My research and the 'violence' I have witnessed

neeb

Brakeless wrote:

MikeBrew wrote:

bompington wrote:

The whole "symbolic violence" thing is just a way for smarty-pants sociologists to enforce their viewpoint on everyone, i.e. an act of symbolic violence. Or something like that.

I'd have to agree with bompington here. The old dude trying to look "cool" in the photo s on said naff blog appears to be as extreme a slave to cycle fashion as one could wish to meet. Looks like he's be on the losing side in a few very nasty punch-ups - in the symbolic sense. At the same time he seeks to suck the joy out of a good ole fashioned bike ride by trying to "intellectualize" and analyse the sh1t out of it...
What a waste of his twilight years. Live, ride your bike and enjoy it, get a dog, get a part time job, get your head out of your ars*. You ain't gonna be on this earth for ever, enjoy life, and don't seek approbation of mumbo-jumbo peddlers and pseudo intellectuals.... :roll:

Thank Fork he ain't on my club runs.

100% agree

What's the chance that his next post will be to promote his next blog entry.

Surely there must be some psuedo intellectual crap to write about a sad old bloke who uses a forum just to promote his own sad blog and contributes f*ck all else.

Amazing how the British (almost as much as the Americans) get all shirty and insulting any time anyone gets intellectual about anything. Maybe the guy doesn't want to get fat, talk about the same boring crap that everybody else does and fade away in a meaningless haze of lazy indulgence. Now, I'm not a socioligist and not in a position to judge the value of his stuff in the appropriate context, but he is doing a PhD in the subject. And he already has a part time job.

http://www.theraceforthecafe.com/p/about.html

ZMC888

It doesn't matter that much, so long as there is a 'point' to a rule. If your tyre labels align with your valve stems it helps you find the valve stem quicker.

But sock length? That's just stupid.

MikeBrew

neeb wrote:

Amazing how the British (almost as much as the Americans) get all shirty and insulting any time anyone gets intellectual

You'll have to tell us more stupid folk what you mean by "Intellectual", as if you're use of words is anything at all like our Tony's use of the word "violence", it will surely mean Not-intellectual.... :idea:

Words of one syllable or less please, some of us non-brainy types have only just got the hang of walking upright

(Edited by Moderator)

Garry H

Is that him in the photo? Steptoe stylee!!

pblakeney

Garry H wrote:

Is that him in the photo? Steptoe stylee!!

If it is then he is definitely a style victim.

neeb

MikeBrew wrote:

You'll have to tell us more stupid folk what you mean by "Intellectual", as if you're use of words is anything at all like our Tony's use of the word "violence", it will surely mean Not-intellectual.... :idea:

Is your terrible grammar and punctuation here deliberate and ironic? If not it's rather funny in this context..

"Symbolic violence" appears to be an established sociological term with a considerable literature behind it. In order to know if it is useful and if Mr Rees is using it appropriately you would need to read that literature (starting off with a lot of stuff my this guy), not just a one-liner definition of the term (although it looks like you haven't even done that). Like many specialist terms it borrows existing words and modifies their meanings. Objecting to its use on the grounds that you don't think the things being described are "violence" is as stupid and ignorant as objecting to the use of "cloud" for distributed data storage on the grounds that it never rains in your iPhone. Mr Rees uses the term because it's part of the academic discipline he is working within and to others within that discipline it will doubtless link precisely to a much larger body of concepts.

There are any number of ways to define "intellectual", but contributing something original to an existing and internally coherent system of thought might be an appriopriate one here. It's not about convincing you or me (who aren't sociologists) that you have something new and clever to say about cyclists, it's about relating observations of cyclists to a whole formalised set of theories about how people in general behave in groups. You might think that the whole of sociology is just a load of posturing and stating the obvious in complicated ways, but you can't know if it is or not without properly studying it.

neeb

But really, the amount of unjustified bile being directed in this thread at what is (within the cycling media) basically something a bit different so blatantly says so much about the people spouting it. I suspect the problem here is the same as with much of online abuse - it comes from fat, middle-aged men who have given up on trying to make any positive contributions to society or to their own personal development and harbour an impotent fury for anyone who hasn't. The fact that Mr Rees looks remarkably fit for his apparent age doubtless adds petrol to the fire.

