Downers and Naysayers

[wolfy-hound]

If all you see is people tearing each other down, you're in the wrong places. There's a million forums online for everything under the sun and if you don't LIKE a forum, you should definitely leave that forum and go to forums that make you pleased to be on them.

I'm not saying 'If you don't like it, leave!" in a nasty way. I'm saying, don't spend your valuable time with a forum that doesn't make you happy to log in. That's why I've left almost every reptile forum except for BP.net. It's why I'm on extremely few places online at all. I realized that if I went to a bar where people called me nasty names and threw stale beernuts at each other all night, I wouldn't go back! Why should I continue to go onto websites that make me feel the same way?

But as far as pointing out poor husbandry, or providing good resources to read on basic care... yeah, people SHOULD do this. Most good reptile people care a whole lot about the reptiles and if you've got an exposed spotlight glaring inside a ten gallon tank, you're going to hear "Take that bulb out before your snake fries!" If you are introducing new animals without quarantine, experienced keepers are going to point out how dangerous that can be. A forum that is all about caring properly for ball pythons is about caring for ball pythons, not about making every person feel like their the best keeper in the world regardless of their low standards of care. If a new keeper gets butthurt over being told that their pacman frog is going to die in that dry sand fishtank with the heatlamps over it... then they're just going to be butthurt because any keeper who cares about the animals will tell them.

I see people all the time who cry over the fact that a morph discovered 5+ years ago is now much lower in price. That's how it has always happened. It's new and high priced and as more people produce them, more animals get on the market, prices begin to drop as demand is satisfied... the price drops. Especially when it's a co-dom animal. A lot of new breeders think about the cool animal they want to produce and forget to plan for all the normals and single gene hatchlings that they will still need to deal with. Pointing out that you SHOULD have a plan for that is not bashing and is not fear of competition. It's bringing up a oft-overlooked point of breeding.

Find the good people. Participate in a good way. Enjoy the hobby. But make sure that you are doing it in a way that you enjoy. Make sure you are doing it in a way that enhances the hobby and always make sure the animals come first.