Reviews and disappointment

G

Geezy Muldoon

Gold
#21
#21
justme:

Think Joyce worked kind of like a quilt maker. Each piece sewn to the other pieces. Enough breaks in the longer books to surmise that many of the sections were mostly done at one sitting even though the sections were revised (perhaps extensively) later. Must of been an agony to rely on the services of Nora (his wife) and daughter, who I understand also served him as a typist. Hard enough writing on a computer.
 
C

Candide

#22
#22
Judge, Joyce read and wrote so much that he went blind...(he always had weak eyes to begin with and the lighting in those days was not up to par too) even if he had a braille keyboard computer he would have typed his fingers into stubs. Any kid from the middle class who gets into Trinity College Dublin (those Jesuits teachers kick ass!) on his own merits and then quits cause they can't keep up with him is a giant brain in my book.

Justme, Joyce was a freakin' genius and for his trouble he got to die poor, miserable and riddled with self doubts while his family struggled before and after his death in stinking poverty...the world sucks and I love that expression "Ignorance is bliss". If Joyce was a moron or a criminal he would have been more likely to have made a fortune in his lifetime. Vincent Van Gogh made a fortune *after* his lifetime but then again he died of syphillus so maybe that added to his cache.

Fishfry - "Let's say the client is a jaded, experienced whoremonger... " I love that :) And from my extensive experience reading reviews and listening to men talk it is really the opposite that occurrs. A "jaded whoremonger" would never give anyone a good review because nothing is fun for him anymore. An addled dope shooter wouldn't give his dealer a good review either. You could not ever do enough for a person like that. Forget that bit about the girls with kids who need to earn a living..Honey, whether or not you ever become a "jaded whoremonger" you have sweet instincts (hold onto them) :) but most people do not. I have read reviews about women, (other than myself) calling them fat ugly pigs and then I met them and some where outstanding, others were average but no where near the hideous picture the reviewer painted. He was painting a self-portrait (or else he was really a competitive pro) which is why the guys at JAG who had the idea to include demographic info on themselves in reviews (like age, etc., which unfortunately never happened unless maybe they do it now) were right on, because a large percentage of the review is about the reviewer.

In my opinion, the problem at JAG is not because of the members or the quality of the reviews. It is because the people who run the site have to be client oriented and remember what the members want and put some effort into sorting reviews, writing back to people who sent in incomplete reviews, going over the site with a fine tooth comb looking for problems, errors, and places which need improvement, and generally, put a huge effort into the site as a whole. As Slinky can tell us, I am sure, that is a whole lot of work, how and why would someone go through that kind of hour-eating labor without making money from it? You want a great site you have to pay for great webmasters :) But people just bitched about stuff more than they helped out. I guess maybe that is human nature.
 
C

Candide

#23
#23
P.S. (as if I haven't spouted enough) :) My fav thing about Joyce is that he is the only non-Jew writer I can think of with the exception of William Styron to successfully write from a Jewish perspective...with respect and something of brotherhood...a freakin' Irishman who identified with Jews....cause the Irish creeped him out of his homeland so I guess their antisemitism was an emblem to him of all things narrow and ignorant and inbred. What a freakin' ahead-of-his time genius that poor bastard was!
 
L

littleguy

Gold
#25
#25
Problem with a mixed board is the lady's, in most case, don't want to read about what they do or don't do.

Detailed specific act type of reviews, even IF from an "experienced whoremonger" have value, IF they provide as many specific details/facts as possible.

For example, suppose a review simply says "I got a BBBJ" when what really happened was the lady went down on the guy for a little while and as soon as she sensed he was ready, slipped on a condom and completed. Well, big difference as far as I'm concerned. The *fact* that the one guy said he "go a BBBJ" is useless as far as I'm concerned.

If the "experienced whoremonger" says "the lady bent over and I fucked her ass from behind (with a condom) and all the while she was moaning. The moaning was clearly faked and the lady was bored but I was able to shoot my load in her ass anyway", well, jaded or not I at least have the facts, even if some opinion is mixed in. I know the lady does Greek and she moans. Now I may or may not want to see her if she moans. I may or may not want to see her if *I* think the reviewer is trustworthy and *I* don't want to see a lady who "isn't into it", but that becomes up to me to judge. At least I know what she will and won't do. At least I *probably* won't be SHORTED ON SERVICES, which BTW, is what *I* think provokes the MOST negative responses/reviews of all.

fishfry said "If a girl is out the door in 20 minutes some guys will report that as a good experience". True, BUT if I KNOW she's out the door in 20 minutes I KNOW I ain't seeing her, no matter how good the john say she is.

In most reviews, fact and opinion are reasonably easy to determine. That's all I want to know. Opinion, for me, only counts when I know the reviewer and I have similar tastes.

