Forum

[Felon]

Originally Posted by hong

No, describing people's reaction as nerdrage is a negative reference to the irrationality of their posts.

You know, "rage". Cf ragequit.

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

Describing peoples reaction as nerd rage is denigrating their rage, describing it as blowing something out of proportions. It tells. "You/They are way overreacting, as happens often with nerds." (And as hong points out, we are all nerds. Or maybe we're all geeks, and we just misuse the word in this context. The difference between geek and nerd is getting lost these days, I surely can't pinpoint it.)

This is just equivocation. "I'm not denigrating a person, just denigrating a person's feelings. I'm not violating any rules by labeling you as stupid, I'm just labeling your point of view as stupid".

Botom line: is it an intentionally inconsiderate term? Yes.

The persons experiencing said nerdrage probably don't see their behavior as irrational, and likely aren't swayed by having others call it nerdrage. And I suspect the person throwing the term out knows perfectly well that he's just waving a red flag.

And by association, people interested in playing a "dumbed down" game, because apparently they couldn't cope with the "smart" game.

That's a much less direct association. You produce your feelings, other people produced D&D. The implications of calling a game "dumbed-down" is not necessarily calling the people playing it dumb. Case in point: I play 4e, I do feel it's intentionally designed to be dumbed-down, and yet I don't think my group of players is dumb at all.