Why so much hate against boosters?

[zeio]

I'm 37, I don't know if that's "young" for you but I'll take that as a compliment... 😜

In all seriousness, I had no idea about the Sharara joining the forums and sparking discussions thing.
That said, it still seems far fetched to indirectly quote that event and then go on a rant about world politics when answering OP's question "Why does people in this forum hate boosting so much?".

A good starting point if you really want to post your naive worldview on this. See Adham Sharara's personal stance for yourself. Many comments were moderated so you won't get the full picture but it was nasty back then. Sharara was more concerned about the politically-correct image of table tennis than anything, so to speak.

The website for ESN Tensor has had the logo of Agenda 21 for over 2 decades. Look it up. Sustainability was the most heated political topic back around 2000s-2010s. Still remember Al Gore?

Pingpong's version of 'doping' has different twist
https://www.espn.com/espn/wire?section=oly&id=8233632

Players continually fidget, walking to the net and wiping their sweaty hands on the table -- choosing the spot where the ball is least likely to land. They blow on their paddles, spin balls to make sure they're perfectly round and hard. Many stomp their feet as they're serving, drowning out the soft ping sound.

"Every little detail counts," Sharara said. "It's almost a sickness I would say."

Table Tennis – New Year Message from Adham Sharara, ITTF President
https://amandala.com.bz/news/table-tennis-new-year-message-from-adham-sharara-ittf-president/

Some of us are very fortunate to be in good health, financially secure and live in a stable political environment. On behalf of the ITTF I send my best wishes to all those who are less fortunate and who are starting the year with health, financial, personal or political issues; I sincerely hope that 2012 will be a better year. To all I send my best wishes for a very Happy New Year.

Adham Sharara
President

 

[Dr Evil]

Let’s be clear. It is illegal. Plain and simple.

Definitely not plain and simple. Any enforceable rule should have to satisfy some baseline rule-of-law tests which the anti-boosting rule fails miserably. Above all, to be enforceable it should be, well, enforceable. This requires objective, reliable testing, which can't exist because there's no physical difference between boosting in a factory and boosting on your kitchen table. Then, as others have noted, the rule itself bans any "physical, chemical or other treatment" which is nonsense unless they intend to ban cutting and gluing rubber to the blade. If you want to ban something, you have to define clearly what you're banning. There's also the issue of selective enforcement; an arbitrarily applied rule is not a rule. So who's allowed to boost H3 (a rubber designed to be boosted and which virtually every pro boosts)? It's got to be either nobody or everybody, and it's definitely not nobody. There's even a legal doctrine in a few jurisdictions (such as West Virginia in the US) that applies to so-called dead-letter laws; a law is effectively revoked by long, public non-enforcement.

Either way, in the UK at least, it’s very much a minority issue - Hardly anyone is doing it as far as I know!

You must be speaking about amateurs only. Even then, I'm surprised that most good players using H3 are not boosting. Where I'm from in the US, almost no amateurs I know boost Japanese or ESN rubber, but most H3 players do.

 

[Grahf]

"We fear what we dont understand" - Wang Hao, probably

 

[Tyce]

because it makes a 20 dolla rubber better than dignics/dynaryz/nuzn/bluestar and last almost forever.
which makes manufacturers earn less money.
hence dan and company cannot travel the world and experience what it's like to get annihilated by waldner or zhang jike 😄
---------------
this is also the reason why they banned speed glue.
how many pro players from old eras did you hear die from inhaling toxic gases?
none.

Ever heard of painter's disease? Basically solvent induced Parkinsons. Can't tell me that's any good for quality or quantity of life.
Now imagine getting this in your teens, twenties or thirties, because you played table tennis as a kid. Life is over, dead or not.

yet we went from a speed glued 25 dolla mark v or sriver to a 93 dolla dignics which performs probably worse and needs to be replaced more often.

it's a well thought out plan to keep us poor and using low quality materials while at the same time making them richer.

 

[nablaz]

A good starting point if you really want to post your naive worldview on this. See Adham Sharara's personal stance for yourself. Many comments were moderated so you won't get the full picture but it was nasty back then. Sharara was more concerned about the politically-correct image of table tennis than anything, so to speak.

The website for ESN Tensor has had the logo of Agenda 21 for over 2 decades. Look it up. Sustainability was the most heated political topic back around 2000s-2010s. Still remember Al Gore?

Pingpong's version of 'doping' has different twist
https://www.espn.com/espn/wire?section=oly&id=8233632


Table Tennis – New Year Message from Adham Sharara, ITTF President
https://amandala.com.bz/news/table-tennis-new-year-message-from-adham-sharara-ittf-president/

Are you suggesting any of this is relevant to what OP is asking NOW, not in 2010? If so, care to direct me to some posts made by users in the last, let's say, 3 years using this as an argument against boosters?

