R.I.P. VMP Forum
- Thread starter scotthilk
- Start date
helllord
Member
yep, i've gotten a couple in the past week or two, both from vmp and not. idk if it's a service they're paying for, or discogs trying to be more interactive? i haven't done any research on it.
helllord
Member
omg, i've been on indefinite hiatus for so long from the old place that i didn't know y'all picked stuff up for hatbird. not that it surprises me, but that made me...so happy. y'all are good.
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
Enoch
Well-Known Member
I get someone may feel that way, not sure that is needed, just my opinion
Count_Vader
Well-Known Member
You have absolutely no reason to be embarrassed. You're an amazing person for making this case. I'm not an easy person to move I rarely get emotional in the sense that I display it physically. This moved me to tears. I've always felt out of place from the small Kentucky town I grew up in. I was always ostracized and treated like an outsider. I was withdrawn and created a false persona to keep people away. I was hesitant to open up to anyone even my own family. Especially about my personal life and sexuality. The only person I was able to fully open up to is my girlfriend (who came from out of state which is why I talk about her on here so much) but this fucking community has been a way for me to actually feel like I belong somewhere. I feel like I have true friends here. You guys are like family. When I found at that the forum was cancelled I was devastated but unfathomably relieved when I discovered this forum existed. Thank you for trying your best to preserve the only place that I really felt any belonging to.
Dead C
Well-Known Member
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If Discogs are going to start taking money for direct advertising then the least they could do is drop their seller fees a little.
ChristoBee
Well-Known Member
Sup?
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And then, of course... the fake story
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Thaht EU bullshit is absolutely fucking lame. I don't even knows what they have to gain there.
helllord
Member
yeah agreed. still lower than ebay so eh
Dead C
Well-Known Member
Yeah. That was a really foul move. I'd heard mention about it here and there, so I asked if someone could finally link me to the situation while all the bullshit was going down. Then I went and screenshot it, because it pissed me off so much, and it was a pretty damning piece of evidence they were about to erase for themselves. There's a lot of stuff I wasn't able to save when the house was on fire, but that was the one thing that I ran in to grab, along with the addresses for a couple of Pay It Forward records that I needed to ship.
More time? With "more time," I might have filled my shoe box with even more shit like this, or... maybe I just would have focused on the more positive aspects of what we left behind.
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Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
Sup?
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EDIT:
And then, of course... the fake story
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The craziest thing about that whole thing is why WOULDN’T you just take a moment to say “The great thing about VMP is that many of our members are more knowledgeable about certain genres or eras of music than we are, and occasionally the first time we’ve heard of an album is because somebody tells us about it and brings it to our attention. One of our members sent me a message about this album with a cool cover that I’d never heard of, and after listening to it, I agreed with him that the rest of the Vinyl Me, Please community needed to hear it, too.”Yeah. That was a really foul move. I'd heard mention about it here and there, so I asked if someone could finally link me to the situation while all the bullshit was going down. Then I went and screenshot it, because it pissed me off so much, and it was a pretty damning piece of evidence they were about to erase for themselves. There's a lot of stuff I wasn't able to save when the house was on fire, but that was the one thing that I ran in to grab, along with the addresses for a couple of Pay It Forward records that I needed to sell.
More time? With "more time," I might have filled my shoe box with even more shit like this, or... maybe I just would have focused on the more positive aspects of what we left behind.
Because that’s the truth, and he wouldn’t have looked any worse for admitting one of his customers turned him on to it. That’s the kind of response that would actually endear him to a lot of folks, I’d bet.
Or a "Thank you, @Lee Newman , for the VMP Rising name." So few words. So much meaning and goodwill.
Dead C
Well-Known Member
Well... the obvious answer is that, if they respected the community, we wouldn't even be here.
Should they have done that? Definitely. Storf even set the question up, while claiming that they'd been working on it for 2 years. That, obviously, wasn't the case at all, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it just seemed like it had been that long. But, if that's true, then that only means that Cam didn't even tell anyone how he came across it when he contacted them that night, he just kind of approached Egon as if he also had his finger on the pulse in regards to that world. Clay Condor should have known, though. But then again, he commented with shock and awe on Youtube under the Woodstock set video, as if he'd never seen it before, so... maybe memories don't seem to be so great in those parts. Maybe they should check for a gas leak.
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Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
For sure, but you’d think they’re smart enough to at least recognize that they should want people to think they respect the community. Like, maybe Cam doesn’t care enough to give the credit, but dude, it was on a public forum; at least make people THINK you care about it.
Dead C
Well-Known Member
I'd agree except the whole move of wiping the forum would have, otherwise, completely removed that evidence, just like it removed so much else. I'm sure that was part of the thought process there. Plus, they continued to frame the community as some bonus that they gave to us, as opposed to something that we fueled and was proven an incredible benefit/asset to them, up until the very end. That's why the wording in the announcement was delivered like it was and why it was such a callous move with them exhibiting their power and showing us that they can just take things away from us if they wanted to.
