Monthly Archives: December 2016

You know, zerg, I've tried to be patient with you. I really did. I know that you're young; and I know from nearly two decades of experience that people of a certain age (the late teens and all of the twenties) tend to move through life with a nearly imperturbable confidence in their own knowledge base. I don't know for sure that you're in that general age range, but that's my best guess.

I know that in part because I have very clear memories of being equally confident at that age.

However, a lot of the statements in this post fall into a trap. Many of the statements you make above treat your anecdotal observations as absolute facts. I'm not going to parse your post into specifics because it's clear that you're not interested in listening to anything that anyone--newbie or oldtimer, professional or amateur--here has to say if it doesn't confirm what you've already made up your mind to believe. And frankly, I have better things to do with my time than waste it trying to prove that someone is wrong on the internet.

However, for any other readers who might still be willing to listen, I want to point out the following.

Sean is a professional in the pest management industry. He has all the officially recognized bona fides that come with the professional training and experience that the state requires in order to be credentialed to treat peoples' homes to rid them of pests.

zerg_infestor is a bed bug sufferer who has read some stuff on the internets.

I know that for a lot of people,particularly in the rampantly anti-intellectual culture of the United States, charges of elitism are quick to get thrown around. There's a very long tradition in the US of many people mistrusting anyone who seems to be pretentious.

All of which means that especially people who've been burned before by bad PMP or people who generally are inclined to think that the advice to hire a PMP is some sort of conspiracy that reveals that we're in bed (metaphorically) with the pest pros are quick to assume that those of us who push professional help are doing so because of some hidden agenda.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I get that there are people who are in a tough financial situation and who cannot afford to hire a PMP. But I also know that some people who claim they can't afford to hire a PMP have enough disposable income and just think that the whole thing is a racket.

Clearly, zerg_infestor is in the former category. And zerg's case is complicated by living at home with his or her parents who own the home.

In that case, my advice would be, if zerg's a minor, to call whatever state agencies he or she can to get them to force the parents to treat. Because all the self-treatment in the world isn't going to solve the problem if the whole house isn't treated.

If not, then it's harder, but the answer still has to involve getting the whole family on board somehow. I'm not a social worker or a psychologist. I don't have the experience or the skills to give advice about how to do so; but I know enough about bed bugs to know that until that happens, chances of solving the problem are slim.

If I break my ankle, I'm not going to read on the internet how to set it myself. I'm going to hire someone who has the hands on, day to day experience of setting other peoples' ankles properly. I don't think that makes me elitist or pretentious; it makes me someone who respects the experience that others have that I don't.

There are reasons that, for example, the medical profession prohibits doctors from treating relatives in some situations. When you have a problem that requires specialized expertise to solve, unless you have years to develop that expertise, you hire someone who has it.

Yes, the fact that not everyone can afford to do so creates a boatload of problems. Clearly, laws and our social support system need to catch up to the reality of this infestation.

And zerg's case is particularly complex.

If zerg doesn't own the home, but zerg's parents do, zerg's parents are going to have to get on board with a treatment plan.

If that's not possible, then the fastest, most effective, most likely to succeed, and in the long run cheapest approach is to get the parents to hire a *good* PMP to treat the house.

(For what it's worth, I've always found that most of the PMP here don't speak in pretentious language at all. And I would think that the number of times I've been told by posters to stop using such big words, my evaluation of pretentiousness would carry some weight. Maybe not. Maybe some big meanie like me who actually evaluates how trustworthy I find posts based on a host of complex factors including but not limited to the potential bias of a person because of what I know about his or her entire background, the person's data sample size, the amount of experience the poster has in dealing with bed bugs, and, yes, even the quality of the person's writing and grammar can't be trusted because I'm clearly an elitist, pretentious something or other.)

However, I don't see anything pretentious or elitist in Sean's post. (Please note: for the record, I find ad hominem attacks to be the fastest way to get me to dismiss a person's opinion. If the poster cannot even differentiate between the posts a person makes and the person him or herself, it's a pretty good sign to me that I shouldn't bother engaging with the person in question. I'm just sayin'.)

Pretentious means that someone is putting on airs and talking down to someone in a condescending manner. What I hear in Sean's post is a clear explanation of the actual facts about the regulations for applying a chemical. What I hear in zerg's post is a lot of selective listening.

From where I sit, when you're talking about applying chemical pesticides? I'm going to listen to the person, professional or amateur, who takes the time to explain step by step why a particular kind of application might be dangerous before I take the advice of a person who declares someone who takes that time to be pretentious or elitist by providing such information.

And a post that ends with:

A responsible DIY who is resorting to self-treatment as a last recourse because of financial constraints, it would seem to me, would be happy to hear advice from a PMP on how to most effectively apply chemicals. Responding to a "hey, btw, that product that you're using isn't supposed to be used by people without the credentials of a pest management pro" with that sentence seems to me to be the response of someone who may, in fact, be harboring an unstated bias against professionals in the pest management field or just professionals in general. Coupled with a post that repeatedly describes someone who took the time to share expertise as both elitist and pretentious?

Well, if this were a short story I was analyzing--you know, reading between the lines to see what the story implied as opposed to what it explicitly said?

I would infer that any text so quick to use labels like pretentious and elitist was, consciously or not, probably showing some of that anti-intellectual bias so common today. Since I don't know the person, I can only describe what the text itself gives away, and the text itself is screaming that kind of loudly to me.

I would just like to remind readers that anyone in the US has the right to post anything he or she wants. I can post that the sky is really red and that everyone who calls it blue is wrong and delusional. However, saying that won't make it reality.

When I read statements like this:

And zerg, I just want to be clear: I teach writing for a living. I'm pretty fluent at looking at a sentence and figuring out both what the phrasing in question actually says to most readers AND what I think the writer meant to say.

I'm not sure what a PMP acting like a poster not a PCO even means. My best inference is that PCOs act, well, elitist or pretentious by daring to suggest that the hundreds or thousands of cases of bed bugs that they're seen might give them a larger data set of knowledge and expertise to draw from than someone who is fairly early on in a battle against bed bugs. From where I sit, that sentence reveals more about the bias and suspicions of its author than I think the author meant the sentence to.

I'm also not at all sure what a social failure is, exactly. I mean, I've never met Sean. But I doubt he's a bigger geek than I am. I'm betting he gets out more on weekends than I do (seeing as how I could be at parties downstairs at the conference I'm at rather than typing this up on a Sat. night). More importantly, I do know this:

I don't give a rat's posterior about what a PMP's social life is like if he or she can effectively treat a bed bug problem.

And since I benefitted tremendously from the advice on this subject given by many people on these boards who have tons of professional experience with bed bugs, I would be very, very sad to see them chased off by this attitude that crops up from time to time among a handful of posters that somehow there is some big conspiracy on the part of the pest management industry to hide the good chemicals or the magic secret to getting rid of bed bugs from the general public so that they can continue to profit off of the rest of us.

If there were a safe, effective, OTC treatment for bed bugs, I'd be singing its praises from the rooftops in a heart beat. I expect that the PMP here would, for the most part, move on to treating other pests and do just fine making a living at that.

And I just hope that those posters who are willing to listen to reason will keep those facts and arguments in mind as they wade through the various posts on these issues. I also hope that those PMP who do take time out to help people here for free will not be put off by the people with the pest management equivalent of the whole "the moon landing never happened" or "the US government crashed the planes on 9/11 themselves" of the bed bug world.

(Apologies if this is a bit disordered, but it's the third day of the conference, and I'm pretty tired by this point in the con.)

Read the original here:
I found this at walmart Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums