Don’t bite the hand that feeds
There was an article in the diving press the other day basically having a go at internet forums for divers. Now this forum has a go at the diving press fairly often, but then in this respect it is pretty much a free press. You can rant as much as you like abotu how much a magazine is a waste of paper and ink and it will appear for all to see. Write the same to the magazine in question and it will be filed in the “nutter” pile more quickly than Cat Deeley is losing weight. So, getting a slagging in the internet fora is possibly more something to take notice of, rather than to make fun of. The general point was that someone very inexperienced could get all sorts of advice and ideas from the internet. Well good for them, if they are stupid enough to take advice from a forum on the net and then use it, they diserve all that comes their way. What is different than taking the advice from a diving magazine? The main one is we have a right to reply which is more or less uncensored by the people making the point. Andy and Jay post very little, more the pity.
What the journo misses in his article is that many of the “YD Mafia” actually know each other, we are *real* people. We dive together, shock horror, in the sea, with real wrecks, currents, boats and everything. So i know when Garf posts something on Ratio Deco it is more than likely correct as he sees it, because Garf is a real person, i feel i know him - we have met a few times, chatted a lot - i know the training he has done and *know* that because he has passed he is of that standard, not simply bought a qualification in the Red Sea because i also know the people who did his training. Small world really.
Sigh. Shut up and dive. 
