People don't always respond the way you want them to. What you call 'going south' happens in normal, live, group conversations as well. You can't expect 2-300 total strangers, many from different cultures and backgrounds, to all be on exactly the same page. If that were the case, we'd probably have world peace . In a previous post you criticized Americans for their spending habits and for not doing things that YOU enjoy instead of what THEY enjoy. If a person enjoys shopping and can comfortably afford it, what's wrong with that? That's one of the reasons we're the number 1 economy in the world. You simply can't get upset over the things people do THAT DON'T AFFECT YOU. What's wrong is not so much what they are doing as it is your expectations of what they SHOULD be doing. People bring their own biases to every situation; we all need to be more tolerant of the other guy's position. Also, we tend to remember things from the past as being better than perhaps they were. Apples were sweeter back when we were kids, bacon tasted better (THAT'S TRUE ), girls were prettier, etc., etc. Everything was better in Europe.....and yet, here we are, back in the good ol' USA.

WAIT A MINUTE. Did I just take this post SOUTH? Sorry.

chas