The "S" Word

[MikeFerrara]

Little scenario here.

We are sitting around watching the football game. We have a few beers and run out. I suggest a quick beer run and you agree. We hop into my car, and I jam down to the store, cut off 3 cars, almost hit a pedestrian and sidescrape a van in the parking lot. You are polite so you don't say anything.

Next weekend same scenario, but I ask another buddy to go with me. What do you say?

Mark

Good question. I'd say that if I say anything I'm setting myself up to be called a "driving elitist" though. LOL

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I never considered myself "DIR" and I never cared for the term stroke but lately out of total frustration I find myself having a strong urge to use the word.

An example...recently, in response to a question about finning techniques other than a flutter kick (which is often the only kick taught in entry level courses and the only one required by training standfards), I discusses some other kicks, their uses and some situations where a flutter isn't the best. I also tied that in with trim because no finning technique works well with the head up (or head down) trim we so often see. One poster responded, more or less, accusing me of "scuba ilitism" (preaching only one right way). I thought that funny since it isn't me teaching only one kick and leaving students knowing nothing about trim to go about head up, fins in the silt and negatively buoyant to avoid pushing themselves to the surface if when they kick (because of the head up trim).

gosh, I'm sorry but when you give useful information that ADDS to the divers choices and hand them options that can only improve their diving, increase their understanding and hence their enjoyment of diving and help them solve problems that so many divers strugle needlessly with from day one...and then some one calls you an "elitist", I get MONSTER urge to use the term stroke. Face it, divers wouldn't be asking such questions on a forum if they were really given any choices by the "non-ilitists" who trained them. Who is it pushing only one right way? Oh, they say "do as you like, it's all good" but they only teach one way and they teach that in such an incomplete fashion as to give the diver only one incomplete choice and a lame one at that. If that's not, to use a GI phrase, "abject strokery" (both the diving they push and the accusations they throw around) than nothing is and we need a new definition for "stroke" or a new word to describe it. This term "scuba elitist" is every bit the sharp put down as the term "stroke" is yet the folks who whine about one term toss around the other like their using it to save the world or something. Now, I suppose that being called a name like "scuba elitist" or having honest information refered to as "scuba elitism" by folks who don't have a technical arguement (other than they don't understand the arguement in the first place) doesn't justify responding to such idiotic name calling (that's what it is) with more name calling. My mother always said that if you don't have anything nice to say that you shouldn't say anything and two wrongs don't make a right. So...lets be polite and not call strokes, strokes. I'll try it my mothers way and just ignore them in the hopes that their mothers some day teach them the same lesson.

End of rant.

Reminds me of a situation I encountered recently with someone I've been diving with ... her scuba instructor apparently had told her that the "correct" way to make a free ascent was to make yourself negative, kick yourself to 15 feet, and hold your safety stop by continuing to kick.

No notion of neutral buoyancy was ever introduced into the process ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Hooked-Again]

I think I would tell her my experience with his driving and let her decide what she should do. I could relay that information without labeling him or calling him some name.

 

[headhunter]

Little scenario here.

We are sitting around watching the football game. We have a few beers and run out. I suggest a quick beer run and you agree. We hop into my car, and I jam down to the store, cut off 3 cars, almost hit a pedestrian and sidescrape a van in the parking lot. You are polite so you don't say anything.

Next weekend same scenario, but I ask another buddy to go with me. What do you say?

Mark

In our neck of the woods, we'd label you a "BMW Owner".

Now, all you BMW owners out there with your fingers poised over the "flame key" calm down and note the smilie.

Christian

 

[HBDiveGirl]

<snip>A lot of demeaning talk goes on on-line. I've never seen it in person.

If I just based my decisions on what I read on-line, I wouldn't be taking the F class. But, darn it, when I dive with the suckers, they have some skills I don't, and you can't get 'em from the local Spokane PADI shop.

So, if, after the class next month, I start to give off an attitude of exclusivity, superiority, condescension, narrow-mindedness, snobbery and anti-strokishness, please remind me of this post.

Hear, Hear!! It's the skills, you beautiful people!
And I've given the same request to my nearest and dearest dive buddy's, as I approach the fundies-gate and prepare for transport... "If I come back from this, spouting nonsense and acting the arrogant b*****d, Somebody THWACK me upside the head, please."