Monk says he thinks JAG has a larger preponderance of bad reviews than elsewhere. Why do you suppose that is ? Think it's because the providers are not SUPPOSED to be there ? Which percentage of bad to good reviews more accurately reflects the truth ? JAG, or somewhere like TBD ? Frankly, due in large part to JAG, I would say my personal percentages in the past 2.5 years is roughly 5% bad, 15% mediocre, 20% good and 60% fantastic. The 20% bad and mediocre generally came from trying a lady "on the blind" or from a TBD review. The remaining 80% came from JAG reviews and the occasional TBD review/post. Now that's just my personal opinion and experiences. I'm willing to bet my personal percentages are WAY better than the general population.
 
C

Candide

#26
#26
Little guy I agree with you. I think that closed, secret door sites for reviews are the best idea and I think that providers for the sake of their mental health should stay the freak away from reading them. I can't imagine anyone, not even a hard-as-nails soul-less old hooker, who could deal with reading that kind of review. Even if they are good reviews, they reveal a level of honesty, of true, visceral experience from the man's POV which women do not get to hear. I thought I knew men - but I never did till I read those reviews and I was sorry I did read them.

But the problem is more than this. It is that most webmasters see their sites as their property. They aren't going to give members the power to police the site, to send reviews back or to run the show. I'm talking about webmasters who charge admission, the members are not trusted friends, they are paying clients and their opinions seem to be rarely taken into consideration if the bottom line, i.e. money, is in question.

Also, even if you have a small amount of members, there are always going to be people in the community for whatever reason who take the reviews and the info and show it to the ladies. And I'm not talking about the guy who got drawn and quartered in JAG for giving pro's access. I'm talking about many guys who never say a word but who for whatever reason will show pro's who get a lot of comments made about them, extreme comments whether positive or negative, they will seek out that pro and show her the reviews. Maybe there is a Freudian word for that syndrome? It happens so often it seems that I'm going to call it "snitch" syndrome.

Judge Crater - Joyce is a VERY edgy kind of guy :) good choice. But I always sprinkle some standard "The New Yorker" or some mystery paperbacks or even some Mad Magazine comic books in with my extremely edgy reading. For G's sake you must be one tough nut to crack if you could hang on the edge for a year with Joyce. He would have driven me over the edge already! He makes me cry. I most recently have been sent crying by Joyce, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Graham Greene...but then again I cried over the last episode of "Six Feet Under"...to me everything has an edge :)
 
E

ew

Silver
#27
#27
Though perhaps JAG may have slipped it is still the only place where you have access to the latest without being in the "inner circles" backchanneling.

Still has a pretty high hit ratio.

On the other hand, I have seen some that were JAG staples and they weren't what I thought they would be. JAG is fairly accurate on service. I don't think they are very accurate on looks. I think that there is a bit of a generational gap somtimes between what somone considers a wet dream, beautiful, or pretty and what I think is.
 
E

ew

Silver
#28
#28
And I'd like to add that the recs on this board have been fairly consistently good even tough you have to take it on faith. And the rep of the poster.

There used to be the odd review posted here. Are they banned, not encouraged or what? Or do the guys feel a little bashful?
 
Slinky Bender

Slinky Bender

The All Powerful Moderator
#29
#29
"Are they banned, not encouraged or what? "

Not encouraged.


"Joyce read and wrote so much that he went blind"

Ironic, since his mother had constantly told him to read and write to stop him from another compulsion, which she told him would make him go blind.

I think one problem with some of the JAG reviews is that simply new guys must submit a review without the benfit of seeing abunch of reviews first and thus can not possbily know what a good reivew is before writing their first one. In addition, some of the incentive to write good reviews has been eliminated: if you pay, you don't need to write reviews, period. If you write great reviews, but don't pay, you get the same thing as if you just write garbage. People will exhibit whatever behaviour is rewarded, and if you write great rreviews but are not provided access to the message board, you get no postive feedback for your great reviews. In addition, I think the concept of allowing your "best" customers ( and probably the potential source of the best reviews ), not to post reviews, might be self defeating. There is no good answer, though, aside from having a group of guys who want to write good reviews, and it's hard to "lead" from the rear.

It's funny how guys want to show gals the reviews, and the gals want to see them. It's one of those things that doesn't do either any good, and actually can inflict some considerable harm, but people continue to do it nevertheless. I must say that if a client of mine showed me anything that I knew they had agreed to keep confidential, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them left handed.
 
M

mr. wonderful

#30
#30
Provider Reviews

When I was a regular poster on TBD, I used to write reviews of my soirees pretty frequently. In all honesty, I wrote these reviews more for me than for the girls. I like to write, and would more often than not create a scenario in which to describe the meeting as prose, and not merely a description of what took place. I wrote a review of Terri Brice from Dallas in Seussian rhyme, which I was particularly proud of. So I took this as something of an ego boost rather than reporting on a field trip.

When a rendez-vous did not live up to my expectations, I admittedly did not readily post about the person, but did make my feelings known about the experience to comrades. Like someone mentioned previously, you really don't know who you are dealing with and when armed with your personal info these people can cause great harm. I passed along some unflattering info regarding a provider to a friend, who then posted this on TBD as part of an ongoing thread. The next day, I got a call from this provider who surmised that I was the person who had passed this info along.

