So, just who is George Irvine III?????

[danvolker]

It might be "dangerous" on a boat, but I often use this methods on land because it is actually easier. I often have difficulty with straps and things getting hung up due to limited flexability in my arms. But putting it on over my head things just slide together easier.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

I just took a peek at the video to answer a PM from one SB'er.....and noticed....that just prior to George lifting the tank over his head, he makes a point to say that it is worth while to see how easy this is to get IN AND OUT OF UNDERWATER.... and then he demonstrates this "as if he was underwater"....so George was absolutely NOT suggesting that ANYONE should do this on a boat...or even on land...this was an u/w move he was showing. !!!

 

[Griffo]

I will see if George or Bill have an old DIR 1 or 2 lying around, and if so, I will make an mp4 of it I can put on my Youtube channel to go with DIR 3

DIR1 is already on Youtube, although not the best quality

DIR 1 - YouTube

It's interesting to see how things have changed.

 

[Tortuga68]

I don’t know if I am derailing the thread or getting it back on track… anyway, I agree that GI3 is no longer relevant, and I really don’t care about all the stupid stuff he posted 10 years ago – but what does get up my nose a bit is Dan’s constant revisionist attempts to excuse his boorish behaviour.

It was like watching Pro Wrestling on TV, but with actual knowledge that could be gleaned from it as well (unlike Pro Wrestling)

I agree it’s unlike pro wrestling… so why do you keep using that analogy?

George… was exactly like the Wrestler/Actor known as the "Rock" ( [FONT=&quot]Dwayne Johnson) doing his Eybrow raising Glare at another Wrestler[/FONT]

He did the WWF Wrestler persona ONLY in Cave or Tech circles…

this was one of the things George did to "generate" thousands of people following his threads... exactly the reason people watch WWF Wrestling

And today, the "History" you hear about in the last 2 decades of tech or cave diving, has been revised and reinvented by those dominant in the media

…and now it seems you’re trying to reinvent and revise George’s reputation in your self-appointed(?) role as his ‘media’ publicist

not to use the media tactics of the 90s

This was a "Media" game George was playing

it was a style he used for the media he was in

[FONT=&quot]he used this as a media tool[/FONT]

There are plenty of people who are perfectly nice in person but act like assholes on the internet. That’s no excuse. Sounds more like George was a ‘media tool’.

AFAIK Geirge hasn't repented or retracted any of the things he said, so I don't get why you feel the need to be an apologist for him

 

[danvolker]

I don’t know if I am derailing the thread or getting it back on track… anyway, I agree that GI3 is no longer relevant, and I really don’t care about all the stupid stuff he posted 10 years ago – but what does get up my nose a bit is Dan’s constant revisionist attempts to excuse his boorish behaviour.




I agree it’s unlike pro wrestling… so why do you keep using that analogy?












…and now it seems you’re trying to reinvent and revise George’s reputation in your self-appointed(?) role as his ‘media’ publicist








There are plenty of people who are perfectly nice in person but act like assholes on the internet. That’s no excuse. Sounds more like George was a ‘media tool’.

AFAIK Geirge hasn't repented or retracted any of the things he said, so I don't get why you feel the need to be an apologist for him

Because, i believe strongly, that because of the dominant advertising and media and Dive Industry dynamics of the mid to late 90's, if George had been soft spoken on the Internet, or not even on it...there would have been absolutely no DIR movement, and today there would only be about 100 or so WKPP people that would even know what DIR meant.....

The whole buoyancy and trim issue "may not" have ever come to recreational divers ( there are still many places it has not), the who bp/wing thing now becoming mainstream in recreational diving, would never have grown legs and would be looked at only as a curiosity by recreational divers....we would be in a different world. Without the techniques George used, even as obnoxious as some of them seem today, there would never have been the huge threads on rec.scuba or the Internet in general, and the main stream DEMA pack would have killed the DIR ideas dead.....they were bad for their marketing plans.

 

[Superlyte27]

I spoke with an instructor in High Springs from the DIR camp recently. The interesting thing is, even they know the damage he did. If they could create a time machine and get rid of the GI3 and the term DIR, they would. Surely you recognize that he did more harm than good.

Look, there are agencies who track market share. Do you think GUE's market share is growing or declining? I know the answer, be honest with yourself. Do you know the answer?

Now, if you answered truthfully, do you believe that GUE's market share would be doing better than it is if GI3 hadn't acted so much like a horses rear end for so long?

Just recently, a new cave diver (one of my students) walked into EE and asked for a Nitrox fill on his doubles. The staff treated him just like George would have, as a stroke. Then EE charged him $42 dollars for a Nitrox fill on a set of doubles. Bear in mind this is easily more than double, almost triple the going rate in the area. EE still treats outsiders like fools. His (GI3's) legacy still lives on. And GUE has one hell of a job trying to change that.

 

[danvolker]

I spoke with an instructor in High Springs from the DIR camp recently. The interesting thing is, even they know the damage he did. If they could create a time machine and get rid of the GI3 and the term DIR, they would. Surely you recognize that he did more harm than good.

Look, there are agencies who track market share. Do you think GUE's market share is growing or declining? I know the answer, be honest with yourself. Do you know the answer?

Now, if you answered truthfully, do you believe that GUE's market share would be doing better than it is if GI3 hadn't acted so much like a horses rear end for so long?

