Genesia said:

my god, i was wrong.

sorry folks. nevermind me.

stanleylieber said:

Please tell me U're joking....

chocolate1 said:

not joking. circa 1998-1999. the scene was similar with people defending prince to the death no matter what he did, but the criteria was different.

but see, i didn't realize before that prince is a natural predator of jockeys/fans, so i was holding him to an unfair standard. now that i've watched the video i realize how ridiculous i was being.

stanleylieber said:

Haha! The scene from "Hush"...

stanleylieber said:

i don't even understand what your argument is, except for the fact that whatever i post, you're going to disagree with.

Anxiety said:

You don't remember the vegan faction circa Animal Kingdom? Insted of fams/fans it was veggies/carnivores. It got pretty testy

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

i don't think i'd fully embraced the .org or much else in cyber-fam-land when 'crystal ball' first came out. i didn't even start posting regularly on the .org until around the time of the RAVE album.

Anxiety said:

Been famming since 96 He's right, there were these factions and people were trying to steal the right to famdom based on someone being a meat eater

Anxiety said:

i think you and i personally have been suffering a series of miscommunications.

my position:

- don't care how much this package costs. my first reaction was, "hey, prince is finally doing financially smart by offering a high-end, limited edition item that will probably sell through in such small numbers."

- the alligator/leather/silk used in production (and as a selling point!) is disappointing since prince is supposed to be vegan.

then people started arguing with me about whether or not prince was ever a vegetarian or vegan.

i guess all i can really do is roll my eyes, but history is history. like i said, last i remember you were suspect as a prince fan if you weren't a vegan; now we're saying that prince was never even a vegetarian.

i dunno, man.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

when prince started hiring fans to work on his official sites, and once those sites started having their own forums, and once they started picking fans out to moderate those forums and enforce their rules, it was really divisive amongst the already existing online community. those who have a tendency to get really defensive and protective of prince were regularly going ballistic on other fans who simply wanted to participate in online fandom. it was a really weird time and was part of what drove me away from prince fandom in the first place.

the more prince advanced his 'positive all the time' agenda, the more heinous the bickering amongst fans became.

make of that what you will.

stanleylieber said:

seems suspect!

stanleylieber said:

Don't think anyone would argue against the fact that he once was. In my opinion he replaced that ethical ideology with being a hardcore jehovahs witness. I even recall a quote by him on eating "The bible diet" which at the very least is probably high in fish flesh you'd think.

Lets face it the religious texts are pretty clear in spelling out humans as masters and the rest of "creation" as theirs for using, eating and whatever else.

stanleylieber said:

Well I remember stumbling upon some fan page that throttled Prince over the mishandling of Crystal Ball and my friend and I couldn't understand how there could be this much conflict in going to the store to buy a CD. We were mystified at first and I chalked it up to bitterness but then the pattern kept repeating and repeating to the point that intellectually I couldn't make excuses anymore.

It was a strange time but I'm glad now that Prince has established himself with his own mistakes so the haters finally have some legitimacy

prince started suing his fans. he posted messages on his websites slamming his fans. what happened was, the people who stuck around these fan sites after all of that happened tended to be the kind of folks who would defend him for doing those things.

now, so much time has gone by that a lot of the folks on these sites weren't even around when those things were happening. i guess a lot of it just seems like mean-spirited rumors to them. for a lot of folks, either they never paid that close attention in the past or they weren't a part of prince fandom before prince became adversarial, so the current status quo just seems normal.

there used to be a relatively harmonious internet fan community. i guess i miss that. call me old fashioned.

stanleylieber said:

Yeah, we were nearly united in every way. Today's culture has been bred to accept this BS from the powers that B.

Dsoul said:

read above. it has been argued in this thread that prince never even said he was vegetarian. then someone posted an interview where he claimed to be completely vegan. of course, the poster who claimed prince never said he was vegetarian did not amend their previous statement or acknowledge that those of us who remember prince's own words are not insane, as had been insinuated.

prince has cited his new world translation as promoting veganism, so i'm not sure we can draw solid conclusions here based on basic logic.

it's not that i am trying to constantly judge prince for his perceived misdeeds. i'm just saying that, as a fan, over the years, we've been asked to humor a number of his philosophical pronouncements, and now he's apparently dropped some of them (or is acting in contradiction of them, which i think is more likely), and we're not supposed to comment on it?

strange fucking fan site, wouldn't you say?

if prince's philosophy is out of bounds then we'd probably better serve him by ceasing to discuss the vast majority of the things we discuss here.

let's talk about his hairdo.

stanleylieber said:

He created New Breed Leaders and then wants to complain that we're new breed leaders

vegan/not-vegan, JW/not-JW, pill-popping alkie/vitamin guzzling health-nut...i don't think prince cares what we think he is or isn't anymore, as long as we keep handing over that money.

Anxiety said:

He doesn't care so much that he changes lyrics to old songs in his concerts!

Spirituality is all we'll ever need....

Anxiety said:

complete agreement.

it's kind of sad to me because i think prince really does have a lot of fans who care deeply about his music and what it means, but he has, for over a decade now, seemed to be so focused on maintaining his mainstream visibility and viability, while simultaneously doing things 'his way,' that the music itself seems to have become a distant secondary distraction. i can understand his desire to try and change the music industry, but it really is the artistry that brought most of us here in the first place.

there is more to his work than his identity as a jehovah's witness, black american and an abused artist. i wish he hadn't forgotten that somewhere along the way.

my observation is that somewhere along the way music stopped being the single most important element of his life. i speculate that it started with his decision to marry mayte and his claim that she had put him in 'studio rehab' (which seemed to be a signal that he was spending time doing other things besides recording for the first time in his adult life), and progressed through his jw conversion into what we have now. he still cranks out tunes but music is no longer the center of his existence as it once was.

billy corgan recently wrote a livejournal post that talked about how, back in the original smashing pumpkins days (roughly '89-'95), they rehearsed upwards of 30 hours a week, even when they weren't touring or recording. he talked about how that level of familiarity with the music led to he process of carefully refining the writing and recording process, and how, in the years since, with much less practicing going on, he felt that he had at times lost his way in terms of having such a strong connection with his own music.

prince can eat hamburgers or weeds; i don't care. i would however enjoy more of the same kind of results we used to get from his 24/7 music immersion lifestyle.

maybe that's not how he wants to live his life anymore, but it does raise the question of why he keeps releasing albums and attaching more and more cruft to his legacy. before long he will have released more 'casual' albums than those created during the period of his intense musical focus.

Let's divide the 2100 bucks up by 50 people, hold our own raffle and the concert can be held at that winner's house.

Vendetta1 said:

I could roll with those odds but that's the only way I'm spending any money is for Prince to do me in a personal concert

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Now ain't that some shit?

chocolate1 said:

What the hell is wrong with some of these folk? There are some real issues in the world to get worked up over. Prince changing his mind about being a vegan is not one of them. Who the hell cares????

stanleylieber said:

agreed, and what you've posted since that sentence has been pretty deep. i'm gonna have to take another read of it all to let it all soak in.

funkteer said:

why are you here posting when there are more important things to do, right

stanleylieber said: