Snake oil??


Well, on March 8th, at the age of 64, I suffered a mild stroke. I have felt that things were returning to normal for the last few weeks. Now I’m not so sure. I just reviewed an email that came to me from Agon about a mysterious substance involving something called 3-Dimensional Enhancer, the NPS 1260. It claims to cure literally all my audio problems for the low price of $599. Is this some leftover April Fools thing or am I having some sort of stroke relapse?   I’m hoping that MC has some form to sage advice for this conundrum. 
sawdustguy
"Would it be "Snake Oil" at $5.99 a bottle?
If not, when on the price continuum between $5.99 and $599.00 does it transform into "Snake Oil"? "


It’s not primarily a price issue.

It’s a question of something purporting to do something out of the ordinary, when it clearly doesn’t.

"I just reviewed an email that came to me from Agon about a mysterious substance involving something called 3-Dimensional Enhancer, the NPS 1260. It claims to cure literally all my audio problems for the low price of $599."


Therefore it’s safe to classify it as a simple contact cleaner being sold as snake oil.

Breathtakingly expensive top of the range snake oil, but snake oil nevertheless.

If you believe in the need for contact enhancers, and many don’t, they argue that the simple breaking and making a connection every couple of months is sufficient, then the tried and trusted Caig Deoxit D5 contact enhancer might be more palatable to your pocket.

Or a careful wipe with a trusted metal cleaner or simple wipe with isopropyl alcohol instead.

As Mark Twain once wrote, ’you pays your money and you takes your choice’.
As Mark Twain said, "What gets us into trouble isn't what we don't know. It's what we know that just isn't so."

There you go. Blathering about what you 'know' that isn't so.
When you see the words ’snake oil’ on an audio forum, consider automatically changing it to read as the words ’sour grapes’.

sour grapes. COMMON. If you describe someone’s attitude as sour grapes, you mean that they are jealous of another person’s success and show this jealousy by criticizing that person. These accusations have been going on for some time now, but it is just sour grapes. The government says that Mr Fedorov’s criticisms are mere sour grapes. Note: In one of Aesop’s fables (= traditional stories, usually with a moral), a fox tries several times unsuccessfully to reach a bunch of delicious-looking grapes. In the end he gives up, telling himself that they are probably sour and inedible anyway.

If they can’t hear it and/or if they feel it is ’expensive’, then it’s "snake oil".

Oh, I mean "sour grapes".

Almost as if we need a script for the given forums that automatically blanks out the term ’snake oil’ and replaces it with ’sour grapes’, or blanks out the word pairing ’snake oil’ in the same way it blanks out attempts to swear.

One could also ask a forum owner or administration to enact this with their given ’granny checker’, so that it edits it out like attempts at swearing.

I suspect that audio forums would become quite a bit more civil post that change....

Even more fun... the granny checker that checks for swearing can be set so that the post will not happen until the word pairing ’snake oil’ is removed from the attempted post. Further yet...that the given post goes to vapor, and the posting script is reset....the poster loses the post into the interwebs ether. A far more stinging lesson. And far more forum peace. This can be enacted by most audio forums in mere seconds.