R.I.P. VMP Forum

ByersVinyl said:
I ventured onto Reddit last night - more out of curiosity wondering how VMP are integrating into it. Eurghhh it is not user friendly at all! I couldn’t even get the comments in date order FFS - what is all that about. Doesn’t appear to be gaining much traction or interest either.
If they were hoping to get same out of Reddit then I think they are in for a tough slog of apathy.
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I couldn’t get over the overwhelming negativity. Everyone shouting at everyone else! How dare you like/dislike/blah blah blah said thing. Thinking any opinion is a shit opinion and everyone is a wanker seems to be the base mentality of a lot of the posters on there...
 
Joe Mac said:
I’m kinda glad I didn’t see the phase of the staff wanting to be friends. I joined during their exodus in 2018 which made me realise from the start that they weren’t necessary for the community and gave me a healthy scepticism towards the lot of them...
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Having been on for a few months while they were still around, and then seeing them go, and some come back again later, I much preferred the staff-free forum.
 
BjorgenFjorgen said:
Having been on for a few months while they were still around, and then seeing them go, and some come back again later, I much preferred the staff-free forum.
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Me too! I was always slightly perplexed with the complaints about them being gone when I’d look at how great the community was and think they weren’t needed...

I think the best proof of that is in how amazing this place is in comparison.
 
Joe Mac said:
I’m kinda glad I didn’t see the phase of the staff wanting to be friends. I joined during their exodus in 2018 which made me realise from the start that they weren’t necessary for the community and gave me a healthy scepticism towards the lot of them...
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Fair point
Clay Condor was a diff situation - A case of a forum member getting a job at VMP.
 
Melancholy_Melody said:
I’ve still got another month of Classics before my sub expires and I cancel. I was wondering why the selection wasn’t showing up on my Orders page, so I went to My Account. My payment info has been mysteriously deleted. I put it in again and this is the email I received today. Please note that I have been a member for almost 2 years.


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I’m quoting myself, as I wasn’t sure where to post this. Basically my payment info was mysteriously deleted, so I had to add it again. I received this email welcoming me to the club I’ve already been a part of for almost 2 years. :rolleyes:
 
Bohnjaggs said:
Also, considering the fact that he designed the Pride merch AND the Anorak, I'm not sure he's actually that good at his job.
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I have not seen the Anorak, but it's not very difficult to put a gradient over letters in Photoshop
 
helllord said:
also like. they can totally choose not to do anything. that's fine. a business is a business. whatever. i personally would rather them do nothing (or something like "hey this is important, so this month we're donating $1 from every record bought in the store") instead of turning it into a branding thing. you're not historically good allies of women, poc, or queer artists (or forum members, if that counts for anything), so having items that show your brand in telling rainbow long past june feels like unfair exposure.

but also i get the argument that any dollar to the trevor project is helpful to those that need it. it's fine. i'm just angry at everything all the time and want more. the community deserves more. it deserves genuine.
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I agree that donating a % of your normal profits is a better move than creating a branded merchandise product with a rainbow design. I think other good moves are to make a separate donation to the charity as a company (on top of whatever contributions you generate from sales) and to push people to make direct donations on top of their purchase from you.

I've been thinking a lot about this stuff recently; mainly, how I can be more mindful of what platforms I have available to me, no matter how small, and how I can use them to raise money for social issues, no matter how small the amount. It was pretty intuitive for me to spot the potential risks of mixing a commercial endeavor with fundraising and I sort of settled into the template above. I made a few personal contributions to the National Network of Abortion Funds on my own, I set up a weekend promotion where I donated $4 from every pin sold in my pin shop to the NNAF and then I made links to donate directly to the NNAF readily available. I was not tempted to co-opt the reproductive rights issue by creating a new sticker/product with a pro-choice catch phrase or some equivalent of pasting a rainbow pattern behind my logo on a side merchandise product. It made sense to me that the goal was to give directly to the organization and the secondary goal was to raise extra contributions from people buying pins they were already interested in and probably going to buy anyway. I didn't want to feel like I was taking someone's $11 contribution, pocketing $7 of it, and giving $4 to the organization. I wanted it to be $11 that was entirely separate from one's giving and for those $4 to be re-routed to a good place.

IMO, if I'm not living the cause and/or a member of the group affected, it feels really really inappropriate for me to turn the cause and people's real and often difficult life experiences into a product. Often, especially in the pin world, people will make cute products that have catch phrases and sayings associated with mental health issues, gay rights issues, and other social issues and they aren't always members of that community and there isn't always a charity component. The fact that they often sell better adds a complicated, potentially gross element to it. I think it's good for products that reflect a diverse range of identities and interests to exist but I don't feel comfortable being the one to monetize them. I'm even wary of 'productifiying' mental and physical health issues that I've had and social issues that directly affect me.
 
Dead C said:
It doesn't look like it's actually on their lap, but maybe I'm seeing the wrong thing.

In this shot, and some others (more clearly), it's actually resting on one of those tree stumps we all have in our bedrooms

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Anyone else remember the Kevin Morby video where he discussed in voiceover how much he liked vinyl while he took his record out of the sleeve and carefully placed it onto a turntable that was clearly not plugged into anything at all?
 
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