Bonsai Auction/99 Cent Bonsai Shadiness - and a better alternative!

Colorado

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Hey ! Sorry but with no friends and a brand new profile your request was rejected. Request again and I’ll approve. Sorry about that, trying to keep spammers to a minimum. Thanks!

Thanks so much! I requested again.

I am also proud to report that I now have one Facebook Friend :)
 

amcoffeegirl

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Thanks so much! I requested again.

I am also proud to report that I now have one Facebook Friend :)
There are some good groups over there and a lot of good Bonsai people.
You can friend all the Bonsai people if they start talking politics or stuff you don’t wanna see just snooze their profile for 30 days.
Or unfollow them- if you do this then you won’t see their posts but you can still be their friend. Lol
Just friend all of Roy’s friends then you’ll know everyone. 😃
 

Colorado

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There are some good groups over there and a lot of good Bonsai people.
You can friend all the Bonsai people if they start talking politics or stuff you don’t wanna see just snooze their profile for 30 days.
Or unfollow them- if you do this then you won’t see their posts but you can still be their friend. Lol
Just friend all of Roy’s friends then you’ll know everyone. 😃

Appreciate the feedback!
 

small trees

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5 pages of arguing about Facebook, wow.

I thought, "someone should open another page and not charge" when I saw that pinned post. If I want to pay fees I will go to eBay or somewhere like that. Charging me a fee to use a Facebook page sounds like a shakedown. The bonsai community is small enough that building a page like the one in question is not as big of an undertaking as you would think. And to have the other page that is already established, this is a great thing. Great people being admins, I will be putting my support behind them.
 
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I love how half of the posts were Crotchety McCrotchersons shaking their cane at FB. Feel free to focus your apocalyptic FB opinions to something more appropriate then an announcement about a Bonsai Auction community that has 10k members... It's your choice how to use the platform, not the other way around. Sorry you live in the future. I quite enjoy it. I wouldn't know half of what I do if it wasn't for the internet. Don't like Politics? Neither do I. Does that stop me from checking in on Bonsai Auctions? Hell-to-the-no. How many Bonsai enthusiasts have I met walking around my local nursery.... Umm.... Zero. How many have I made personal connections with on FB? Dozens... Maybe close to a hundred?

Visiting Japan to see the nurseries in Omiya? Feel free to consult your local nursery on that. I'm sure they'll stear you in the right direction... Or, you could check out all of the obsai professionals pages or the famous nursery pages...

Either way, put the canes away. We're talking about Bonsai not culture.
 

Orion_metalhead

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all of them? or just a percentage of them? and how would that percentage compare to 30 years ago?

you have never met an "adult" who was "totally vacuous"? I think the sighting is just as common

@Palltergeist, do you have any trees to display or just your inability to be pleasant? I havent seen a single post from you so far which hasnt included being a pompous self-fellating ass to long standing members. It seems like within the span of 8 posts you've provided 95% ad hominen attacks on people and 4% attacks on their trees and 1% necessary conjunctions to connect your well-worded dickery.

I'm 32... the generation which is coming up behind me is tattoed with the indelible ink of consumerism, technological numbness, and social paranoia which previously did not exist on the scale we are seeing now. Anyone who doesn't see a correlation between the rise in mental illness, depression, suicide, and anxiety with the inundation of social media, instant gratification, and the commercialization of idiocy and vapidity proves themselves to be ignorant or blind to their own bias. Why is it unacceptable to point out we have a problem? Isnt this the first step to discover a solution?

I quit FB 2 yrs ago because I realized that my mild mannered approach to argument and attempt to inject reason where there was none did nothing but further press people to defend their positions with lies, rudeness, and offensive comments. I didnt need that in my life so I told everyone where they could find me if they cared. It seems like you were exactly the type of person I was running from when I left, based on your current attitude as displayed over the few interactions youve presented here.
 

bonsaichile

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Seriously, stop bitching at me about what YOU won't do. YOU CAN'T really participate in FB auction, UNLESS YOU'RE A MEMBER OF FACEBOOK. Calling people names because YOU have opted NOT to join is pretty silly. Obviously, FB is NOT what you stereotype it as. Maybe time to reconsider the decision not to join...
Is your last name Zuckerberg or something? Facebook has been pretty deleterious to this country, and I cannot find a single good reason why I should help Zuckerberg become even richer. No reason to reconsider joinkmg a service I never needed in the first place
 

Cable

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I am also proud to report that I now have one Facebook Friend :)

Will you be my friend? Lol

Back on topic. I’ve sold a half dozen or so trees on the .99 site and bought a few non-trees as well. I joined the “new” site yesterday. I’ll probably try pitting then against each other and stick with the one that gets me the most sales.
 

canoeguide

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I don't have a dog in this fight either way, but I think it's not unreasonable for the people spending time running and moderating the auctions to need to add some sort of structure where they get a little compensation for their time. This isn't some kind of "fleece the community" cash grab on their part, but that seems to be how the "other" side is portraying it. My take is that there is a core group of sellers, who sell the max number of items every week, that the "fees" would most impact. It's not surprising that some of those people are the same ones moderating and pushing the new groups. I don't love the way the admins of 99 cent etc. phrased their post about this, but I get that they are trying to walk a line between heavily enforced fees, and a sort of honor system that sees the most active sellers supporting the administration of the group. I don't see any negative intentions there.