MikeBrew

neeb stop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj3p6hrOcE4 :roll: Not so much symbolic(s) as talking b...ics. Well, I'm sure that (even)you get the idea...

964cup

Jeez, wear what you want. But not football shorts. Or Crocs. I think there has to be a limit somewhere. I'm all for fit women wearing unpadded yoga pants, though.

webboo

Written above the toilet roll holder in male toilets in the Leeds Student union building. Sociology degrees please take one. With an arrow pointing down.

neeb

MikeBrew wrote:

neeb stop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj3p6hrOcE4 :roll: Not so much symbolic(s) as talking b...ics. Well, I'm sure that (even)you get the idea...

Have you done this all of your life? Stick your fingers in your ears and shout "bollox" any time any one asks you to think about anything a bit differently?

MikeBrew

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... tellectual

Almost perfect, but for the omission of neeb and Tony......

neeb

MikeBrew wrote:

<span class="skimlinks-unlinked">http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pseudo-intellectual</span&gt;

Almost perfect, but for the omission of neeb and Tony......

But the problem with that, Mike, is that people like you just label anything you can't be bothered with as "pseudo-intellectual". It's just another way of saying "bollox". You wouldn't know the difference between profundity and pretension if your life depended on it because basically, you're just not very interested.

So let's get this straight:

- Is Mr Rees talking bollox in your eyes because you think he's doing sociology badly, or because sociology itself is completely bollox? (and you're not allowed to dodge the question by saying "both").

- If sociology is bollox, do you think all academic subjects are bollox? If not, which ones are and which ones aren't? How about psychology or anthropology, philosophy? Maybe these are bollox but "hard sciences" such as physics aren't? Where do you draw the line, how about economics or paleontology?

Just interested.

Matthewfalle

Are people actually confusing pseudo intellectualism with pseudo liberalism here though?

You can't use cycling and cyclists per se as commoditised anchors and try to imbue them with totemic significance - away from the materialistic, there is a pyscho-spatial world to look at.

Use wonderin' like, innit.

Matthewfalle

Arrrggh - have just noticed a typo: it should have been neo liberalism not pseudo liberalism in the above post: I blame too many early mornings.

Apologies for any confusion caused.

cookeeemonster

Wow, the 'internet'.

The road forum really comes across as the Daily Mail part of the forum sometimes (by which I mean, often).

He wrote a blog which is pretty interesting to some, but not to others. Rather than giving some constructive comments or just not saying anything (if you have nothing nice to say) people lose their s**t and get nasty (violent? )

Get a life people, we all view the world in different ways. The OP doesn't come across as horrible so chill out and write a post about disk brakes or helmets or something

cookeeemonster

MikeBrew wrote:

neeb wrote:

Amazing how the British (almost as much as the Americans) get all shirty and insulting any time anyone gets intellectual

You'll have to tell us more stupid folk what you mean by "Intellectual", as if you're use of words is anything at all like our Tony's use of the word "violence", it will surely mean Not-intellectual.... :idea:


Mind you, our boy does look as though he may well of "witnessed" some violence of the more literal variety....Bless his little cottons



Words of one syllable or less please, some of us non-brainy types have only just got the hang of walking upright

My last word on the subject.

This is extremely childish, and basically bullying. I hope you're proud of yourself Mike.

Not cool at all.

MikeBrew

Well if you're right CM, it's probably best that our esteemed blog author hasn't bothered to hang around to read it, or indeed anyone else's input or thoughts on the subject. He's done what he's done on multiple other forums - posted with the sole purpose of increasing traffic to his blog, then simply blogged off.
Many of "them" have been familiar enough with his past offences of "intellectual" fly-tipping to lock the spam threads he's instigated.

