Hard to Please?

When I first joined, I was really flummoxed when I received a cheap folded note card from a member and then saw her profile where she had many thousands of cards sent and wrote “do not send folded cards- they aren’t postcards”. She obviously knows what she is sending doesn’t follow the rules and doesn’t care.

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People tend to be less than economical with the truth on personality quizzes. :wink:

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Hmm, she could have been having a bad day? Or in a hurry? Or had run out of proper postcards? Or something else?

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I am currently on break as I dont have a performant address right now but will re join once I get my housing situation sorted out [No I am not homeless, just housing insecure, but I am doing good] and in my profile I am just like, “well my general interests are xxxxxx” because several people have mentioned to me on the postcards that I have received that they would like something to go off of when selecting a card to send out [which is fair] but do i expect to be sent stuff from there? Of course not. The job of postcrossing is to send a postcard. Any postcard.

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I didn’t want to say anything about the sender in order to identify them, but the person had over ten thousand cards sent and received. I doubt they were having a bad day or didn’t have postcards. It looks like they were simply churning out as many items as possible to receive as much as possible. They also had a massively long wishlist with dos/don’t comments. Also, if a person flat out says, “don’t send me folded cards, those aren’t postcards”, that’s not really an excuse, is it? If you ran out of postcards, don’t request a ton of addresses. Wait until you can buy some. Let’s be honest- some people are only interested in what they receive and don’t care what they send. Not a big deal if they are following the rules. It was also a free note card sent to her by a charity looking for donations, of super thin paper and she wrote next to nothing in it, so it was cheap and impersonal on top of it. :joy_cat::joy_cat: There was nothing about it which was about making a connection. It was the bare minimum, sent with the intention of another notch in the post. I like that you wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but in that particular case, it doesn’t fit.

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After reading that passionate explanation, I agree with everything you say. I’ve run into this type of person too, and had the same feelings/suspicions … " It looks like they were simply churning out as many items as possible to receive as much as possible" as you. I may have commented on this somewhere.

But since you’ve sent over 2,700 you’ll already know that the best route to take is just to shrug it off :man_shrugging: while maybe thinking something else (insert choice of expletives?)

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I dislike people who do not regard their own standards!

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Isn’t that hilarious?! I am always so sad when someone makes alot of restricted requests, because it dampens the mood, unfortunately for them I send a very generic card. The beauty of postcrossing is seeing what people send, some of my favorites have been homemade, and ad cards. The point is connecting with other people.
Good luck, I hope I don’t pull their name!

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All due respect to people having a bad day or very busy, but if I am having a bad day or am in a rush, I just do not send cards… It is not fun to force myself to write a card if I am having a bad day or I am tired (many, many evenings were spent browsing the forum aimlessly wishing I had the energy for cards). If I am in a rush I don’t even think about it… Maybe I draw an address then get a phone call and have to rush somewhere… I’d just do the card another day, we know it’s nice to send out quickly but waiting a couple of days is also not a sin :slight_smile:

(slightly pointless post of mine I guess, but it struck me that having a bad day cannot be an excuse for everything, especially when we are talking about a hobby - which requires you to have the energy to deal with a recipient - and not an obligation…)

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I’ve been here about a year and “only” sent about 200 cards, but I’ve never drawn a profile like this one before.

This person wants only one type of animal. It’s not even an ordinary animal like a dog or a cat, it’s a very specific animal. It’s not a particularly short profile either. I read it and re-read it, hoping for a clue about some other card, but no, it’s all about This Animal.

I found that very peculiar, and stultifying. In the end I sent another animal. Best I could do. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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Well done! You are not amazon .com!

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I agree with @elikoa. You don’t just send a card just because you are having a bad day. Seems almost like a cheap excuse to get out of maintaining doubke standards.

If I’m too busy or I’m having a bad day, I just don’t Postcross at all for the day. I don’t think it’s fair to spread negativity to someone else.

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I wonder sometimes if there are some people who are feeling anxious about their standing on the “leaderboard” of top senders in their country, because the pressure to keep up can be intense for some people. I say this honestly from my own experience, although I am not proud of it and I wish to forget that period of time where Postcrossing was a chore for me.

