It simply is not for normal people. If you play D&D you are not normal, period.
It doesn't matter if you pretend to do normal things.
We must all be normal and conform to the one true way of being normal.
Whatever that means.
If D&D isn't normal, then why does its influence permeate much of American culture?
I mean just watch Freaks and Geeks.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJAGxAeV7YU]YouTube - Freaks and Geeks - Carlos the Dwarf[/ame]
You have a big time producer and network like Judd Apatow and NBC placing up and coming young stars playing D&D. The characters in that series are supposed to be, as the title implies, Freaks and Geeks who have mild difficulties with social lives. Ironically they tend to do pretty well here and there.
The game of D&D is as mainstream as Harry Potter.
Do you know how many well adjusted 'normal' girls I know who read Harry Potter? Or the New Moon/Twilight (crap ... cough ... crap)?
The former is pretty well accepted and lauded, while the latter is sometimes made fun of and ridiculed as teeny bopper.
Anyway, my point is D&D tends to fall into the New Moon/Twilight category. Its perceived by some as a guilty and pretty geeky pleasure. Yes and people make fun of the couch potato stereotype of all gamers -- but how many hobbies have that connotation nowadays? It used to also be seen as bordering on paganistic, but that's fallen by the way side by and large (not completely ... I know there are still a few bad mouths).
Hell and Robin Williams openly plays it:
And whatever is good for Robin Williams is good for me.
C.I.D.