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ian said:
I think it depends which threads you frequent. If you spend a lot of time on this thread or the covid thread, KKF will seem as you describe. But on a lot of the threads there's a strong interest in getting better at making/sharpening/buying, in helping others to get better, and in laughing and ****ing around together. Even buying and selling has a community feel to me. I often buy and sell multiple times from/to the same people and use f&f when appropriate.



I think there's a lot of cost sharing here. There are a ton of us here who do sell at a pay-it-forward price, either decreasing the price of a knife with every sale, or at least sell at the same price as before, despite it being a higher value item. These sales just don't get airtime in the flipper thread. There're also all these really knowledgable people like Kipp, Dalman, Steampunk, Dave M, etc... that give so much of their time to the forum, teaching us newbies how to tie our shoes. (I mean, I give a lot of time too, but my contributions have a lot less content.) That's totally a sacrifice too.

That said, I totally agree with you that it's sad that KKF is so overwhelmingly white/asian male, and it's especially sad (at least to me) that by and large this is not really something that people want to change. See e.g. all the pushback in that knives of wives thread. Don't think that makes it not a community, it's just something that I'd change if I could.

Anyway, I guess my point is just that it depends how you interact with KKF. I've met some people on here that I consider real friends at this point.
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Ian, I do always appreciate your reasonableness even when we don't 100% agree.

I guess that I tend to judge behavior when it's not easy. This is not to dismiss the specific individuals you mentioned at all btw, but more generally, my observations will be focused around how people act when it's hard. Or sometimes around here the slightest of inconveniences but even then that's often too much. You correctly ID that this thread, the COVID thread, etc. highlight the behaviors I'm talking about, but this is more or less my point.

If the basic premise is "fine as long as there are no stressors", that's not a community IMO. Frankly, things work around here for me as they do for some others too. But while other people believe that's enough, I'd like to see it work for everyone and that's what would have to happen for me to call something a community.

A perfect counterexample for me is a discord Im on for a very small food youtube channel. There I am basically an omniscient knife god while here I'm just another patzer (albeit a well financed one). However, because that community has lots of people from varied backgrounds, and people treat each other with actual respect and not just politeness, I find myself spending more time there, and just wishing that it had the level of knowledge this place had and maybe a few of the folks I actually like around here (company which includes you FWIW)
 
I think the reason most of the forum is male is simply that more women are wise enough to not go down this rabbit hole. Saves them a fortune. ;)
In general this kind of nerd-obsession with specific tools, be it knives, razor blades, or automotive vehicles, seems to be a 'guy thing' for some reason. I don't think it's necessarily because there's anything wrong about the forum that would make it unwelcoming.
 
Jovidah said:
I think the reason most of the forum is male is simply that more women are wise enough to not go down this rabbit hole. Saves them a fortune. ;)
In general this kind of nerd-obsession with specific tools, be it knives, razor blades, or automotive vehicles, seems to be a 'guy thing' for some reason. I don't think it's necessarily because there's anything wrong about the forum that would make it unwelcoming.
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You don't want to know how much shoes and bags costs. Don't ask how I know...
 
IsoJ said:
You don't want to know how much shoes and bags costs. Don't ask how I know...
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I didn't want to go there. ;) In general I think making such gross generalizations about entire genderse is extremely problematic... but there must be something if there is indeed such a large discrepancy in representation. Then again some of it might also be simply presuming people's gender. People don't necessarily advertise what type of genitals they have when it's not relevant to the discussion, but there's always a tendency to presume that the other person will be 'just like me', even when that might not necessarily be the case.
 