A long time ago when HK was still “rare”, there was a moment where I was the top sender, and I felt the anxiety I am trying to describe, about how cool it was to be in the top ten, and I instinctively started to think about what I needed to do to stay in the top ten, even though it’s not in my nature to be competitive. (I should state here that being on the leaderboard was not, could not, have been a personal achievement, because I just happened to start Postcrossing when there were relatively few people, and right before HK got its own Postcrossing code. It was just chance timing. It has nothing to do with anything I personally did to “earn” anything.) There’s just something about the existence of a leaderboard that made me naturally attach significance to it. Perhaps it was my baser human instincts. Anyway, I started noticing that I was not happy when I was sending official cards - it felt more like a chore or homework than a joy - and then I finally realised for me personally at the time it was becoming about the leaderboard, that I was racing to send postcards, and that was not the point of Postcrossing (that I wanted for myself). So I purposefully stopped and did not send anything if I didn’t feel like it. I dropped off the leaderboard after that, and the relief I felt was wonderful. I am much happier in my Postcrossing life now, and I still have the joyful memory of having been able to send HK-3!

I’m even hesitating to share this story here because I don’t want anyone to think I am boasting - on the contrary, that was a period of my life I am ashamed of (well, maybe ashamed is too strong a word for a hobby, but you know what I mean). Recounting it here is making me mega-cringe! Brrr! (Does anyone else here get cringe attacks? :cold_face:) It was a time in my life where I was trying to learn more about myself and what mattered to me, and it was another way I learned that external competition to gain arbitrary markers of importance is ultimately pointless for how I want my life to be, and what I wanted for myself was to just do better than I did yesterday. For Postcrossing, what matters to me above all else is the fleeting connection between the person I’m sending to and myself. The numbers are not that interesting to me anymore. But even so, there was a moment in time I was caught up in it! (shakes fist at younger self lol)

What I am trying to say is that maybe for some people, the numbers matter and the standing matters a lot, and that’s simply a reflection of the world as a whole - there are all sorts in the world! Different things matter to different people. I am sorry for anyone who is hurt by encounters with such people though. It’s sucky to be a notch in someone else’s belt, but hopefully the next card that comes along will reflect a sentiment that is much more amicable and personable. That’s what I tell myself, anyway! :grin:

E-hugs for anyone reading this who feels momentarily discouraged by an unsatisfying Postcrossing encounter! The next one will be better, I’m sure, or the next one after that! :smiley: Hang in there!

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Thanks for sharing your point of view an your biography!

I have sent cards to or have got cards from the most top senders and they were all friendly, not demanding and sent decent cards! Well, there might be members who want to get to top soon and send heaps of cheap rubbish postcards while demanding just expensive ones. Maybe they’ll feel better in doing so, but they are just very very few, I think. Yes, they annoy, but the next card and the next profile will be fine! Nobody is entitled to spoil your, mine or anybody elses mood!

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I can’t help wondering why. As @scrutiny said,

Who would these people brag to? Their neighbours? Colleagues? Family? Would any of them be impressed or even interested? I’m not being argumentative, just wondering what anyone would get out of such a transient ‘distinction’. :neutral_face:

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Maybe they need that for their ego for their boss has fired them and everything else looks bad, they can feel like a hero on Postcrossing! Luckily I am not in that situation right now.

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So you never ever want to reach a goal just for yourself? Something nobody ever will know but still makes you happy?

(Of course, the users would have other postcrossers knowing they are among the top-senders)

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The goal being, to be the top postcrosser in England? No, and without looking it up I already know it ain’t gonna happen.

What is the point in this ‘goal’ if nobody ever knows? I’m more interested in overcoming real-life challenges and academic achievements, tests passed (like the driving test as a random example) than fleetingly being the person who sent the most postcards in a particular country. It seems a very strange goal or ambition to me. Sorry if that reply disappoints you, or anyone else.

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You really haven’t ever wanted to achieve anything just for yourself? I’m not talking about sending postcards and I don’t think @Stevyy was talking about it either. I’m talking about anything anywhere - something that will bring you satisfaction because you did it but it might not be any achievement other people will understand or that you will even wish to share :slight_smile:

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I meant goals-no-others-care-about in a broader sense, not in postcrossing. Like ‘running the usual jogging course in personal best time’ or ‘finishing a Sunday’s crossword in under seven minutes’ or similar. A thing one usually can’t and won’t brag about, but still it makes the moment you reach this goal a pleasant one.

I myself ‘meet’ such situations regularly.

And for some, it’s being among the top-senders. They can’t brag to their family or colleagues, but are happy about it.

The saying is ‘different folks, different strokes’, I think. À chacun ses goûts. Jedem Tierchen sein Pläsierchen.

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