Whats up with all those girls at the Zap IAO

[automagseeker]

Does anyone see that kid in the lower right corner? He looks about 4-6 years old. I dont think its appropiate for someone of this age, even if they dont understand it at all, kinda sad to see that...

[FaSSt]

Now for a deep thought:

Three young women covered in paintball fill and making out in front of a cheering crowd is disgusting. I mean, that stuff is BITTER!

LOL@myself

[This message has been edited by FaSSt (edited 08-23-2001).]

[slayer]

shartley, thank you for that in depth and insightful post. I had no idea how much phsycology and politics goes into marketing. What I thought was a simple issue was apparently not so simple once it was analyzed by someone in the industry. Where did you go to college? I am curently considering business school for my masters and was just wondering.

[shartley]

[rt_81]

reason number #231 i should have been at IAO, half nakid girls covered in paint while indulging in a little foreplay. hell yes yeah, sex sells. id have enjoyed it. but do we know the whole story behind this stunt. was this what the people had in mind when they set this up. i heard about it earlier and this is the first i have seen of these pics. im willing to bet that when they filled up this pool with paintballs, they werent planning on charging a cover charge and serving coctails. things can get out of hand in situations like this. its easy for things to take a turn for the worst and a lot of the time there isnt much you can do about it untill the damage is already done. obviously this isnt a good situation for young kids to see. but cripe, go turn on a tv or visit the movie theater and tell me what you see. personaly, im going to wait untill i get the whole story before i go passing a moral judment on this one. these paintball polotics give me a headache, i have to go lie down.

thats 2 cents coming your way

RT

[Arturus]

Some people seems to have missed the point.

As Cphillip's pointed out, there is a time and place for everything. There are kids in those pictures and apparently there were those as young as 10 at the skirmish event where they basically had a wet t-shirt/topless contest.

For all the reasons that have been pointed out in the previous posts, the events specified here can never really benefit anyone commercially, nor will it bring 'good' light to our sport.

That.. And it was just in bad taste?



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[cphilip]

Thank you Arturus. Well said.

Hey guys... I like naked or partialy naked women as much as the next guy. But if I am going to ooogle them I don't want my kid watching. Thats just sick!

You kids want me to email this picture to your mothers and tell em this is what goes on at Tourneys? Whats that I hear? No? Cause she will never let me go to one after taht right? Didn't think so...

[Micromag5371]

Ok. I will probably catch somebody's wrath for this. You people complain about the smallest details the event promoters thought would help their event. When its the superbowl, and half time is out, there are many sexy and scantily-dressed females. I myself have not heard any body complain about taking their kids there to see some cheerleaders at half time, never mind the extreme physical contact and sometimes injuries of football players. Football is great. I am not a big football fan, but I see its value, and it is here to stay along with the females that are involved. Females are involved in paintball. I won't pass this one off with "Your child will see a half-dressed female someday, anyways." I don't see what is wrong with females and males, wrestling in a tub of paint. By the looks of it, they are having fun and nobody is getting injured. Whats the difference if you take your small child to a beach, where some women dress in 2-piece bikini's? Mmm, i don't see any differene between that, football or the beach.

I think people are over-protective these days. It is good to be aware, but not VERY protective. I can see your reasons. I think you adults, me being 15, should talk to your kids about growing up and what is to come when they are 10-13, Pre-adolescense. It isn't very hard. decide when your child is old enough, and sit down and talk to them just like you would talk about being anti-drug or anti-alcohol.

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need a pic?- http://www.geocities.com/unblood/Paintball.html

[cphilip]

No that's cool. At 15 I would expect I would have said pretty much the same thing. Nobody should "give you their wrath" for it...

[fenris69]

look...ill level with everyone, im a pervert. certifiable. many of you are as well i think and as much as the sight of three women kissing may turn me on, it has NO place in paintball. ESPECIALLY with a bunch of kids and tippman himself looking on??? wtf is that? yeah, the kids arent stupid and if they want some pr0n theyre welcome to it...but cmon, this is bad business. its not about OUR morality...cause id rather not guess at that collective level...heh...but if the wrong people see this? ugh. bad news guys.

[Thordic]

Originally posted by MagDog68:
shartley
No matter how many times I say i hate the Marketing Department in my company, they always seem to make things "seem" better. Maybe that's why I hate them so...

...that and the fact that they break every piece of IT equipment in their department on a religious schedule.