Anyone is free to create whatever groups they want obviously, but fragmenting the auction community into multiple groups with the same name and the same purpose seems like a loss for everyone. Confusion. Less eyes in one place. I already am not sure what group an item is posted in when it comes across my feed. Which "Bonsai Auctions" is it? Can I bid in the last minute and the order of bids matters? Oh no wait that is the other group that actually has different rules... What a mess. People *will* mess this up.

Frankly, the rules for the new groups seem much more complex and harder to administer, and as a frequent bidder, harder to understand. They need to be clear and concise, and they are not.

My 2 cents. I say all that having bought multiple items from several of the people forming these new groups.

Does anyone else feel that it's odd and spammy that several of the people in this thread pushing the new groups have been members on bnut for literally a few days? That alone leaves a bad taste in my mouth - to show up here with an agenda to push and make no attempt to actually be a part of this community first. Barf.
 
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jcrossett

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I don't have a dog in this fight either way, but I think it's not unreasonable for the people spending time running and moderating the auctions to need to add some sort of structure where they get a little compensation for their time. This isn't some kind of "fleece the community" cash grab on their part, but that seems to be how the "other" side is portraying it. My take is that there is a core group of sellers, who sell the max number of items every week, that the "fees" would most impact. It's not surprising that some of those people are the same ones moderating and pushing the new groups. I don't love the way the admins of 99 cent etc. phrased their post about this, but I get that they are trying to walk a line between heavily enforced fees, and a sort of honor system that sees the most active sellers supporting the administration of the group. I don't see any negative intentions there.

Anyone is free to create whatever groups they want obviously, but fragmenting the auction community into multiple groups with the same name and the same purpose seems like a loss for everyone. Confusion. Less eyes in one place. I already am not sure what group an item is posted in when it comes across my feed. Which "Bonsai Auctions" is it? Can I bid in the last minute and the order of bids matters? Oh no wait that is the other group that actually has different rules... What a mess. People *will* mess this up.

Frankly, the rules for the new groups seem much more complex and harder to administer, and as a frequent bidder, harder to understand. They need to be clear and concise, and they are not.

My 2 cents. I say all that having bought multiple items from several of the people forming these new groups.

Does anyone else feel that it's odd and spammy that several of the people in this thread pushing the new groups have been members on bnut for literally a few days? That alone leaves a bad taste in my mouth - to show up here with an agenda to push and make no attempt to actually be a part of this community first. Barf.
What you fail to remember is that Ben Griffin founded BA. A few years ago there was a middle of the night overthrow (this can be proven easily and is widely known) where the other admins ousted Ben from the site he created. He then started ‘Bonsai Auctions’ for the second time. At that point the original which he was booted from, was extremely popular and his site never took off in the same way. Ben’s stance was never to monetize off of this group he started, while it was the other admins which did. Hence a reason they staged a coup d'état on Ben.
It’s amazing to me how something offered for free can still bring a negative reaction.
The admins from the original group aren’t being depicted as anything but what they are.
But yet, we digress. So before you spout off inaccurate Intentions, get some facts straight.
 

JudyB

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Or just sell it privately after the auction ends... ;)
I do a lot of my selling privately...

And you can send PP friends and family on auctions, you are just not allowed to request it. But if I'm purchasing from a known seller, I always F+F it.
 

rockm

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Is your last name Zuckerberg or something? Facebook has been pretty deleterious to this country, and I cannot find a single good reason why I should help Zuckerberg become even richer. No reason to reconsider joinkmg a service I never needed in the first place

Good Lord. No, I just am not delusional about stuff that isn't going away, and has a useful side (which you apparently know nothing about, but are pretty spooked by anyway--which is kind of silly). Facebook, like most technology is neither bad nor good. The people on it and those that run it, can be both too. If you understand what's going on with FB, you can blunt the bad stuff.

I have never had an issue on FB in the ten years I've been on it. I have never had anyone question my family lineage, been insulted or called names as I have here over the years--repeatedly and sometimes alarmingly. I have a wide-ranging group of longtime friends on FB from both sides of the political spectrum, as well as bonsai community friends. It has connected me to long time friends I had thought I'd never hear from again, as well as new ones in the bonsai community that have deeply enriched the experience for me. The bonsai pot forum alone is a never-ending source of interest, let alone the Kennet Collection, the Omiya Bonsai Museum, countless posts from Japanese and Western bonsai artists, new sources of stock. the list goes on. You never know what is useless if you don't see it.

You rely on second, third or fourth hand "evidence" of FB malevolence, but yet, have no apparent problem using the Internet and forums like this one. You think data isn't being gathered here? If you do, just take a look at the ads you're seeing...
 

sorce

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do, just take a look at the ads you're seeing.

Google is watching us and placing the ads here.
No information is being collected here.

Every App that allows access to camera, OfferUp, FB, name it....is watching with eyes, in our houses.

It's disturbing.

Sorce
 

rockm

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Google is watching us and placing the ads here.
No information is being collected here.

Every App that allows access to camera, OfferUp, FB, name it....is watching with eyes, in our houses.

It's disturbing.

Sorce
"Google is watching us and placing the ads here.
No information is being collected here."

Um, this is a matter of degrees. Google watches us coming here, so yeah, data is being collected about what you're doing. You really think FB is malevolently watching every move THREE BILLION individuals make? It's not unconcerning, but I'm not getting the raving heebie jeebies and damning electronic services. It's not going to go away. Only have to look at the "digital native" generation coming up. They're unafraid of dealing with this kind of thing and, yeah, they DO understand what's going on. They're using it to their advantage.

Sticking your head in the sand about all this is silly, counterproductive and willfully blind. You can stand their with your head in the sand as the tide comes up over you on the beach, still won't stop the water from rising...also, next time you complain about not having a decent bonsai pot for that choice tree, you have no one to blame but yourself. There are literally hundreds of awesome containers changing hands that you have eliminated out of your fear of the unknown.
 

sorce

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You really think FB is malevolently watching every move THREE BILLION individuals make?

Is deciding where your money will go for you malevolent?

Your facial expressions are read through the camera, fed to a computer to read and customize your content.

I'm broke and smart so it doesn't work on me. Reckon you're smart.

The easiest way to tell if you're subject to the ads is of you have a monthly subscription for anything but a magazine.

This is why there are ads for that thing from the bank that tells you, hey asshole, you got 400 subscriptions you never use but pay for.

Turkey subscriptions, knife subscriptions, buttwipe subscriptions....fuck me!

What's further, is this customizing of content is so perfect, it's euphoric enough to have folks walking into the street without looking.

That's backdoor malevolent.

Makes it that much worse.

Head down driving too.

Sorce
 

coh

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Sorce does have a facebook account, so...
 

sorce

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Sorce does have a facebook account, so...

After selling them last bunch of pots here, I realized I never should have went there in the first place!

I never find myself here like, "what the fuck are you doing, this is a waste of time", as I did there.

Anything I think I need there, I've been able to find in books. Thanks @Anthony.

Sorce
 

Bonsai Nut

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Potentially, but even a vacuous adult has more life experience and relative wisdom.

Just to stir the pot a little, one thing I recommend to ALL people - starting with my own children - is to get out a little and see the world. And if you can do it without using the crutch of current technology, so much the better! I was just talking with my wife about this the other day. When I was in the military in my early 20's I lived in Europe for two years. No Internet. No email. No Skype calls. No Google translate. It felt like a two year episode of "the Amazing Race" where I had to constantly figure everything out - how to speak a foreign language, how to navigate country roads with crappy paper maps, how to order food that I wasn't familiar with, what to do when my car broke down in a rural town at 2AM. And I figured it out.

When I got back to the U.S., not only did I have a better appreciation for our country, even with its warts and foibles, but everything was so EASY. I now understand the meaning of the term "worldly".

I see it first hand now with my own children - who don't know how to take a bus anywhere because they always had a parent to drive them to school. If it isn't on the Internet - it isn't "real". And since much of what is on the Internet is a shadow of the truth, or at least someone else's perception of it, my kids often go through life living in a strange alternate reality.

Facebook is one symptom of a greater problem. There have been tons of papers written about how the "reality" that people post on social media is not the "reality" of their lives. People participating in this farce often find themselves in an arms race to "out-socialize" their peers - with cute photos, or videos of themselves doing progressively interesting/crazy things, etc. I have often wondered how many people social media has killed in the last decade - people behaving badly because they want to publicize how amazingly cool they are - and dying in the process. Just look at the fact that distracted driving kills more people every year now than drunk driving - and many times the distracted drivers are doing nothing more than responding to vacuous text messages... or updating their Facebook status to let everyone know they are going Christmas tree shopping :(
 
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PABonsai

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I love how half of the posts were Crotchety McCrotchersons shaking their cane at FB. Feel free to focus your apocalyptic FB opinions to something more appropriate then an announcement about a Bonsai Auction community that has 10k members... It's your choice how to use the platform, not the other way around. Sorry you live in the future. I quite enjoy it. I wouldn't know half of what I do if it wasn't for the internet. How many Bonsai enthusiasts have I met walking around my local nursery.... Umm.... Zero. How many have I made personal connections with on FB? Dozens... Maybe close to a hundred?
Lol, that's hilarious. I was on Facebook the year it came online. I'm guessing it's safe to say you were too young at the time. I was the initial "target audience". You have no clue what Facebook is. It's not about "the platform" it's about the code and the company that runs it, which you're clearly too naive to understand. It's funny that your justification for giving Facebook all of your personal data and history is that you have the apparent inability to meet people in person. Have you ever heard of a bonsai club?

Do you "know what you do" because of the internet or do you "think you know" things from the internet? You're a shining example of why our generation gets such a bad rep. You are the stereotype "millennial". The problem is when you bemoan the "Crotchety McCrotchersons" you have no idea who you actually are denigrating.


And @rockm why is it "not going away"? Look at where Myspace is today. That was all the rage too. Facebook will fade, give it time.
 
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