Jovidah said:
I think the reason most of the forum is male is simply that more women are wise enough to not go down this rabbit hole. Saves them a fortune. ;)
In general this kind of nerd-obsession with specific tools, be it knives, razor blades, or automotive vehicles, seems to be a 'guy thing' for some reason. I don't think it's necessarily because there's anything wrong about the forum that would make it unwelcoming.
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True, more guys join the forum than women, for whatever reason. But we then tend to accept that the forum is 'for (hetero) guys' in some slight ways, like in the plethora of penis jokes (ok, who am I to talk, being the proud owner of the only(?) @RDalman penis handle in existence, and the author of a few such jokes), the usual accepted distinction between good knives and wife knives, etc... I suspect a higher percentage of women join the forum than stick around. I'm not trying to rain too much on the forum culture. I mean, obviously I like it enough to spend some ungodly number of hours talking **** on here. :p But it could be more welcoming sometimes.
 
Jovidah said:
I didn't want to go there. ;) In general I think making such gross generalizations about entire genderse is extremely problematic... but there must be something if there is indeed such a large discrepancy in representation. Then again some of it might also be simply presuming people's gender. People don't necessarily advertise what type of genitals they have when it's not relevant to the discussion, but there's always a tendency to presume that the other person will be 'just like me', even when that might not necessarily be the case.
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I still remember how intensely betrayed I felt when I figured out that @inferno wasn’t a woman. 😭
 
AFB11D38-F336-4943-BB22-04BA2E836333.jpeg
 
josemartinlopez said:
https://cnaluxury.channelnewsasia.com/obsessions/hermes-birkin-menswear-fashion-191186
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Seems like a rather expensive way to come out of the closet...

ian said:
True, more guys join the forum than women, for whatever reason. But we then tend to accept that the forum is 'for (hetero) guys' in some slight ways, like in the plethora of penis jokes (ok, who am I to talk, being the proud owner of the only(?) @RDalman penis handle in existence, and the author of a few such jokes), the usual accepted distinction between good knives and wife knives, etc... I suspect a higher percentage of women join the forum than stick around. I'm not trying to rain too much on the forum culture. I mean, obviously I like it enough to spend some ungodly number of hours talking **** on here. :p But it could be more welcoming sometimes.
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Honestly I think if a few penis jokes was enough to scare off women they'd all have packed up and colonized Venus or Mars without us instead. Who knows, maybe SpaceX's engineering department is filled with them and we just haven't heard about it.
I'm okay with referring to wife's knives as 'normie knives' instead. ;)
 
ian said:
True, more guys join the forum than women, for whatever reason. But we then tend to accept that the forum is 'for (hetero) guys' in some slight ways, like in the plethora of penis jokes (ok, who am I to talk, being the proud owner of the only(?) @RDalman penis handle in existence, and the author of a few such jokes), the usual accepted distinction between good knives and wife knives, etc... I suspect a higher percentage of women join the forum than stick around. I'm not trying to rain too much on the forum culture. I mean, obviously I like it enough to spend some ungodly number of hours talking **** on here. :p But it could be more welcoming sometimes.
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Vigina jokes. We need more vigina jokes. I know that Dalman would love a vigina shaped saya.
 
Jovidah said:
Honestly I think if a few penis jokes was enough to scare off women they'd all have packed up and colonized Venus or Mars without us instead.
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It’s doubt any of this scares people off. It just makes the culture here more bro-y, and therefore makes it slightly less attractive to people that aren’t bro-y. It’s not like someone goes “ew, a penis joke” and quits the forum because of their fragile mental state, it’s just that they become less engaged the more they see. Anyway, I didn’t really want to make all of this about penis jokes… the wife knife thing is a better example. I feel like a total hypocrite arguing against penis jokes anyway. Maybe it’s also just that once there’s a critical mass of masculine energy, regardless of the number of penis jokes, it’s less enticing to people that don’t identify that way. I definitely don’t have a solution to this, in any case.

Jovidah said:
I'm okay with referring to wife's knives as 'normie knives' instead. ;)
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Perfect! :)
 
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WildBoar said:
How do you know we are guys?
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if I went to a conference for the selling of propane and propane accessories it would be a pretty safe assumption that people weren't there to pimp their charcoal starters.

