Authenticity, a retrospective...

UKBouldering.com

Help Support UKBouldering.com:

By the way, with the new-look UKB, if you click on somebody's profile you'll see a little blue button marked "Ignore". If you press it then you will stop seeing that user's posts.

Not sure why I chose to mention that on this fascinating thread.

Andy, you're totally entitled to your opinion, but you also have to accept that other people may then come to hold the opinion that you're a dickhead. I could take the time to dismantle your ideas and show you that your stereotyping of "what middle class people think", "what working class people think", "what Labour voters/members think", and even "what cavers think" (I know three cavers and two of them hold PhDs and are about as close to the status-quo as you might find) is wrong, but it would bore me to tears, take up far too much of my time, and it wouldn't have any effect anyway. Enjoy the rabbit hole.
 
Sorry Andy, but that last post was just a load of potted sweeping-generalised psycho-drivel.
 
Nothing particularly controversial about that - unless you were careless or deliberately inflammatory about how you expressed this.
I missed it all at the time. Sounds interesting.

Authenticity is only a negative if someone talks about it publicly - lots of people post loads of stuff on social media, which is public - so in many cases it becomes a negative. Keep it to ourselves and it's a good thing.
When people keep it to themselves or are told to shut up, they just harbour a grudge and get their own back at the ballot box, even if it's self-destructive (we humans have a real passion for martyrdom). I think classical journalism served the function of acting as the voice of 'the people' and so reduced radical outcomes. If we'd understood this, we'd live closer to the ideal Liberal world, without Brexit, Trump, and landslides victories that feel like a defeat for everyone.
 
Climbing and climbers have changed over my lifetime and I expect the last bastion of what it once was (which was counter-culture, anti-status quo etc) might be found in caving (maybe?), maybe due to the sport being a hard sell for lifestyle marketeers (as are cavers). As for class, although you're the class you're born into until the day you die, the education industrial complex does seem to output a certain type of citizen (as is primary and secondary education). They have the higher status of accreditation; they are professionalized, and they are 'management', which means they think and act in a middle-class way, which is to think of themselves as radical free thinkers and free to act and do as they wish. Really, they are trapped within the conformity of being a "good person", who acts, and says, and reads, and thinks only good thoughts. Just as the non-working and working class are kept in their place by each other, so are the middle).
Whilst I cannot speak to your experience with any authority, I can dispute your claim in the main. I’m 54, I’ve been climbing since 1976 ish (?), I started climbing with my father, who had been a climber since childhood and with many of the old goats he’d climbed with as a boy. The South West was quite a small scene, of course, but I was driving all over the country as soon as I got a license and went off to college. Sport in France most summers from about ‘81 onwards, annual Font trips from around the same time, etc etc.
Ran a climbing wall for a decade or so too.
Pretty sure the diverse nature of climbers hasn’t changed much. Flash “look at me” gits, to careful trad bimblers, Dirt bags to Yuppie toe dippers. Doctors, Lawyers, Plumbers, Miners, restaurant dish washers, Teachers, Engineers, eternal students, Military of all ranks and so on and so on. I’ve met and climbed with all of them. I still do. I think your particular cohort, your “gang”, might have just faded away, but I don’t think you were ever the be all and end all of “climbing” nor even representative of the wider scene. Just another sub-culture in great seething mass.
 
When people keep it to themselves or are told to shut up, they just harbour a grudge and get their own back at the ballot box, even if it's self-destructive (we humans have a real passion for martyrdom). I think classical journalism served the function of acting as the voice of 'the people' and so reduced radical outcomes. If we'd understood this, we'd live closer to the ideal Liberal world, without Brexit, Trump, and landslides victories that feel like a defeat for everyone.
Yes, some people do react like that.
 
By the way, with the new-look UKB, if you click on somebody's profile you'll see a little blue button marked "Ignore". If you press it then you will stop seeing that user's posts.

But then you'd miss the second most interesting thing to happen on the forum this week...
 
Andy, don’t you think that it’s people that have changed to change climbing, and that the spirit of climbing that you encountered when you started was that of the anti establishment zeitgeist? There’s still plenty of anti establishment activism within climbing these days, but maybe you value it less as it doesn’t align with your beliefs?
 
By the way, with the new-look UKB, if you click on somebody's profile you'll see a little blue button marked "Ignore". If you press it then you will stop seeing that user's posts.

Not sure why I chose to mention that on this fascinating thread.

Andy, you're totally entitled to your opinion, but you also have to accept that other people may then come to hold the opinion that you're a dickhead. I could take the time to dismantle your ideas and show you that your stereotyping of "what middle class people think", "what working class people think", "what Labour voters/members think", and even "what cavers think" (I know three cavers and two of them hold PhDs and are about as close to the status-quo as you might find) is wrong, but it would bore me to tears, take up far too much of my time, and it wouldn't have any effect anyway. Enjoy the rabbit hole.
The issue, Will, is that I'm able to admit you're 50% right in what you write (most people are half right), but I think you're too afraid to admit - in good faith - that so am I. Instead, what you're doing is performative writing, it's all dead words, demonstrating to everyone else you're like everyone else. Do it again, but actually say something worth reading. Are you authentic?
 
