• @hydrospanner
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    110 months ago

    Exactly! Very well said!

    Don’t make a new interest a “don’t do what interests you, do what interests me” thing.

    I’m big into fishing and while people are generally pretty good to newbies, people can get ridiculously preachy over catch and release vs keeping fish, as well as safe and ethical fish handling practices.

    I’m all about educating, but A) you need to do it with positivity and not guilt, B) a lot of times people get super, super anal about it…like… we’re all jamming a hook in a fish’s mouth and dragging it out of the water…in that context, laying it on some wet grass to quickly unhook it and get a picture is not the worst part of its day, and C) just because their fish handling may not be perfect doesn’t mean it’s cruel either…newbies gotta learn, and they’re going to learn better from gentle suggestion and explanation than coming at them telling them how wrong they are.