Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[billd91]

It's fine to be critical of a work, but it really helps if you can show at least some effing evidence that you've actually read it.

 

[gnarlygninja]

It's fine to be critical of a work, but it really helps if you can show at least some effing evidence that you've actually read it.

I have a friend who spent a lot of the 2010s arguing with me/other friends/randos online that this is gatekeeping. There's a line in the 1990 movie Metropolitan that it always reminded me of. One character is telling a guy she's interested in about her favorite book (I think it's Little Women), and when he starts dismissing it she asks if he's ever even read it, and he says something like "Why would I ever read a novel when I could ready literary criticism about it instead".

 

[Velderan]

It's fine to be critical of a work, but it really helps if you can show at least some effing evidence that you've actually read it.

The number of times I've had someone tell me their opinion of something, only to find out later in the thread they were going off of what a wiki told them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Nothing is more fun than tossing some color into an adventure -- a wizard put a rune on a door that leads into his former lair -- and having the players absolutely spin out over it. (Guys, you really do want to have all four basic pillars covered in Shadowdark before going for non-core classes.)

The amount of paranoia and nervous theorizing over what amounted to "lair of Dead_Wizard_01, keep out!" was priceless.

 

[Autumnal]

 

[trappedslider]

I'm watching Ken Burns American Revolution on PBS and my mom would have loved the fact that the Gaspee affair was mentioned, She always said that some of our ancestors were involved in it.

 

[Ryujin]

Nothing is more fun than tossing some color into an adventure -- a wizard put a rune on a door that leads into his former lair -- and having the players absolutely spin out over it. (Guys, you really do want to have all four basic pillars covered in Shadowdark before going for non-core classes.)

The amount of paranoia and nervous theorizing over what amounted to "lair of Dead_Wizard_01, keep out!" was priceless.

In one adventure module, I think it was "The Bane of Llywelyn", the party wasted an hour trying to figure out a spiral inlay on the floor in the castle. As a throw-away I had it so no matter where they started walking the spiral never reach the centre, and it just ran them back to the outer edge for some reason.

 

[Mannahnin]

I have a friend who spent a lot of the 2010s arguing with me/other friends/randos online that this is gatekeeping. There's a line in the 1990 movie Metropolitan that it always reminded me of. One character is telling a guy she's interested in about her favorite book (I think it's Little Women), and when he starts dismissing it she asks if he's ever even read it, and he says something like "Why would I ever read a novel when I could ready literary criticism about it instead".

Always nice to see a Whit Stillman movie reference in the wild. This movie is so fun. Very dry. Such a time capsule of NY prep schoolers in the 80s, but more generally of smart kids who had no idea how ignorant they actually were, despite reading a lot. Which is part of the time capsule; nowadays kids read less but have a much wider view of the world in many ways due to social media. The acting isn't the best, but IIRC these were pretty low budget, and the cast being pretty amateur is kind of charming.