Sir Lance the Lott

Oh well, I suppose expecting the simplest of requests to last longer than 4 posts was a little too much to ask nowadays Maybe it was an unreasonable request? You are a sock puppet after all, so what respect should your request be given? There is so much personal bitchyness in these forums that using a sock was the only way to make the post and have it acceopted as a statement without personal conotations. I had already apologised for using a sock, and explained why. The sock is over 3 years old because it was created for a cache that never materialized. Why does everything on here have to degenerate to a slanging match whenever anybody tries to start a genuine discussion? And yes, there are at least 6 socks using this forum that people take at face value every day without batting an eyelid!

Alive and well in the House of Dragons and I've only been here a year Oh well, I suppose expecting the simplest of requests to last longer than 4 posts was a little too much to ask nowadays

First off, let’s get the apologies out of the way. This posting might not be for all who read it, so sorry to 1. Anybody thats been doing this for less than two years. That’s not a fixed time, just an arbitrary number. There’s nothing in here that’s “anti” you, it’s just that this post is referenced against a period before you joined and as such will have no place discussing here. If you do want to discuss the topics discussed here, please don’t hijack this thread – start one of your own 2. Number chasers. Again, I appreciate that for you the game is all about the numbers. This thread isn’t for you. 3. Manufacturers and vendors of 35mm film pots – I’m really sorry that the traditional market for your product is disappearing under the relentless onrush of digital photography – but I don’t feel it’s fair that you make us a marketing target 4. Anybody expecting an “I hate micros” rant, or a “kick the newbies” crusade. 5. Sorry for being a sock puppet. My owner is here somewhere - their just fearfull of backlash. This isn't a moaning post (much) - just one persons thoughts on how caching has changed since they started. Lets keep the personal stuff out, and if you do want to add to the thread let it be your own observations on how things have changed over the past few years. OK now that that’s out of the way, on to the substance. We have reached the first ten year anniversary of the first geocache being hidden, and where are we? For me, after a little under 7 years playing, a world away from the game as I first found it. Regardless of how you look at it, the game has changed – and for me, it hasn’t changed for the better. Sometimes it’s hard to state exactly how and why it’s gone downhill. Yes, there are thousands more caches to find than there were. But look at them! If I run a PQ of new caches from my home coordinates, the vast majority – that’s over two thirds – will be micros. Perhaps that’s just my location? I don’t know. I would run the same PQ for different areas, but I can’t be bothered. And from the same PQ, three quarters of the caches will be circuits – or components in national series’! Whatever happened to originality and individuality? When did people stop trying to make their cache stand out by its own merit – and feel proud of the logs they received for those reasons alone? None of this is to say that there arent some crackin caches out there , just that theres an awful lot of filtering to be done to get to them. Yes, I know I can use GSAK to filter out micros. But not all micros are bad, and not all micro-caches are correctly labeled as micros. And why should I? When did it become my responsibility to change the way I do something to accommodate the way a newcomer chooses to change the game? Another way in which things have changed seems to be in the way people get into caching in the first place. “Back in the day” cachers used to consist of three main types. ( a ) Outdoorsy people, who owned a GPS already for walking, or mountain biking, or whatever. ( b ) Geeky gadget freaks, who owned a GPS because it was this really smart bit of tech that could tell you (almost) exactly where you were on the planet, at any time (just in case that bit of info would ever come in handy) and ( c ) Outdoorsy geeky gadget freaks. Geocaching was this cool, secret-squirrel thing, that cool secret-squirrelly, outdoorsy geeky gadget freaks did in their spare time. Now it's mainstream, and it's something the general public do with the kids when it's not raining and there's nothing on the telly. And somehow, because of this, it became (for me) slightly more embarrassing and cringe making to discuss than it was a few years ago. And the chances are if you weren’t introduced to caching by another cacher, then it wasn’t long before you bumped into a more experienced cacher. Introductions to the game were by word of mouth, or by going along with somebody you knew. Everybody had or knew of somebody that could mentor their hides, and their searches. Criticism was genuine and helped, rather than sniping. The caches you found shaped the caches you hid. Nowadays Countryfile, and Rambling magazine, and the iShop have taken the place of people – and new geocachers come into the game in complete isolation. Occasionally one will find his or her way in here – where they’ll either join a big mutual back-slapping party, or kick up a fuss when not everybody agrees to drop everything to answer the questions they could either have answered themselves with a 30 second Google search – or, rather less likely, have found out themselves before they spent £300 on a GPS that now doesn’t do what they want it to do. And if you never meet another cacher, and only ever find hedge-bound filmpots, then that is what you are going to hide. The caches you find still shape the caches you hide. I know that there are other cachers out there who agree with me. I’ve met them. I continue to meet them. But as is so often the case, few if any of them bother coming in here anymore. And those that do would rather keep quiet than risk the wrath of the self-appointed politically correct forum police. So Happy Birthday Geocaching. Ten years old, and you don’t look a day over five. Have a great party everybody, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. and remember, the game’s what you make of it and the way you choose to play it.