The biggest strikes against them with us all coming here, aside from snuffing out all good will, was obvious. They not only killed a direct line they had for people to jump straight from the forum to purchase, but one where members helped and encouraged each other to do it. If what they say is true, they want to integrate the accounts more seamlessly to the "new" forum they are claiming to build, as if us posting links for each other wasn't enough. Once you leave and all of that noise isn't around you anymore, members -- and ex-members, especially -- begin to realize even more that the value of that "club" was limited, because there is NO club. We are the club. VMP found more value in maintaining a mystique of us needing them and this idea of their curation skills, brand, and industry connections than they appreciated the community aspect. Even more, they didn't recognize how much more important the community aspect and element of respect was for us ... or, maybe, they just didn't care. They took a gamble and it wasn't the noble one. You can't give the community their due, or the curtain opens, providing a glimpse of the bumbling humans behind the all powerful entity. With all of the rest of their fallibility being exposed regularly, the question of what they do right gets louder and louder. I mean, you have De La Soul Is Dead, Nat Turner, The Anthology, Weyes Blood... people ordering MF Doom and Lloyd Miller albums they don't actually have in stock, as well as endless other problems in such a short period of time. Somehow, they still tried to play both the "sorry guys... thanks for sticking with us" angle, as well as the, "don't question our methods or power" approach. It's common for someone to not recognize where their strength or appeal lies.
In other words they're either not "smart enough," or they wagered on being stable and/or powerful enough.
If they ever fully admitted what members brought to the table, how could they have ever rationalized killing the forum? Any hopes of scattering us and diffusing a growing wave of dissent backfired astronomically. They had it pretty much contained within a platform that they controlled. Agitating a mob and letting them loose with hatchets is dumb as shit. Just think about how the whole EU back and forth was buried in the forum to where I had to have someone link me to it. Now it's posted above in full context in the one thread on this forum that's dedicated to preserving the history of that entire debacle. It's easier to find now than ever.
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Dead C
Well-Known Member
Since you've expressed interest about the final hours of the forum, I thought you should kmow that we heard from numerous others with similar stories about what that space meant to them. There were even several people who either never signed in before, or simply never posted, that used the opportunity to chime in and explain that they'd been lurkers for quite some time and it had a huge impact on their lives, as well. The fact that all of those sentiments, along with @mcherry's plea yielded basically no response other than a firm statement that they would be ending it regardless without further consideration or delay, was the coldest and most revealing aspect of the whole fiasco.
Oh wait!!! Matt Fielder actually did break it down to us how it was really painful to do and was hurting him more than us. I wish I would have screenshot that gem, too.
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Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
Part of me still thinks none of us has hit on the “real” reason, the true catalyzing event, for shutting down the old forum. A lot of the theories make sense, but none of them completely hold together for me. I suppose that this part of me just thinks that if I reflect on how VMP has done business in the past, there may very well not BE a single reason. They just...decided to do it, then started forming a rationale, whatever that happens to be, to support it, after they’d already concluded it was a good idea.
What’s incredible to me is that, if people are even halfway correct that it was an attempt to stop hosting and/or to decentralize criticism of their business, then not only did that fail when this forum got started, but they also VOLUNTARILY GAVE UP THEIR OWN ABILITY TO RESPOND TO IT. Now all of that criticism is in a place where they may not even be welcome, much less have control over the messaging (to be clear, I’m personally cool with any staff who were active on the old forum joining up here to be part of the community, just not cool with them joining up to act as official reps of the business).
That’s what makes this decision so terrible to me. The Google results won’t bring up VMP hosting its own bad PR anymore, sure, but what they get instead may be even worse for them: wild theories, extremely critical reviews, some (speaking frankly here, including myself in this) bitterness from former members who resent what they’ve done, and...absolutely no response from VMP. The only party they’ve successfully silenced is themselves. Truly baffling.
What’s incredible to me is that, if people are even halfway correct that it was an attempt to stop hosting and/or to decentralize criticism of their business, then not only did that fail when this forum got started, but they also VOLUNTARILY GAVE UP THEIR OWN ABILITY TO RESPOND TO IT. Now all of that criticism is in a place where they may not even be welcome, much less have control over the messaging (to be clear, I’m personally cool with any staff who were active on the old forum joining up here to be part of the community, just not cool with them joining up to act as official reps of the business).
That’s what makes this decision so terrible to me. The Google results won’t bring up VMP hosting its own bad PR anymore, sure, but what they get instead may be even worse for them: wild theories, extremely critical reviews, some (speaking frankly here, including myself in this) bitterness from former members who resent what they’ve done, and...absolutely no response from VMP. The only party they’ve successfully silenced is themselves. Truly baffling.
AnthonyI
Well-Known Member
Your funny
AnthonyI
Well-Known Member
@Indymisanthrope, I do agree with you, even through all the bitterness the reality is we don't really know, BUT, I would bet my left lung it has/had nothing to do with making the community better, or for the community in the long run. No way, no how, whatever the reason was it came from a place of selfishness. I've said it before, all they had to do was actually listen and not go on the defensive. Take a step back and say, "Wait, lets back this truck up a minute, take care of these little problems and then move forward"