Just recently, a new cave diver (one of my students) walked into EE and asked for a Nitrox fill on his doubles. The staff treated him just like George would have, as a stroke. Then EE charged him $42 dollars for a Nitrox fill on a set of doubles. Bear in mind this is easily more than double, almost triple the going rate in the area. EE still treats outsiders like fools. His (GI3's) legacy still lives on. And GUE has one hell of a job trying to change that.

My point....is that there would never have been a GUE, no chance whatsoever, if not for George.....these GUE guys of today--many were not even diving in the 90's, and many or most were not plugged in to the big issues of the times back then....

I have no disagreement that if you could magically get GUE to right where they are today, and have no GIII in the history or awareness, then GUE would find the future a much more accessible marketplace.

But I will say this again...If there was no George, there would have been no divers all over the world trying to find out how to DIR dive around the year 2000, and the tiny few that heard about it, would have been mentored by joining WKPP --those that could not, would not have become DIR, and there would have been no reason for JJ to even consider creating GUE, with no one in the world aware of what it was about. JJ created GUE, because of all the huge number of requests from divers all over the world, to get instruction in DIR diving...something the WKPP was not really set up for....The WKPP used mentoring--it was a long process, one that could only move a small number of divers into exploratioon level skills, usually over many years--and you pretty much needed to live in easy driving distance, and be able to be diving in Wakalla a lot...

JJ and Casey and the others in the inner circle were very nice guys, soft spoken ( compared to George on the Tech diver or Cavers list) , and they were not heard directly from, often enough to create any kind of movement back in those days--back in the days when there really were bad problems that needed to be addressed.....

Which is another part of the equation...horrible problems existed in Dive Training and dive practices, and gear, back in the mid to late 90's....this led to a large attainable COGNITIVE DISSONANCE that George was able to exploit--in the direction of a better way..... Today...this would be a problem, because the diving world for tech and cave has gotten much more intelligent, in all the places it used to be horific. So today there would be little power for cognitive dissonance to drive anyone in the direction of GUE ( a movement that was started in the mid 90's, and got the power to start, back then....) today, it could not "start"..there would be nothing to drive it.......And that is part of the market issue GUE has today that you are speaking of....Most Everyone else gotten a lot better, the bad behaviors of the 90's don't get seen very much today, and the impetus for instruction with GUE--far more cost, lots more time, Hell Week like sleep deprivation in courses.....it is not going to appeal today, as much as it did when more divers were dying like flies due to bad training, bad ideas, and bad gear.

 

[Superlyte27]

I guess I look at it differently.

I look at a villain who needed a champion to fight. GI3 would battle Tom M. and Bill R. and anyone else he could because if it wasn't exciting people wouldn't pay attention.

Just to name a couple Tom M. was a pioneer in cave diving. Sure, it was a slow learning process but he was there the whole way, and is still here. Bill R. in my opinion was the best thing to happen to sidemount diving up to that point, and probably for some time beyond. If there was a more heated debate than from George and Bill, I never read it. George believe because Bill was sidemount and solo that the end of the world was coming. He hammered on that drum over and over again. Guess what, 20 years later, there's more sidemount and solo divers than ever. Are they making up a mass numbers of deaths?

You might be right, without his antics there might not be a DIR. I bet GUE is okay with that. Like I said, they really want that term "DIR" to fade away. But, I believe he could have gotten everything he wanted and had a greater number of followers if he hadn't been viewed as such a huge prick. You catch more flies with honey after-all. I'm pretty sure there would be masses to follow if he had tried using honey. At the very least, JJ wouldn't have to constantly do damage control for the actions of a man 20 years ago. Look at all the other agencies out there that are successful without acting like a baffoon. Go ahead, pick any 10 that have more members and illicit a fraction of disdain that GUE deals with.

Try as you might, GUE and the DIR crowd are still portraying themselves as a group of elitists jerks. Sure this might be big damage caused by a small few, but it's still happening. I know it's a concern because every single time someone from the DIR/GUE camp spends time with me, our discussion always ends up on them asking, "what can we do to stamp out that image".

It's pretty simple... Keep insulting the newer divers by treating them like fools, double charging them on fills/gear/training, acting like you're superior and don't have time to answer their newbie questions, and you'll run yourself right out of people to train.

 

[danvolker]

Try as you might, GUE and the DIR crowd are still portraying themselves as a group of elitists jerks. Sure this might be big damage caused by a small few, but it's still happening. I know it's a concern because every single time someone from the DIR/GUE camp spends time with me, our discussion always ends up on them asking, "what can we do to stamp out that image".

It's pretty simple... Keep insulting the newer divers by treating them like fools, double charging them on fills/gear/training, acting like you're superior and don't have time to answer their newbie questions, and you'll run yourself right out of people to train.

Superlyte,
Is it possible that this is a "Cave Country" phenomenon? I really don't see even a hint of it at any of the shops even slightly DIR oriented in South Florida...
The Cave world is so much more like "Frat life", where "us" and "them" are constant distinctions....I could imagine how this could magnify the issues you are discussing.

 

[PfcAJ]

"Trey hurt my feelings!!! Wah!!!"

 

[gitterdun]

try as you might, gue and the dir crowd are still portraying themselves as a group of elitists jerks...

bullsh*t