[mcguyver]

Drake saw this coming, almost exactly 1 year ago. He gets first dibs on "I told you so":

Originally Posted by Drake

I hadn't commented on this thread until now. I've been reading, and had been expecting one of the "old boys" to speak up, but it seems everyone decided to remain silent and/or ignore this.

To be honest, I'm somewhat flabbergasted by most of the responses. I get where they're coming from, specially where the newest members are concerned, but I'm still amazed at the complete about-face a lot of people seem to have performed.

In the old days of ASC (this would be roughly 8-10 months ago) there were hordes vehemently lauding airsoft for it's realism, taking pride in how much better our MilSim was compared to paintball, even arrogantly mocking paintballers and clearsoters alike.

Now look at you.

The lure of cheap prices and desperate hope for marginal acceptance by the mainstream would have you readily surrender a large part of what airsoft is about (for those of you with short attention spans, that would be "realism").

I'm old enough to have seen this before, not in airsoft but in paintball; "demilitarization" was what they'd referred to it as, kiddies hoping their moms would accept it as a legitimate sport and let them play rather than seeing it as a wargame played by crazy survivalists who live in the mountains or as the evil guns -- since yes, paintball guns were once frowned upon as guns (before they became colorful markers).

Personally, I see the same schism occurring here. Just like the those paintballers opposed to the neon clown suits carried on in the woods with black guns and camo, there'll be those in the airsoft community who will go back to living comfortably under the radar -- just as we had been for a decade before.

Some people were hellbent on having the sport grow and expand, while others, sometimes motivated by little more than greed, exploited the demand. This has without a doubt contributed to getting use into the situation we're now in -- had we stayed small and under the radar, we'd probably still benefit from the same status quo, which IMO was better than fucking clearsoft.

I know some of you reading this (the handful who haven't skipped it yet) are wondering why such opposition to clearsoft. It isn't just about clearsoft: for the serious players who field FMU kit and invest serious amounts of money into gear, even most of the cheap Junk Gongs and other bottom tier entries in the market were utterly undesirable. Sure, the CYMA AKSU and A&K 249s are great with a bit of work, but that's a far cry from clearsoft.

Maybe it's time someone set up a ClearsoftCanada board.