It is my firm belief that, in an open air situation such as this, where you don't know who is lurking out there, if you don't have anything good to say, don't say, unless it is in private.

These are my own views on the subject of reviews. I never wrote them to curry favor with providers, I wrote them for my own, and my friend's, enjoyment.
 
C

Candide

#31
#31
Slinky...your 7/17/01 10:33 p.m. post is the freakin' Dictionary Samuel Johnson Bard post of all U.G. posts! What a great post! And I actually agree with everything you said...my god that is frightening. And the irony of Joyce, his mother and The Catholic Cure for going blind - I was thinking that myself...your a laugh riot :) And I think your a good moderator too
 
H

Humble Narrator

#32
#32
I might be naive but...

...I assumed most people who posted reviews of providers were doing so out of a perceived debt to other hobbyists who had done the same previously. You know, a sort-of karmic re-supplying of the resource continuum. In this case the resource is information, good, bad or indifferent.

I have posted reviews that were unflattering, but not negative. What I mean is that I try to remain objective, especially when posting something critical. I feel that this is actually helpful to providers who read that review. Or in the case of agencies/incalls, I think it helps management to enhance their offerings by either giving constructive feedback to the lady or by finding staff more appropriate to client requests.

I think that honest, constructive, gentle feedback is probably the most helpful aid to growth that a person can receive. This is not "faux-gentility"; this is reasonable, fair behavior that can and does help others.

On the other hand scathing rebukes, inflammatory venting or vendetta-driven contrivances (all of which I think we have seen recently) are in no way helpful and serve only to alienate, divide and injure.

One of the saddest things I have witnessed on the Internet (and in popular culture in general) in the last 5 years primarily is the dramatic increase in caustic behavior for the sake of its shock value. The depersonalization that comes with perceived anonymity lets the reptile in us come out and do and say some really nasty things. It takes active resistance to these impulses to keep sane.

For Mr. Wonderful: Here is a re-writing of a post I had on TBD some time back. (Also for our amie de Voltaire who truly makes this the "best of all possible worlds")

"natalie with her long long legs looking at me smiling what is she thinking about then we get close she talking about medical school madness why doesn't she stop talking while the beast is rising her lips ah her lips with those deadpan eyes not looking not seeing but feeling her soft smooth caramel skin not touching mine while she keeps talking about husband and mother and father yes father not there and she not here and I'm almost there when she tells me her now slender body was two-hundred pounds at the moment I come to my senses I can't believe I let this happen"

The triple meter wasn't intentional.

Would this be negative? Is Joyce Carol Oates negative? Is beauty only applicable to "positive" thoughts/feelings/experiences/people?
 
C

Carl M

Hanging by a thread
#33
#33
Originally posted by Hotpuppy


BTW, Why is "lurker" the accepted term for someone that reads the threads but does not post? Ive always thought that lurker has a negative connotation, a sneak or someone lying in ambush.

[Edited by Hotpuppy on 07-17-2001 at 06:28 PM] [/B][/QUOTE

My point exactly HP which I made quite well known in my Lurker Thread several weeks ago!
Click to expand...
 
N

nypete

#35
#35
JJ would himself appreciate this thread, with its subtly intertwined discussions of 20th century literature, reviewing etiquette and genital piercing. It could be a chapter in one of his later novels: "Finnegan's BBBJ"
Perhaps we can start a UG book club. Any nominations?
 
N

nypete

#37
#37
Yes, Richard Ellman's biography confirms that JJ was a hobbiest.
You are right about De Sade. Henry Miller I always considered overrated. Never read Frank Harris. Come to think of it, I'm not sure that the literature of the hobby is as rich as one would think it would be. And it has all been from the client's point of view.
 
M

Monk

#39
#39
Perhaps we could start a review site in which each reviewer chose an author's style to emulate. JC could do his best Joycean immitation, I'll work on my Foucault, etc. Of course, the savvy amongst us would choose Miller (or, more ambitiously, Anais Nin) and keep writing in the style they've always done.

As for JAG, I still think the reviews are worthwhile. That said, their quality has definately come down several notches ever since paying members didn't have to submit reviews to continue to gain access to the site. Many of the better writers no longer post reviews. And many of the most prolific hobbyists simply post to the discussion board, which is always less satisfying reading.

TBD always seemed like the British Punter.net -- oversubscribed and full of flames -- while JAG compared to their Captain69. (I'm not sure what anyone will do with that arcane bit of info, but it's just another observation I'll throw into the mix. I'm tired of these JAG vs. TBD debates.)
 
H

Hotpuppy

Mr.Butterworth
#40
#40
Originally posted by Monk
Perhaps we could start a review site in which each reviewer chose an author's style to emulate. JC could do his best Joycean immitation, I'll work on my Foucault, etc. Of course, the savvy amongst us would choose Miller (or, more ambitiously, Anais Nin) and keep writing in the style they've always done.
Click to expand...
I will attempt Ken Kesey
hp
 
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