(btw for those unfamiliar with King of the Hill, my point is that in an environment where there is an open, if often unspoken hostility to some group, you wont find that group there)
 
As usual, men are clueless as to what they're doing that upsets women... Penis jokes are just to be expected from men, and they're generally good-natured. Boring and predictable, but not upsetting unless you have unresolved trauma. The 'wife knife' comments could upset some women, but others can relate to this partnership dynamic (and may even have a wife of their own 😉), especially if they're the one inclined to visit a forum like this. The terminology isn't great, but it rhymes and is catchy.

The parts that are off-putting are the ways that women are discussed in threads like 'youtube knuckleheads' and elsewhere - god forbid she shows one tenth of the overconfidence as every mediocre-skilled man with a sharpening tutorial. And anytime CM gets randomly brought up in a conversation, it's almost never relevant and usually demeaning. This is what real sexism looks like, not penis jokes.

But I think the biggest issue is more widespread and less obvious to men, which is the general culture of one-upsmanship and competition. It feels like a good chunk of the men here (and every internet forum in existence) are more interested in asserting their dominance than trying to be helpful, when say for example debating the best way to do something. I think this is the main reason women tend to avoid primarily male spaces.
 
Sex is a blood sport "All is fair in love and war" and almost every action we make as an adult can be connected to our drive to have sex. This includes the assertion and dominant traits in men as well as where women choose to spend time.
 
spaceconvoy said:
As usual, men are clueless as to what they're doing that upsets women... Penis jokes are just to be expected from men, and they're generally good-natured. Boring and predictable, but not upsetting unless you have unresolved trauma. The 'wife knife' comments could upset some women, but others can relate to this partnership dynamic (and may even have a wife of their own 😉), especially if they're the one inclined to visit a forum like this. The terminology isn't great, but it rhymes and is catchy.

The parts that are off-putting are the ways that women are discussed in threads like 'youtube knuckleheads' and elsewhere - god forbid she shows one tenth of the overconfidence as every mediocre-skilled man with a sharpening tutorial. And anytime CM gets randomly brought up in a conversation, it's almost never relevant and usually demeaning. This is what real sexism looks like, not penis jokes.

But I think the biggest issue is more widespread and less obvious to men, which is the general culture of one-upsmanship and competition. It feels like a good chunk of the men here (and every internet forum in existence) are more interested in asserting their dominance than trying to be helpful, when say for example debating the best way to do something. I think this is the main reason women tend to avoid primarily male spaces.
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Ignoring everything else and veering mildly off topic, I actually don't think CM's general reputation here on the forum is much based in sexism. I mentioned her to my wife one time, just as an aside about something else, and her viewpoint was that it would be more sexist/demeaning if we pretended her knives were good or refused to criticize her or her pricing simply because they were made by a woman. In the same sense, no one here speaks badly about DesRosiers or Jessica Burke because their work is of a high quality and commensurate with the cost. This isn't to say that there haven't been overly derogatory comments made about CM, just that as a whole, I don't think her reputation is founded in sexism, but rather what she produces and how she markets her work.
 
Yeah I agree that you can't count the CM bashing as sexism. If anything her knives are marketed based on her sexuality - not on her skill as a knifemaker or the knives inherent quality. That's on her / whoever made that documentary, not on us. If anything it's her doing a disservice to women...
Also, things becoming a meme just... happens. Like TF.
 
Slim278 said:
Sex is a blood sport "All is fair in love and war" and almost every action we make as an adult can be connected to our drive to have sex. This includes the assertion and dominant traits in men as well as where women choose to spend time.
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This thread has gone from “flipper alert” to “creeper alert”
 
It's not about the quality of her knives or fairness of her pricing. It's about how often she's randomly brought up in completely unrelated discussions, and how the focus is often on her, not her knives. And no, memes don't "just happen"

TF has become a meme here because of the small but zealous circle of people who recommend them enthusiastically while brushing aside their shortcomings. And probably bolstered by his high prices and how seriously he presents himself.

I haven't done a study but I feel relatively confident to claim that literally no one here has ever recommended CM's knives. No one seems to ask about them either. But somehow she just keeps popping up in unrelated conversations for some mysterious reason 🤔
 
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