Brakeless

neeb wrote:

But really, the amount of unjustified bile being directed in this thread at what is (within the cycling media) basically something a bit different so blatantly says so much about the people spouting it. I suspect the problem here is the same as with much of online abuse - it comes from fat, middle-aged men who have given up on trying to make any positive contributions to society or to their own personal development and harbour an impotent fury for anyone who hasn't. The fact that Mr Rees looks remarkably fit for his apparent age doubtless adds petrol to the fire.

You suspect wrong (from a very skinny 6ft 69kg bloke who rides 300 miles a week)

If someone posts and promotes a blog on a forum then they have to expect feedback.

For you to suggest that anyone thinking his blog is rubbish must be 'fat, middle-aged men who have given up on trying to make any positive contributions to society or to their own personal development and harbour an impotent fury for anyone who hasn't' says far more about you and your predjudices than it does about the posters you are trying to insult.

MikeBrew

Well said Brakeless, though I fear that common sense alone will have little impact on young neeb. He clearly has a penchant for generalization and overextrapolation, bordering on Magical thinking....

neeb

Brakeless wrote:

neeb wrote:

But really, the amount of unjustified bile being directed in this thread at what is (within the cycling media) basically something a bit different so blatantly says so much about the people spouting it. I suspect the problem here is the same as with much of online abuse - it comes from fat, middle-aged men who have given up on trying to make any positive contributions to society or to their own personal development and harbour an impotent fury for anyone who hasn't. The fact that Mr Rees looks remarkably fit for his apparent age doubtless adds petrol to the fire.

You suspect wrong (from a very skinny 6ft 69kg bloke who rides 300 miles a week)

If someone posts and promotes a blog on a forum then they have to expect feedback.

For you to suggest that anyone thinking his blog is rubbish must be 'fat, middle-aged men who have given up on trying to make any positive contributions to society or to their own personal development and harbour an impotent fury for anyone who hasn't' says far more about you and your predjudices than it does about the posters you are trying to insult.

Feedback is one thing, abuse and baseless ridicule is another. I stand by my comments that that sort of stuff often comes from people like those I describe. Obviously it doesn't always, I said "suspect".

Basically, this sort of bullying, lynch mob dynamic that often arises on Internet forums when someone posts something a bit different just really gets on my tits.

neeb

MikeBrew wrote:

Well said Brakeless, though I fear that common sense alone will have little impact on young neeb. He clearly has a penchant for generalization and overextrapolation, bordering on Magical thinking....

I suspect you are considerably younger than I am.

Brakeless

neeb wrote:

Brakeless wrote:

neeb wrote:

But really, the amount of unjustified bile being directed in this thread at what is (within the cycling media) basically something a bit different so blatantly says so much about the people spouting it. I suspect the problem here is the same as with much of online abuse - it comes from fat, middle-aged men who have given up on trying to make any positive contributions to society or to their own personal development and harbour an impotent fury for anyone who hasn't. The fact that Mr Rees looks remarkably fit for his apparent age doubtless adds petrol to the fire.

You suspect wrong (from a very skinny 6ft 69kg bloke who rides 300 miles a week)

If someone posts and promotes a blog on a forum then they have to expect feedback.

For you to suggest that anyone thinking his blog is rubbish must be 'fat, middle-aged men who have given up on trying to make any positive contributions to society or to their own personal development and harbour an impotent fury for anyone who hasn't' says far more about you and your predjudices than it does about the posters you are trying to insult.

Feedback is one thing, abuse and baseless ridicule is another. I stand by my comments that that sort of stuff often comes from people like those I describe. Obviously it doesn't always, I said "suspect".

Basically, this sort of bullying, lynch mob dynamic that often arises on Internet forums when someone posts something a bit different just really gets on my tits.

You are using abuse and baseless ridicule in your replies !

keef66

To be fair to the OP he has revisited this thread and thanked everyone for their feedback...