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Are you suggesting any of this is relevant to what OP is asking NOW, not in 2010? If so, care to direct me to some posts made by users in the last, let's say, 3 years using this as an argument against boosters?

don't fall into his trap of the zeio's narrative - zeio history channel
however, you did ask a great question - how is this relevant to what OP is asking NOW.
lol, eager to see how he responds (my experience/expectation is to dodge it and quote more useless links of the past)

 

[lodro]

Ever heard of painter's disease? Basically solvent induced Parkinsons. Can't tell me that's any good for quality or quantity of life.

I do agree with banning solvent based booster but I think this is where the "lawmakers" went wrong with their "kneejerk-reaction" trying to ban ALL boosters . For us who boost , using the oily stuff, boosting is just a fun hobby that hurts nobody.
On top of this, it has been said before: If you are not wiling or capable of policing it - don't try to make a law against it.

 

[zeio]

Are you suggesting any of this is relevant to what OP is asking NOW, not in 2010? If so, care to direct me to some posts made by users in the last, let's say, 3 years using this as an argument against boosters?

To understand the whole reason behind the hate, you gotta know the history behind it. Otherwise, it's just pure speculation.

 

[zeio]

Definitely not plain and simple. Any enforceable rule should have to satisfy some baseline rule-of-law tests which the anti-boosting rule fails miserably. Above all, to be enforceable it should be, well, enforceable. This requires objective, reliable testing, which can't exist because there's no physical difference between boosting in a factory and boosting on your kitchen table. Then, as others have noted, the rule itself bans any "physical, chemical or other treatment" which is nonsense unless they intend to ban cutting and gluing rubber to the blade. If you want to ban something, you have to define clearly what you're banning. There's also the issue of selective enforcement; an arbitrarily applied rule is not a rule. So who's allowed to boost H3 (a rubber designed to be boosted and which virtually every pro boosts)? It's got to be either nobody or everybody, and it's definitely not nobody. There's even a legal doctrine in a few jurisdictions (such as West Virginia in the US) that applies to so-called dead-letter laws; a law is effectively revoked by long, public non-enforcement.

You must be speaking about amateurs only. Even then, I'm surprised that most good players using H3 are not boosting. Where I'm from in the US, almost no amateurs I know boost Japanese or ESN rubber, but most H3 players do.

That's where Sharara instilled so much hate. His response was that there was never a "VOC ban" but rather a "VOC limit". Same with booster, no "booster ban" but rather "no post-factory boosting".

Yet with the 40+ ball, Sharara actually used "a worldwide ban of celluloid" as the pretext...

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/everything-about-wcq.33067/post-445943
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/booster-legalization-proposed.17264/post-223636
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/what-will-happen-to-boosting.21143/post-275766

 

[nablaz]

I do not see that much hatred against boosters on the forum... in fact, I see much more "pro-booster" talk, in the form of boosting guides, reviews, comparisons, etc.

I don't know why OP feels the majority of the forum is against booster use, unless they got sidetracked by the resident spamming bot's threads (now officially upgraded to AI-gor version 1.0).

Personally, I don't care in the slightest whether people boost their rubbers or not. I do boost H3 on my forehand and do not boost Euro/Jap sponges, unless in an effort to "rejuvenate" old and almost dead sheets...
I would, however, caution against speaking positively about boosting in person at your local club, as in my experience people are much more open about it online than in real-life environments.

 

[lodro]

I would, however, caution against speaking positively about boosting in person at your local club, as in my experience people are much more open about it online than in real-life environments.

In my local clubs nobody cares about boosting and most don't know what I am talking about. 😁

 

[zeio]

You're so new (and young in the world of politics).

Mizutani and Boll openly contested the ITTF for turning a blind eye to rampant boosting. Mizutani protested by boycotting ITTF events and posted his own "findings" on his blog (see 2012/11/22 below). Both were losing left and right for various objective reasons but booster as a scapegoat was an easy target, so why not?

Once again, it was a hot topic the previous decade that has died down in the past few years.

Mizutani's multiple blog entries on booster:
2011/2/19
あぁ～
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-10806601601.html
2012/11/21
たくさんアクセスいただきありがとうございます
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-11410100393.html
2012/11/22
補助剤について
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-11410347053.html
2014/4/26
あと2日
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-11834566303.html

＜日本卓球の至宝、覚悟の告発＞ 水谷隼 「世界の卓球界を覆う違法行為を僕は決して許さない」
https://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/293736
Jun Mizutani boycotting boosters/tuners!
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/jun-mizutani-boycotting-boosters-tuners.4291/

Timo Boll Interview: About 80% of pro's are using illegal rackets
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...t-80-of-pros-are-using-illegal-rackets.12236/
Timo Boll interview
http://mytabletennis.net/Forum/foru...PID=1433208&title=timo-boll-interview#1433208

Timo Boll - How I glue
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/timo-boll-how-i-glue.23943/page-2#post-322192

 

[lightspin]

For anyone who thinks speed glue is safe, you are completely insane. Look up trichloroethylene, toluene, xylene or the other substances used in speed glue. Inhaling that on a daily basis is extremely harmful. Look at the ITTF timeline when they first were going to ban speed glue. Then something happened and they immediately banned it. Wonder what that something was to make them ban it immediately...

