This time it's "troll," sans question mark. I think it's time to open another BF account if you want to continue.

Troll is label to limit freedom of debate, as if members are psychotics ready to indulge in a world war if they hear ideas that question their choices.
Nobody here mentioned charity bike trips, which are a good example of selfless touring !

This describes you to a tee, and welcome to my iggy list:

"In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[SUP][1][/SUP] by posting inflammatory,[SUP][2][/SUP] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[SUP][3][/SUP] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[SUP][4]"

[/SUP]

The definition by itself undermines members. "Upset","Emotional response" just because someone asked what touring offers to society? If you are paranoid you can consider all threads as troll.

Internet forums have been about long enough now for trolls to be recognized as the wind-up merchants that they are; most people deal with it. But if ever there was a forum that needed a bit of bile then this is it.

So a troll can be considered a productive member of society?

Why do you ask?

What is your motivation for asking?

If you aren't a troll, then you'll explain the background of this question. After all, the answer is: Yes or No or Maybe or It depends ... but with no background, no understanding of your motivation for asking, we can't get more specific than that.

In Communist Bike Forums, No Insubordination Will Be Tolerated. Speak Now Or Be Declared An Enemy Of The Red State.

Sounds to me like you're trying to censor people. Machka's questions were completely reasonable. Your response was not.

I'm drawing a lens on people who seem to be much more prone to bullying on the internet than they would be in real life. It's not about defending this choumichou guy, I could care less. It's about how we, as a community, uphold respect even when someone else doesn't return the grace.

People can do whatever they want. I won't apologize for speaking out when I see things start to go sour. This is my community, too, and the self-righteous and thoroughly elitist side of it is, in my opinion, poisonous to the better 99%. No, I'm not saying Machka is the worst 1%, she is almost always in the good half.

But when it suddenly becomes ok to bully people into admitting they're a troll, or be subject to punishment by ridicule, well, I'm not gonna sit around and snicker with everyone else.

I think you're way out of line alleging bullying, and your response to Machka's post was inappropriate.

The answer to this question is ...

Yes or No or Maybe or It depends ... but with no background, no understanding of the motivation for asking, we can't get more specific than that.

It is not bullying to try to draw more detail out of the OP. After all, he must have had some reason for starting the thread ... we just simply want to know what that reason is, what the background and motivation is, to get a better understanding of the situation, and thus to allow us to both understand the OP better and to provide a better answer.


Just throwing the question: "Can bicycle tourers be considered productive members of society?" out there, with nothing else in the way of explanation, quite naturally makes us wonder what's behind the question.

It's easy to hide behind semantics, Machka. Your reputation speaks for you. I called you out 8 months ago for ridiculing a female member for asking how to deal with feminine issues on tour. It's atypical of your posts here, but it highlights something we as a community shouldn't be okay with. Not every poster on here is going to be an eloquent retiree with 10,000km under their belt.

Let trolls be an opportunity to demonstrate how childish posts get ignored. Don't be part of an interrogation process.

I have never ridiculed a female member for asking how to deal with feminine issues on a tour.

Is it more productive to spend a few weeks a year building bike roads and bikes and having the rest of the year free to tour them or to spend 50 weeks a year building highways and cars/motorhomes and having two weeks to tour those?

Driving produces demand for roads/lanes, fuel, and other resources. Bike touring conserves these resources and reduces demand for roads. Roads cost money and resources to produce and maintain, plus they consume natural land and even already-developed land that could be used for more productive purposes than motor-traffic. Also, since busy roads are unpleasant to drive on, cyclists are 'producing' better traffic flow, more pleasant roads, etc. by traveling without a car.

All-in-all if everyone touring by motor-vehicle would bike tour instead (an extreme example for the sake of clarity), There would be much less clearing and paving of natural land, less road repairs needed, etc. You can argue that driving is more 'productive' because it creates more work for road crews, revenues for asphalt sales, etc. but that is like arguing that car-crashes are good despite the harm and destruction they do because they create jobs for repair shops, emergency room employees, etc.

All-in-all it's better to conserve resources and save work for more productive activities than to produce more work than necessary and then calling it 'productive' to do so. Unfortunately, there is a perverse economic culture that purveys the idea that more burdensome activities are more 'productive' because jobs are created to shoulder the burdens created. That is irrational but it has become normal thinking in an economy where most people have been programmed to think anything that makes money is productive, even if it causes or stimulates unproductive or even destructive events.

Bike touring and biking in general are therefore more productive than driving by virtue of stimulating less destruction and waste.