I'm laughing big at TSandM's idea about post-Fundies quarantine:
"After 30 days, if the subject is not foaming at the mouth and using the S word, it may be released back into the pool with the rest of the guppies without fear of cross-contamination or slaughter."

And lastly, am I the only diver who's also a working dog in the healthcare world, and thought that "Stroke" had something to do with the idea of an unsafe diver's potential to freeze, or "stroke out", as the fecal material started to get slung 'round by the fan blades???? That's honestly the image I got every time someone used the word.

Like, "Watch out, he'll stroke on ya' when things get hairy..."

Guess I must have been having my own personal TIA .

I'm lovin' those "Suckers" with Skills,
Claudette

 

[xiSkiGuy]

In our neck of the woods, we'd label you a "BMW Owner".

I resemble that remark. . .

 

[The Chairman]

Mike,

as the "stroke" who made the "etlitist" comment I would like to refresh our collective memory as to what I actually posted:

I hope that this isn't a call to Scuba elitism: where "real" divers use only a frog kick and maintain a horizontal attitude during the entire dive.

I don't believe that I called you elitist, in fact I don't think I even came close. I don't believe that you indicated that you taught any other kick but the frog, whereas I clearly stated that I taught both in my OW classes. But it's easy to assume martyrdom and CLAIM that I called you an elitist. Sometimes the shoe actually DOES fit.

From my perspective, every time I have been referred to as a stroke, it has been because I have actively disagreed with a DIR diver about something that is NOT safety related. There was a while where I was happy to describe myself as a stroke, simply to irk those who were more than willing to ascribe that term to me either to my face or behind my back. Uncle Pug politely asked me to stop, and so I did.

So now, there are a butt load of divers who are willing to go on the offensive with DIR. They are not willing to sit back and allow those vocal few to label them. Instead, they have taken the label and have redefined it as a mark of rebellion against abuse. Notice, I didn't say against DIR, though that often follows.

Does this upset you? It should! Uncle Pug has done a WONDERFUL job of debunking the DIR sterotype, only to have his work destroyed again and again by the vocal few. There are others as well who work hard to stop the abuse by the few so that the movement can grow. But, and again from an outsider's perspective, in order to GET respect, you have to GIVE it. When you use words such as "stroke", or ascribe terms like "The Bungeed Wings of Death", and even like "Spare Death", you end up polarizing our sport and alienating a host of divers.

DIR has a distinctly negative reputation when it comes to abuse. Is this fair? Surely not! However, you have the founder of the movement and a host of GI3 wannabes to thank. Just don't blame the non-DIR folk. They have no way of telling who the vocal few are. They just assume that ALL DIR divers are abusive.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

DIR has a distinctly negative reputation when it comes to abuse. Is this fair? Surely not! However, you have the founder of the movement and a host of GI3 wannabes to thank. Just don't blame the non-DIR folk. They have no way of telling who the vocal few are. They just assume that ALL DIR divers are abusive.

Sadly, I have to agree with that assessment ... having stood on both sides of the fence.

A lot of the terminology serves no purpose BUT to be offensive. And typically the few who are most eager to apply demeaning labels to others are, themselves, moderately experienced and modestly skilled divers who have recently completed a Fundamentals class and feel the need to proselytize.

Fortunately, most of them seem to grow out of it eventually ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[SDAnderson]

If you knowingly insult someone, what motive can you cite but malice? What result can you expect but hate?

"There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult."​

As true today as when Lord Chesterfield Stanhope first said it, nearly 300 years ago.

 

[headhunter]

And I've given the same request to my nearest and dearest dive buddy's, as I approach the fundies-gate and prepare for transport... "If I come back from this, spouting nonsense and acting the arrogant b*****d, Somebody THWACK me upside the head, please."

I'm laughing big at TSandM's idea about post-Fundies quarantine:
"After 30 days, if the subject is not foaming at the mouth and using the S word, it may be released back into the pool with the rest of the guppies without fear of cross-contamination or slaughter."

So Claudette,

If after we come out of our DIR-F class with MHK in December, we start running up to other divers on the beach with flyers in our hands looking like this, you think it might be time for a good THWACK?

Christian