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-09/documents/trichloroethylene.pdf

 

[nablaz]

You're so new (and young in the world of politics).

Mizutani and Boll openly contested the ITTF for turning a blind eye to rampant boosting. Mizutani protested by boycotting ITTF events and posted his own "findings" on his blog (see 2012/11/22 below). Both were losing left and right for various objective reasons but booster as a scapegoat was an easy target, so why not?

Once again, it was a hot topic the previous decade that has died down in the past few years.

Mizutani's multiple blog entries on booster:
2011/2/19
あぁ～
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-10806601601.html
2012/11/21
たくさんアクセスいただきありがとうございます
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-11410100393.html
2012/11/22
補助剤について
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-11410347053.html
2014/4/26
あと2日
https://ameblo.jp/mizutani-jun-blog/entry-11834566303.html

＜日本卓球の至宝、覚悟の告発＞ 水谷隼 「世界の卓球界を覆う違法行為を僕は決して許さない」
https://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/293736
Jun Mizutani boycotting boosters/tuners!
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/jun-mizutani-boycotting-boosters-tuners.4291/

Timo Boll Interview: About 80% of pro's are using illegal rackets
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...t-80-of-pros-are-using-illegal-rackets.12236/
Timo Boll interview
http://mytabletennis.net/Forum/foru...PID=1433208&title=timo-boll-interview#1433208

Timo Boll - How I glue
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/timo-boll-how-i-glue.23943/page-2#post-322192

@Tony's Table Tennis, here's the history channel broadcast you spoke about 😜

 

[zeio]

@Tony's Table Tennis, here's the history channel broadcast you spoke about 😜

A quick look into what little history of you on TTD confirms your first post in this thread applies to yourself.

 

[zeio]

I hate how we know pretty much nothing about what exactly booster contains. I think it should be legalized but controlled - both factory and individual boosting. It would benefit every party without bringing any real downsides if done with propper methods. This way there would be near zero health risk concerns, full transparency both for pro and amateur players and the ability to control it to some extent from the federation if there is a potential danger. I don't know any booster that has fully labeled ingredient list. And we don't even talk about factory boosting, brands can use pretty much anything and we would not know. It's such a stupid system on every level it just pisses me off.

Booster is essentially plasticizer, most commonly based on paraffin oil.

Butterfly tried whatever oil they could get their hands on during the development of Tenergy, including edible oil.

 

[NetProphet]

You are completely wrong


You are completely wrong. There are only a very few members here that do hate boosting but the majority really does not care either way

I'd say that's probably correct alright.

Personally I don't care at all.
There are so many rubbers available with so many different sponge hardness/softness combinations that I couldn't care less what my opponent is using or if they have hardened/softened their sponge somehow.
I choose my rubbers and learn to use it (control it) and opponent has to do the same.

Weird illegal pips is a different thing altogether but boosting is not an issue iny mind

 

[BlotOnPaper]

Butterfly tried whatever oil they could get their hands on during the development of Tenergy, including edible oil.

This is the kind of information that i think absolutely should be publically available. It's just a consumer right to know what goes into the product that is directly touching your hands on prolonged basis, as it can get on your mucose membrane pretty easily from your palms and fingers and, if cancerogenus, cause harm.

2.4.7 The racket covering shall be used without any physical, chemical or other treatment.

Also as a penholder the writing of the rule is stupid for one more reason - sanding the rubber in the fingertip area. I deffinetely saw that on Dang Qui and some other top penhold players setups, and they passed racket controll, but sanding the rubber is practically against the rule, even if it did not change playing characteristics.

 

[nablaz]

A quick look into what little history of you on TTD confirms your first post in this thread applies to yourself.

It sure does, as I still don't understand how your first response applies to OP's question... 😜

 

[belllfador]

When heavy boosted H3 of my opponent begin to return my chop like is nothing, I was in disbelieve. My short heavy chops was looped in fast low ark that was not influenced by my spin... Uneven surface of his rubber, the oily shine..., is clear that he was boosting to the limit. So, my chops was not an option for 2 weeks, after that he was unable to lift the ball like before. The booster is evaporated or the rubber is out, or whatever. I needed to understand this magic and entered the boosting mafia with H3 and just 3 layers of fairy oils. My H3 becomes H3 Neo+ and start to play significantly better but is away from magical rubber.

Boosting need to be regulated for tournaments, but for amateur play that will be never possible. People can boost with free oils, chemicals or air pressure and nobody can stop them. Life is not fair and that is normal.