Are we, as a wider community, nasty?

[Morrus]

Weird stuff, watching an argument I just saw spread across G+, Twitter, and Facebook. Sometimes I think the "nastiness" exhibited by RPG fans is a sign of a damaged community. I've seen it for 15 years, and been on the receiving end of it dozens of times. Then I think that perhaps the awesome part of us that lets us not grow up and enjoy escapism and gaming and pretending to be elves is the exactly same part as the really nasty part of us that lets us not grow up and be as cruel as children are to each other.

Then I remember that football fans stab each other, so there's that perspective, at least. We're actually not that bad, relatively speaking.

 

[GMMichael]

You're asking this about a species that gets its best inventions from war. And burning.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

In personality terms, on average, not really. Though the internet enables many sins.

Personal hygiene, on the other hand ...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yea, I think we are a very broken and damaged community.

Yes I know it could be worse.

I am much more curious how or even if we could fix it...


Enworld is better then most sites, but I bet by Gen COn the edition wars heat up...

 

[Piratecat]

I think there is a very strong tendency to cleave into groups, and those groups come down hard on those who don't match their customs and mores. There was a G+ thread today where someone evinced an unpopular opinion, and while I didn't agree with him, the discussion turned very nasty very fast.

I treasure people who keep open minds and can talk things through. Not everyone can.

 

[Umbran]

Weird stuff, watching an argument I just saw spread across G+, Twitter, and Facebook. Sometimes I think the "nastiness" exhibited by RPG fans is a sign of a damaged community.

The other way to think of it is that we aren't a damaged community because we are not (and never really have been) one community. As P-cat said, we tend to cleave into groups. Smaller groups than "gamers", I'm afraid.

Then I remember that football fans stab each other, so there's that perspective, at least. We're actually not that bad, relatively speaking.

Alas that "fail to riot in the streets" is the benchmark. But, yeah.

 

[gamerprinter]

I remember talking to one of the hotel desk clerks in Indianapolis during Gencon 07, noting all the strangely dressed people and groups having taken over the restaurant area (off hours) with games on every table. I told the desk clerk it must be really strange for the hotel employees with all this weirdness. She responded, "Oh, no, Gencon attendees are the nicest, most polite and easy to get along customers that ever stay at their hotel. You should see any union convention - there are drunken incidents, fights and all manners of wildness. I wish all our clients were like you guys..."

So to many of us, we think we're nasty, but compared to the wider world, we're actually quite nice - non-gamers think so. I don't believe as a wider community, that we're nasty, really quite the opposite.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

We - as community - are passionate and vocal about it. Sometimes (very self-) opinionated. In short: we're a standard group of people, discussing their passion in closed and isolated circles. Just go ahead, nothing unusual to see here.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Look, that rpger's got a vicious streak a mile wide!


Not that I have seen, video gamers are worse (witness death threats for nerfing a gun in CoD). Everyone could do with a internet politeness filter, me included, but I can't see the forums I go to being worse than lots of other internet b1tch fests.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

What's that principle in academic politics? The fights are so nasty because the stakes are so low, or something like that?

I have noticed that the fights that turn nasty in our community are generally about theory. The pseudo-academic discussion of hit points, alignment, simulationist vs narrativist etc... are all guaranteed to attract a level of nastiness in inverse proportion to the importance of the topic being discussed. Edition wars are much the same.

But the practical threads where advice is sought on campaign, adventure and/or encounter design or commentary is provided on actual play? They're normally a joy and rarely, if ever, turn nasty.

I also suspect - but obviously have no data - that our community, on average, is weighted toward the autistic/Asperger's end of whatever the name is of the spectrum where such things are measured. Combine that with the lack of non-verbal cues that is part and parcel of using the internet, and you can get a lot of accidental nastiness essentially from miscommunication.