Huzza! or however they say it. You speak the truth brudda. It’s sad when someone pops up with the “This is the Poser forum …” to stifle the mere mention of anything else. You also have to be careful even if you’re only discussing Poser. Say anything perceived as negative and the knives may come out, and you’re booked for insufficient loyalty. Add in the “You need to ALWAYS do this or NEVER do that and you have a pretty good start on a cult. The irony is that success is supposed to breed security. Poser is no longer down in the Roman catacombs, barely clinging to life. The knee jerk jingoism is less justified now than years ago when it seemed to be less frequent.

Without going through 15 years of threads and trying to assign an objective hostility level, you can’t objectively refute the idea that it’s always been this way, but I can certainly subjectively remember that it wasn’t. Fights, yes but usually not the degree of vitriol that we see now. Disagreements, sure, over art vs. porn, the size of Vickie’s breasts, naked faeries etc. – things that I suspect even the partisans were half joking about. I don’t remember people being accused of lying, of being shills for some company etc. and ad naseum – maybe I forget. I do hope it is a passing thing because maybe that mean’s there’s hope for Congress.

You can speculate on any number of factors, different personalities, more money involved etc. I don’t know. My own pet (probably flawed) theory is that more people are into the technical aspects of Poser these days. Maybe it’s easier to believe that you’ve found the magic number or tick box that reflects truth. In the old days, there weren’t that many switches to flip, so perhaps people were less absolutist. Beyond the artistic aspects of a Poser image, you pretty much had to look at other applications for post-work, rendering, FX etc. As Poser has become more capable, people can now be more insular, though that doesn’t really explain the hostility. People are just getting Effing old too. Lotta people here over a certain age it seems, perhaps more set in their ways, less tolerant of what they perceive as BS, or maybe that’s just me.

I’m not a professional, not really even a competent hobbyist, but I know that professionals use whatever gets the job done and they know that a tool/technique is just a tool/technique, and not the meaning of life. It seems to me that the people here who are actually working in CGI are the least cult-like. There are too many threads where one might learn something about what is available and when to use it, that devolve into two ‘authorities’ saying opposite things. Unfortunately, there are never enough pointy hats and sets of red shoes to go around and hockey games ensue.

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
— H L Mencken

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"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken