[time-nuts] The "auction site"?

Graham planophore at aei.ca
Tue Jul 2 05:44:44 EDT 2013


Not just "engineering-friendly sites / lists".

The trend I have noticed is that any group which any one or more members 
which for one reason or another has had a "bad or unpleasant" experience 
with eBay AND spare no effort in complaining about or deriding others 
and the mere mention of eBay sends them off into a tither, will often 
exhibit this practice or worse. And heaven help anyone who happens to 
mention eBay or auction site in passing on a group where the moderator 
happens to be the person with the bad experience.

And using "that auction site" in lieu of actually stating eBay is I 
think also an attempt at political correctness so as not to offend the 
easily offended who may have also have a less than 100% dealing on eBay.

In American English at least there are common phrases which are used in 
place of swearing; for example, "dang nabbit" (I will leave it up to 
those who don't know to do a bit of research). Other languages must have 
their own nuances as well human nature being what it is.

Language can be odd, funny, and confusing at times even to those 
speaking the same language. Thankfully, in spit of that, we do manage to 
communicate quite well, most of the time.

cheers, Graham ve3gtc



On 13-07-02 08:59 AM, Rex wrote:
> On 7/1/2013 11:59 PM, Doug Calvert wrote:
>> Hello,
>>   Why do people go out of their way to avoid writing ebay on this list?
>> The statements are purposely written so that it is obvious that the
>> "insert mystical phrase"  is ebay and not a generic auction site. What
>> history am I not aware of?
>>
>
> I dunno either. There seems to be a trend in all engineering-friendly 
> sites / lists to not mention the name eBay outright. Maybe they worry 
> about conjuring up something like  the movie "Beetlejuice"?
>
> There are pros and cons to liking the online trading. A couple decades 
> back I liked going to the local swaps, but now it is easier to sit 
> here and do my browsing or make my bids online. Many of the old 
> sellers have gone to the internet or base their pricing on the current 
> "going rate". The negative is that cheap deals are getting rarer as 
> the dealers will swoop in if the price is too good, to buy it and sell 
> higher later. The good is that there is much more stuff to entice me 
> than the random local supplies usually could offer.
>
> There might be some oasis of good deals (like MIT swap?) and I might 
> tend to sell locally at a small bargain, but that is no longer common.
>
> Like it or not, eBay is the main game now. and I see no reason to 
> encode mentions of EBAY. Who here hasn't made a purchase or sale that 
> way?



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