years from now. this is not cancel culture, Verum is not out of business and won't be, if Garuspik wants to continue to grow his business and support himself economically with it he will have to learn one way or another how to behave properly. so far his response has been immature but people have forgotten about much worse and I'm pretty sure his lesson will be learned eventually. he should just stop shooting himself in the foot in the meantime with insincere copypasta apologies, this will only lose him favor with people who were already moderate on the issue
     
  9. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    To be clear, I was and am still pulling for Garu to be a better person, step up to the plate, take responsibility, and accept the consequences. This does not mean that I am pulling for him to be back in the SBAF community. I can't speak for what milestones need to be achieved for him to be back into our good graces because the answer right now is no. I'm not even thinking that far ahead. From what we've seen so far, it would be easier for to stuff a camel into a quarter-inch jack.

    I do want to reflect on something. It rarely happens, but people do change for the better. It's all too easy to totally forever condemn someone, especially nowadays with the the Internet which facilitates mob behavior. I not saying it's happening here, and I don't think I've seen it here, but I do want SBAF to be mindful and exercise restraint and most of all compassion. By this I don't mean idiot compassion, which @zerodeefex reminds me that I am often a sucker for; however, we do need to stop bad behavior in its tracks, even if it's something as inane as banning people who exhibit signs that they would not get along in this community.

    There have been other kinds of bad behavior in the past (including outside of SBAF) were mods have had to adjudicate, but this one has been the most public one. I do not want to be like Paul Muad'Dib and let a jihad just happen. We have to give people a chance and leave the door open otherwise people will not bother. What incentive does a person who is condemned forever have to be better? (And this is the progressive argument.)

    I've said stupid stuff like Garu myself. My hands aren't clean. There was a time in the early 90s where if we saw a black guy working in tech, the guys would wonder why he was there and refer to him as "Token", just like in South Park. And some of you guys would probably ban me from SBAF if you knew where I stood on certain political issues today. Think about that.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2020
  10. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    He tried to cheat gaspasser. Regardless of him being a dick, that’s pure scum and grounds for a ban.
     
  11. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    And as for being judged by deeds not words, it's the internet and words are deeds.

    I got into trouble on another forum recently for, basically, saying that another, very prejudiced member had the problem of not knowing which orifice he was talking out of. It was much more scathing than that, don't remember and it got deleted. I was told to attack the message not the person.

    I thought about this, and concluded... Bollocks! When it comes to this sort of thing, the message is the person, there is no separation. If the message is poisonous, the messenger is poison.

    Anyway, if there was space for reconsideration on appeal here, the dumb blacks comment re delivery guys was enough to end the conversation right there. And I don't think he could buy himself out with a donation to BLM because I don't think they would want his money.

    Is the Verum ad still on the site? I blocked it... just because it made me ashamed to have been so wrong about the guy.
     
  12. Senorx12562

    Senorx12562 Case of the mondays

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    Even if the guy hasn't a racist bone in his body (and I think he has proven this to be highly unlikely) and is just an equal opportunity asshole, he is still clearly enough of an asshole that I would not choose to interact with him on any level if given a choice. Whether he is allowed to participate on this site is clearly not my choice however.
     
  13. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    @purr1n
    To be fair you've banned yourself before.

    Humour over. I agree that people who say horrendous things can be better if they really try, but unless someone goes through something genuinely jarring that won't happen overnight. I think I've said something to this effect before but I've said as bad or maybe even worse than Garuspik when I was a kid and had yet to meet people far removed from my circles, which is why I believe what I do about how the company we keep possibly making it difficult to change for the more socially-acceptable and why I understand that actively forcing change I'm thankful that I had no easy internet access back then because that makes it easier to be nice now without the threat of stuff I said lightly over a decade ago crashing over my head as what happens with loads of celebrities nowadays.

    I still have stupid shit attached to me on the internet, but that's not the worst of it. Also I still make rude jokes but I try to rein myself in because text carries far less nuance than other forms of communication.

    The reason I voted not to reinstate his account is that while Garu might be feeling genuine regret at all this (and the effect it'll have on his business), it doesn't seem to me that they are feeling regret over it for the "correct" reason, i.e. understanding the effect the mere saying of certain things might have on others and communities at large.

    Maybe he'll feel genuinely penitent once he actually understands how much harm there was in what happened, but that likely won't be while anyone here still gives a damn.
     
  14. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    I know you qualified this sentence with "When it comes to this sort of thing", but I am not so sure it is enough . When you reduce a person to an idea, especially a political/moral one, you no longer have to consider them human and your justified to do the things these folks did:


    https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...incorrect-audio-blog.7261/page-20#post-283776

    edit: Is this not in the end what racism, sexism, and all the rest is really about - a reduction of the humanity of a person to something that allows them to be treated as an object, a "message", a "problem", and not as a fully human like you and your own?
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    It's pretty obvious there was no intern, unless the intern was a clone who exhibited similar behaviors. The veracity of the intern story matters little. If your intern acts like an ass, and you act like an ass, then you are the intern.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2020
  16. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Perhaps I have reduced the person who reduced the "dumb blacks" to less than human, to less than human. Perhaps I am, indeed, less than perfect. Don't think I can do any better on this one. Perhaps one day I'll be able to. There probably are better ways.
     
  17. gaspasser

    gaspasser Flatulence Maestro

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    I’m mainly concerned that we are worrying about the actions of a person when, for me, these are the actions of a company. He is an MOT, not a randofacebookfriend. In my opinion, SBAF should hold MOTs to a higher standard. If SBAF fails to do this then I consider it selling out to company influence and sets a bad precedent for this forum.
     
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I'll directly apologize to you now. I'm sorry and in hindsight we should have gotten rid of him or at least issued a stern warning. In terms of "difficult" there is reason why I put that in quotes. It was not to accuse you of being difficult of which I have no evidence of, but in the sense that Verum may have seen you as a so-called "difficult" customer even if you were not.

    Please understand that I only indirectly apologized because I honestly cannot remember all the events and all the names. The admins from time to time have to adjudicate cases vendor-customer and seller-buyer cases that even take outside of SBAF (shared membership with HF). It's not a easy job, we have to spend a lot of our own personal time for "discovery", and in the end, at least one side is not going to like the decision. Dealing with these issues are the worse part of the job.

    It's been long gone.
     
  19. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    It's tough, I am not any better at this either. I want to crush my enemies as much as the next guy...
     
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    TBH, Verum company behavior toward members, specifically you, and the general weird vibe of one too many "delivery" questions, was a huge contributor and made the decision just that much easier. I don't envy Audio Science Review for being in the position of having to harbor a racist (or someone clearly exhibits such behaviors under the pretense of comedy) because they have no other thing to go on. (Not that it would have changed our minds anyway).

    Again, a stern public warning for bad company behavior should have been issued, regardless of dog ate my homework excuses. The problem is taking it too far. I've been at this for 10-years. I can list a bunch of companies, including some that I have dealt with personally, that when viewed from a certain point of view could have or should have been censured including Schiit, HeadAmp, Eddie Current, Mr. Speakers, Audeze, Tom Christiansen Audio, HiFiMan, etc. LOL, in the case of HiFiMan, they actually obtained access to a user account with high access on Changstar to spy on our private conversations (this was actually confirmed when we found a USA account suddenly coming from IPs in China).

    It's dangerous to be judge, jury, and executioner. I would prefer the Judge Dredd approach be used sparingly when it comes to vendors because everyone is going to have a story.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2020

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