~Fred

Hooray for marketing! :-)

Brian David Casani
Marketing Assistant
URS Corporation




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Lots of stuff coming...

[Arturus]

Micromag5371 - It's totally cool and I probably would have said the same at 15... wait, no I wouldn't have. Oh well.. =p

And no you shouldn't get anyone's wrath for stating your opinions and you have made good points.

That said, I wonder why people make the arguments of -

"It's going to happen anyway.. "
"Sooner or later..."
"Why bother... "

So... Hopefully you see my point. Why not take a 4 year old to a strip show? It'll happen sooner or later right. Or let me guess, there should still be some age restrictions? Why even have an age limit on drinking, I mean... we have kids these days drinking at 9 anyway. (I understand that you weren't trying to pass with that Micromag, but just had to point it out)

And there is a difference between seeing women on beaches with bikinis on and at a staged event such as the one that's been the subject of the debate. Just as there is a difference when a person poses nude at an event for the purpose of research (anatomy.. etc) and art, and 'most' strip bars where they do it to err... you know.

As I've been apologizing lately, I'm rather lazy and avoiding analyzing every statement I make, and for some reason have this aweful headache that's a constant. What the few others and I have pointed out isn't really about being 'overly-protective', but rather an issue ranging from having a common sense to good taste. At the chance of sounding smug, if you don't see the point we're trying to make now... Well. *shrugs*

To end... Just imagine at half-time during the superbowl a large mat full of mud is brought out and half-naked teenagers/college girls start wrestling and making out... With a 9 year old right infront of the camera on national television.



Notice not many of us have ever complained about cheerleaders in a paintball event.

I just have a feeling many of us are communicating on different levels and missing eachother's points.


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[This message has been edited by Arturus (edited 08-23-2001).]

[woody 2]

look in the backgrounds of th epictures..this thingy wont grow to anymore tounraments, cuzlook at the peoples expressions that re watching. they seem very bored and unimpressed. its weird...sorry but i have no paintball fetishes so i dont wanna see chcicks makin out with paint all over em... now give em some red comboy boots and a hat.... just joking =)

[automagseeker]

I agree with cphilip, no kids should watch this sort of thing, we need paintball to be accepted by the public, if its not bad enough that we shoot eachother with markers( or "guns" as non-pball ppl call them I think).I still personally think it would be bad for the sport overall. It still disturbs me that that little kid is there watching... just my thoughts again

[Dogbone]

I first read this before I went to work this morning and have thought about it off and on during the day. All I can say is that whoever thought this stunt up wasn't thinking to clearly. This isn't a spring break event it's a tournament. A gathering of players and industry people and their families in many cases. The idea being that it's a time and place for teams to compete and for the industry to display it's wares and promote the sport.To put on that kind of display at an event of this type is improper and unprofessional.

It just goes to show that paintball is it's own worst enemy. There are people out there who want nothing less than to shut the whole sport down. Is it smart to be going out of our way to help them by giving them ammunition to attack us with? Or by doing things that will drive people away from the sport and away from big events? Yet it happens over and over again.

Sure you can say "Screw the media I'm having fun!" but you better remember that it's the media who is going to present us to the non playing public. You better also remember that part of that public are elected officials who make the laws. People who can with one law abolish this sport.

Don't think it can happen? Think again. The majority of people who play paintball are young men, roughly between the ages of 15 and 25. This is a demographic which elected officials don't particularly care about. Why? Because they are either ineligible to vote or as history has shown, don't vote. Why the heck should they care what you think?

Ah, but now you say that paintball is a multi million dollar industry. They won't shut it down because of the hit the economy would take and the people who would be unemployed. Well I got news for you. The industry is composed of small operations for the most part who don't hire many people. There isn't one community out there that would be economically impacted by the whole industry being shut down.

Oh, one other thing. To the best of my knowledge there is no such thing as a paintball lobby up on capitol hill. Or a national paintball organization to take on that roll. Which means we have little or no representation with law makers. Anybody here old enough to remember three wheelers and what happend to them? They don't exist anymore despite the fact that they were very popular and the manufactuers who made them had lawyers and lobbyists fighting for them on the hill.

So far paintball has been a fringe sport. The majority of people don't know about it or don't know much about it. It is however a growing sport which more and more people are becoming aware of. We as players and/or members of the industry can either take the responsibility to make sure that good first impressions are made or we can just focus on having fun for the moment and "screw the media" and the future of the sport. Your choice.