Is a tree nursery owner more 'productive' than a natural forest? Is a water-treatment plant more productive than a natural ground that filters water before it reaches the aquifer? Is a zoo more productive than a wildlife corridor? Is building a treadmill more productive than maintaining a hiking trail? Is touring in an RV more productive than touring on a bike with a tent or bivy? Is it more productive to light a gallon of gasoline on fire every 20 miles you bike than if you just bike 20 miles and leave the gas at the pump station?

Yes, it can be irritating to be accused of trolling when that's not your intent but it's just as irritating or more so to have a forum bustling with trolls.

Maybe some thanks are deserved by Machka and others who put a bit of effort into standing up to trolls, even when we don't agree with their viewpoint or what kinds of content they consider trolling or not.

So now I know why a bunch of my posts were pretty much ignored. Seriously, as a newbie tourer I am only productive in the sense that I stop periodically to water some bushes and trees along the road, and when I eat at a cafe or diner, I tip 20%. I call that "supporting local economies", and I believe it is productive in that it adds a marginal lift in that business which otherwise would not have occurred. Aside from those examples, I question the need to be a "productive member of society" in the first place. Anyone who has a problem with that....has had a much different interface with much of "society" than I have.

I’m not sure how Machka’s questions can be construed as bullying. The OP posted an unanswerable question, and if really serious would gladly fill in the details to get the desired information. I believe her questions are reasonable, and the answers could result in an interesting discussion.

+1

This topic could be an interesting discussion if we had a few more details surrounding the question.

I see a lot of selfishness in those tours. Most of the causes people use as an excuse to ride a bike for money are B.S. anyway. Susan G. Komen and companies like that promote products that literally cause cancer, they fund research that has already been done, spend most of their money on their organization on not on the people or cause they claim to care about.

The people who do these charity rides really just want people to notice them and give them money just because they are doing something that a huge percentage of the world already does for many on a daily basis. When I commute to work or go riding on the weekends or something like that I don't ask people for money to support some cause because I would look like a jackass.

If you are curious to learn more about the non-profit industrial complex specifically relating to the breast cancer awareness check out the movie Breast Cancer Inc. It is focused on that issue but what is being said about them can be said fairly well across the board of non-profit types.

This is an interesting question. In Europe cycling certainly is:
Cycling Is Creating More Jobs in Europe Than Automakers Are in the U.S. | TakePart
https://www.ecf.com/wp-content/upload...g-in-EU-27.pdf

These studies don't parse out the touring aspect, but from comments I've read about what people have spent on their tours, I'd say tourers are among the most productive members of a very productive class.

++1

If you can call lawyers, realtors, restaurant managers, dentist, factory workers, retail managers, mayors, doctors, college professors or clerks productive members of society, the answer is yes. The question reminds me of the inevitable question about taxes when discussing road improvements with non-cyclists. The perception among the public is that cyclists don't pay taxes. Yes we do all the things other people do, have jobs, cars, homes, children and pay taxes. Riding a bike just happens to be fun. It doesn't make us part of some underground culture living off the grid.



Marc

I am not ready to say that choumichou is a troll, but if he is, he is really good! He pushes all the buttons but still ambiguous as to motivation.

People often quote CEO salaries as reasons to hate the Susan G. Komen foundation. It became a bit of a viral fad to hate them for these apparently "secret" injustices within the organization, like they're a for-profit wolf in sheep's clothing.

Not true.

A little research goes a long way. The current CEO of the Susan G. Komen foundation, Nancy Brinker, makes about $500,000 a year. This organization is a multi-million dolalr machine with thousands of employees and a nationwide presence. In order to keep leadership of the caliber necessary to run what is essentially a company on the same approximate scale of Apple or Nike, you basically need to pay that much. Otherwise you lose leadership to the for-profit sector.

The "20% of funds go to cancer research" is also spin. Here's a chart:



In actuality, only 11.3% goes to administrative costs, including the CEO's salary. 88% of funding goes towards a wide scope of activites that include research, but the foundation is also dedicated to providing services for cancer patients, outreach and support groups, education for the public to raise awareness and thus, donations, and for the actual events that do so much good for so many people.

Why the public decided to sink teeth into a foundation that is a net positive in the world, I have no idea. The shock factor of "Charity" and "$500,000 salary" sells newspapers.

Don't believe everything you read.

On the charity "thing"... I don't get why someones chosen vacation should be a reason for folks to donate money. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Not to paint this with to broad a brush, but I met or read about quite a few folks who were doing long tours "for charity" and using donated funds to cover their expenses. Some did so more blatantly than others. A few seemed to be working it as a complete scam mostly using it to fund their trip. Some actually took no funds and all money went directly to their charity and some did something in between.

While, I don't get the logic of a bike tour being used for fund raising. I do admire folks who took none of the donations and raised significant money for a charity.

Those who use it mainly to fund their trip and give the leftovers if any to the charity are scam artists IMO.