(06-04-2015 00:43 )mrmann Wrote: I think it's horrible too, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Also, how many people will actually complain, and would the police even care? I doubt it. Ofcon might, but then again, do we want to give more ammo to Ofcon?
Here's a little fable for Easter Monday...
Once upon a time, there was a babeshow channel. A lot of the girls on it were behaving badly. And not the good kind of bad
They were muting their phones, ignoring callers, and leaving them in the queue for unreasonable amounts of time. In the meantime, through the dark forest and over the hill, a thread appeared on a Forum far away. Post after post after post reported the same old problem. Like the Big Bad Wolf, the owner of the channel would sometimes appear on the forum to spout utter nonsense and drivel, which just got the members more and more irate.
One day, one of those members (not this one, I might add) suggested that we tell Ofcom about what was going on. The problem had been festering for so long that about half-a-dozen other posters agreed with him and the thread went off on a little tangent about this possibility. A revolution was a-brewing.
Within a few hours though, all of those posts were deleted. We were told that this was a red herring and that the information conveyed about Ofcom was inaccurate and misleading -- it was not Ofcom's job, after all, to monitor premium rate phone services. (For anyone who is interested, those complaints should go to Phonepayplus). Even so, one couldn't shake the suspicion that there was something else going on. That maybe some of these guys had been so ripped off and were so evidently irritated that they might actually make good on their threat to report the channel.
The underlying message was clear. The channels were having enough trouble with the Sherriff of Ofcom. They didn't need us -- the supposed fans and supporters of the channels? -- to make things worse by fanning the flames of discontent in the Kingdom. For the most part, we all got back in our box and the furore died away. But a funny thing then happened. Within a matter of days of that whole 'kerfuffle', all of the bad behavior by the channel just stopped. The girls went back to answering their phones. Everything went back to normal. (Or at least we thought it did, until a beautiful princess turned up on another channel and all of this shit started up again, but that's another story).
Was it a coincidence? Maybe. Did someone from the forum have a word in the ear of the producers?
"Guys, we contained the revolution this time, but you'd better get your act together or people really will start to lodge complaints against you." Possibly.
What is the moral of this story? I'm not sure. Maybe we are the mugs. We dedicate our time and effort to a Forum that celebrates and defends these damn shows and then -- when they take the piss and rip us off -- we restrain ourselves from complaining out of our ingrained instinct to defend them in spite of themselves and in spite of
ourselves. And it begs an existential question about this forum. Is it a 'voice' for viewers and callers or is it the first line of defense for the channels? It is one thing to defend the channels from an army of prudes that would have them shut down for fear that an errant nipple will lead to the downfall of western civilization. It is quite another thing to defend the channels from the complaints of the very callers who are, after all, keeping the f*&kers in business.
Take from that parable what you will, fellas. It was my very longwinded response to mrmann's ethical quandary about whether or not the channel should be reported.
I say: complain and let the channel be damned, mrmann.
I know I will.