Andy, don’t you think that it’s people that have changed to change climbing, and that the spirit of climbing that you encountered when you started was that of the anti establishment zeitgeist? There’s still plenty of anti establishment activism within climbing these days, but maybe you value it less as it doesn’t align with your beliefs?
Define anti-establishment. Do you mean voting for Reform, being openly Christian, supporting Trump, being against the war in Ukraine? I fear that the establishment and the 'system' define what is anti-establishment these days. To be a modern revolutionary, you have to be a counter-revolutionary.
 
Define anti-establishment. Do you mean voting for Reform, being openly Christian, supporting Trump, being against the war in Ukraine? I fear that the establishment and the 'system' define what is anti-establishment these days. To be a modern revolutionary, you have to be a counter-revolutionary.
Is that a list of things you like or things you consider anti establishment? Are you a big Musk fan? You have a similar style of writing!
 
Is that a list of things you like or things you consider anti establishment? Are you a big Musk fan? You have a similar style of writing!
I don't know who you are, what you do, or your age, but if I could give you one piece of advice that could really help you in the rest of your life, it's this (there is a 99.9% you ignore this, and just reply with some glib comment, and even if you do, this is in good faith from me, so think about it even if you do). Unplug your brain from what it's plugged into; in fact, try and imagine you're not you any more; try and pick apart what you just wrote. Are the points you're making what you really think (think hard about it), or is it just a programmed response? Have you met Elon Musk and taken the time to understand his viewpoints and believe me and Musk have some overlapping world views, or, have you've been programmed to attack anything you feel is hostile to your programming (we're all programmed, and we're lucky if even 1% of our thoughts are unique). This is my point. This is anti-thinking. It's something implanted in your head that the second something comes close to being heretical or a threat to the system of control, you attack it. Do you assume I'm a Reform voter, a Trump fan, and pro Brexit etc (I fit the MO), no, I'm none of these, I just took the time to put forward the viewpoint that what you think is radical is actually conformity. If you want to be free in this life, then take the time to form your own opinions (I guarantee you that Musk does, which is why he is the King of the world) and don't just act like an organ monkey (although, isn't that what forums are for?).
 
Do you assume I'm a Reform voter, a Trump fan, and pro Brexit etc (I fit the MO), no, I'm none of these, I just took the time to put forward the viewpoint that what you think is radical is actually conformity.
You just listed a load of popular things (winning president, most popular religion in the world, etc.) and I was just wondering what you were getting at. Not sure how radical voting for a billionaire backed billionaire who more than half the country voted for, but will leave that with you.

Are the red pills strawberry flavour?
 
I was living at a friends house on woodbank crescent in about 2014/15. My room was on the road side and it was a pretty warm time of year so I’d often leave the window open. One night at around 1 or 2am I was awoken by the sound of a car with the windows down, blaring loud music and revving its engine like fuck to make it up the pretty steep hill.

The car got to a pretty small parking space right underneath my window and began the onerous task of trying to parallel park. Funny thing was the driver thought not to turn down the volume of the music blaring from the radio obscuring the engine noise and therefore was revving like mad as they painfully inched their way back and forward into the space.

After what seemed like an age I was agitated enough to think about having a quiet word. I leaned out of the window looked down and eventually out of the car popped “Andy 'edge lord' Kirkpatrick”. I recall realising at that point the futility of trying to engage with such an academic heavyweight counter revolutionary such as this and went back to sleep feeing pretty good about having banked a fairly decent anecdote.

It’s a perfect summary for what became of him, a load of noise and effort from someone trying too hard for reasons, apparently unobvious to them, trying to achieve something too trivial.
 
On the theme of 'authenticity'. I used to like watching and reading your stuff back in the day. You were doing your own thing, climbing and otherwise, not the en-vogue stuff but the stuff you were passionate about, you were on the side of being original in your content and how you came across. You seemed to be you, you seemed authentic

Then you turned into yet another propaganda megaphone. Repeating the same shite, using the same talking points, catch words and phrases, that we hear from every other 'truther' and far right nutter out there. You lost any and all authenticity, just becoming one more bot, Another cog in the machine. What you say and what you write is identical word by word to a million other posts available on twitter, youtube and the internet at large. Authentic? There is no authenticity there. Just repeating the same mantras we heard a million times. And when we don't want to hear again for the millionth time you throw the toys out of the pram demanding to be listened.

Write something authentic and original i'll read it, but if i want to read about the threat to Liberal values from Islamism there's about a million choices here to read from https://www.google.com/search?clien...&q=the+threat+to+Liberal+values+from+Islamism
 

Latest posts

Back
Top