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What really bothers me is that I am a native and have people from around the country trying to tell me that they know more about my city than I do.
New York is one of the main (but not the only) victims of something here on CD general called "I am a qualified expert on a city because I been there on vacation for a few days".
Some people for example, feel because they been in Manhattan and seen OMG, Times Square, they know the whole of NYC like the back of their hands. They then 'expertly' annouce how dirty the city is or how Times Square is overrated without even seeing a fraction of the whole city.
Because people see the newer skyscrapers in Manhattan, is why we get "experts" on other threads saying things like "New York has no trees" or "New York has no history" and other nonsense like that.
Of course natives of the New York area, as well as visitors who have been coming here for years, can spot these "experts" right away. We know for instance, Times Square itself is NOT a destination, its what in or nearby that is the true destination.
Location: Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LINative
New York is one of the main (but not the only) victims of something here on CD general called "I am a qualified expert on a city because I been there on vacation for a few days".
Some people for example, feel because they been in Manhattan and seen OMG, Times Square, they know the whole of NYC like the back of their hands. They then 'expertly' annouce how dirty the city is or how Times Square is overrated without even seeing a fraction of the whole city.
Because people see the newer skyscrapers in Manhattan, is why we get "experts" on other threads saying things like "New York has no trees" or "New York has no history" and other nonsense like that.
Of course natives of the New York area, as well as visitors who have been coming here for years, can spot these "experts" right away. We know for instance, Times Square itself is NOT a destination, its what in or nearby that is the true destination.
You're right. But I believe half of these "experts" have never really been to the city. I ask them to prove their opinions, and they come up with nothing. Either that, or they say something totally wrong with the location they're talking about, what's there, obvious spelling of it, etc. I can usually catch them in a lie if I really think they haven't been here.
I think that behavior exists towards a lot of cities. It's the nature of tourists. I, personally, don't claim to NYC...it's way too big to even try that. Even one borough is much too big to try to claim personal knowledge of.
However, there are many people on City-Data who do the same thing for many of our other major cities; entire states; and even entire regions of the country, using sweeping generalizations. And there are are a lot of those...
Yea, it's almost as annoying as people who talk about using a single place and trying to apply it to a whole state or region, or even worse, never having personally been somewhere and lambasting the place based on nothing but preconceptions.
Yea, it's almost as annoying as people who talk about using a single place and trying to apply it to a whole state or region, or even worse, never having personally been somewhere and lambasting the place based on nothing but preconceptions.
I.E. "I don't like Atlanta, I feel it's culture less and sprawling...therefore the south is culture less and sprawling"
"Cleveland just sound boring to me...the midwest must be boring"
"Morris Heights in the BX is dirty...all of NYC is dirty, then..."
People often get so nasty on CD. I don't know why that is. I regularly subscribe to a few other forums, but none of them have the same high ratio of people who do nothing but intentionally look for a fight, or want to enter into some sort of ridiculous intellectual battle of wits over the internet to prove their superiority.
We have a fair number of juveniles (both in terms of age and/or mentality) in a handful of the rooms who like to stir the pot on a regular basis here. You know - live in mom's basement, play video games most of the day, 3 monitors devoted to chat rooms and porn, and several editions of hacker magazines, a few cats, yadda yadda. They get bored and decide the only way to entertain themselves is to say something to stir the mix and get people as riled up as possible. They eat and fall asleep in front of the keyboard, adding controversial comments to a couple of dozen chat rooms each day, getting out of their chairs only to pee and answer the door when the UPS guy delivers a new video card. They're irritating - but unimportant. Please ignore them.
Here's how you handle it: Whenever someone goes too far, starts trouble, makes a personal attack (etc), click on the "report post" icon in the upper-corner of the post. Then, ignore them. Don't engage them. Don't sling an insult back at them. Just completely act like they're a little squishy bug, and ignore them. As time allows, we (Moderators) will view the alert and act appropriately. If they are habitual offenders, I can promise you, they'll get plenty of time to troll - on OTHER boards, but not this one.
So don't let the bickering keep you from contributing legit ideas to the forums, please.
And on that note, I think we've had about enough of this rather negatively-themed topic, anyway. It just creates a fart-like atmosphere of negativity, so - closed.
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