by The Last Druid » Sat Nov 12, 2011 3:21 pm
Okay it's not a big deal, it's a petty annoyance, sort of like a fly buzzing around your soup in a restaurant. But if every time you go to the restaurant you have to deal with a fly buzzing around your food, you probably won't keep going back to that restaurant.
The part that really bothers me is that I construe trade offers of this ilk as reflecting a zero sum game mindset / approach to an activity that I believe, by definition, implies a mutuality, a benefit that both parties achieve by cooperating with each other.
To me, such offers are offensive precisely because they go against --violate, if you will -- the spirit of cooperation that trades should be based on. We live in a society that is based on exploitation of people, resources etc. I like to think that in our personal interactions we need not engage in purposefully exploitative behavior, i.e. don't deliberately try to screw others.
Offers such as the one that occasioned this thread seem to me to be purely selfish, no regard for the needs of the other guy. When I make a trade offer , unless it is to make a point to someone like Merm, I always try to offer something that I think will create value for both managers.
Having reflected some more on the matter, I do think that offers like this are a big deal, at least in terms of what it says about where the sender of the trade is coming from and what it implies about how we treat others and how we see the world.