I think the main issue with his blog is that it's too much sociology for the majority of cyclists, and too much cycling for the majority of sociologists. And the photography comes across as a bit narcissistic..

I'm aftaid I can't identify with the 'violent' behaviour he discusses, because I'm an antisocial cyclist and never ride as part of a group or club.

Or is that because deep down I fear that I might become a victim of such 'violence', and so avoid any possible conflict by choosing to ride in solitude???

Should anyone wish to study me as part of their PhD I am available for interview at the usual £650 per day plus expenses

imposter2.0

keef66 wrote:

To be fair to the OP he has revisited this thread and thanked everyone for their feedback...

I think the main issue with his blog is that it's too much sociology for the majority of cyclists, and too much cycling for the majority of sociologists. And the photography comes across as a bit narcissistic..

I'm aftaid I can't identify with the 'violent' behaviour he discusses, because I'm an antisocial cyclist and never ride as part of a group or club.

Or is that because deep down I fear that I might become a victim of such 'violence', and so avoid any possible conflict by choosing to ride in solitude???

Should anyone wish to study me as part of their PhD I am available for interview at the usual £650 per day plus expenses

Again, to be fair to the OP, if he posted elsewhere and didn't just 'blog-bomb' the forum from afar, I think people would be slightly better disposed towards him.

His PhD panel are probably only interested in him being able to come up with a hypothesis which can be theorized to a level where they are happy to give him his doctorate. Beyond that, I don't think he or they will care about what colour socks we all wear. Post-award, he will probably stop talking about it - and anyone who rode a bike before he got his PhD will still be able to ride one afterwards, and Tony will go from being a bearded bloke on a bike to a bearded bloke on a bike with a PhD. So ultimately, nothing will have changed and the 'violence' we have all suffered will soon be forgotten.

Matthewfalle

keef66 wrote:

To be fair to the OP he has revisited this thread and thanked everyone for their feedback...

I think the main issue with his blog is that it's too much sociology for the majority of cyclists, and too much cycling for the majority of sociologists. And the photography comes across as a bit narcissistic..

I'm aftaid I can't identify with the 'violent' behaviour he discusses, because I'm an antisocial cyclist and never ride as part of a group or club.

Or is that because deep down I fear that I might become a victim of such 'violence', and so avoid any possible conflict by choosing to ride in solitude???

Should anyone wish to study me as part of their PhD I am available for interview at the usual £650 per day plus expenses

I'm a miserable bit but am available for interviews at £1.38, a pint of Andy Godiva and a couple of packets of pork scratching if anyone needs a muse.

keef66

Matthewfalle wrote:

keef66 wrote:

Should anyone wish to study me as part of their PhD I am available for interview at the usual £650 per day plus expenses

I'm a miserable bit but am available for interviews at £1.38, a pint of Andy Godiva and a couple of packets of pork scratching if anyone needs a muse.

Fark me! I've been undercut already! Whatever happened to goodwill to all men and all that bollocks??

Matthewfalle

keef66 wrote:

Matthewfalle wrote:

keef66 wrote:

Should anyone wish to study me as part of their PhD I am available for interview at the usual £650 per day plus expenses

I'm a miserable bit but am available for interviews at £1.38, a pint of Andy Godiva and a couple of packets of pork scratching if anyone needs a muse.

Fark me! I've been undercut already! Whatever happened to goodwill to all men and all that ****??

Bugger that - it's a dog eat dog world down here. I also will say anything you want me to say and can be quoted on whatever you want me to say as well. I'm like a cheap whore with broken knicker elastic me.

And that's meant to have read Lady Godiva, not Andy Godiva. I neither know, nor have any desire to know, what a pint of Andy Godiva is, looks like or tastes like. Freakin' stoooopid spell check corrector thing.

bondurant

Have some posts on this page vanished or is it me?

neeb

Bondurant wrote:

Have some posts on this page vanished or is it me?

Yeah, MikeBrew left a final snarky one directed at me which I wasn't going to rise to, but it looks like either he had second thoughts or someone reported it.