Poison Idea was right, record collectors are pretentious assholes. I should know because I am one of them to a certain extent but to a lesser degree than some. So I have learned.
I don't have many highly sought after or rare records. All of my Misfits singles are bootleg represses and I'm okay with that. I have a decent amount of newer test pressings and a few early Dischord releases. A good chunk of my record collection was obtained the hard way by going to shows and picking them up at the merch table or at Brave New World back before there was a “resurgence” of vinyl and the term “audiophile” became a thing.
These days, I try to avoid getting into dogfights on eBay and keep my Discogs want list to a few local releases that will probably never pop up for sale. There's also a lot of mail order going on for the limited fancy colored vinyl that comes directly from labels or artists. Mostly, my record collection is for listening and not hoarding on Smaug like levels.
Every now and then I'll venture onto the Discogs to create listings for the few records that I have that are not in their database. It is a time consuming process that I really don't have the patience for but I'll go through the motions so I know what's on my shelves and not have to remember each of the three thousand records that I have.
Last Summer, I came into possession of a handful of test pressings and hard to come by color variants from the band Snapcase. None of the records had listings so I took pictures of all of them and put the information into the website. All in all it was a few hours of work because Discogs is not the most user friendly website.
The following day I received an email saying that a listing I created was changed. Another user had gone in and changed it to the way he thought it should be. Which was less than accurate so I went back in and corrected it.
Apparently, that pissed this guy off to no end. And I say “guy” because really who else would be going back and forth over the inane details of a thirty year old plastic disc that is seven inches in diameter other than grown ass little boys? And, again, I say this as a grown ass little boy.
After I changed the listing back, I immediately received an email from this troll that said I was classifying the test pressing for Snapcase's Comatose EP incorrectly. He then went through the other 20 or so listings I had created over the years and nitpicked through the details and complained about each them. Now all of a sudden my inbox was flooded with messages from this guy complaining about the “integrity” of the information I was adding to the database.
Let me get this straight, he went in and fucked up a listing so I changed it back since I'm the one with the record on my shelf and then he throws a fit that I corrected him. That was seemingly the gist of it. I made the mistake of responding to this sweaty palmed record nerd and explained that I had the test pressing, the documentation from the label and the envelope that Victory Records used to send the record to the band for their approval so maybe I was better suited to know what the deal was with this record than he was. This stuff had personal addresses and phone numbers on it so I did not want to post pictures of these papers on the internet. He said I should have included that long story in the posting as if it was anyone's business. It was at this point that my middle fingers started twitching.
Was he upset that I was in possession of a record that he didn't have and that I had no intentions of parting ways with? More than likely but I didn't bother to stick around to find out. I came to the sudden realization that I had better things to do so I got on with my life and the middle finger twitch subsided.
It's moments like this that make me keep my fandom and collector nerd tendencies to myself. And it's also one of the many reasons why I don't frequent record conventions and similar events. I am completely unable to deal with people that might get a little too wrapped up in whatever it is they choose to nerd out about. I'm glad they have a hobby that makes them less miserable but I need to have an arms length policy from other collector nerds.
I use music as a medication and sometimes when other people get too close to it they will more than likely fuck up the dosage. That's why I usually go to the record store by myself and prefer to go to shows alone. The chemicals in my brain need the music not the human interaction.
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