Are gamers really that pathetic?

[jester47]

I see Nisargs point, I just disagree with his numbers.

<RANT>
As for the inclusion thing, why should I spend time around you if I don't like you? 1) If I let you hang around me and I don't like you I AM ALREADY LYING TO YOU. 2) Why do I want to punnish myself? I don't.

Why hurt us both?

There is a difference between being a virgin because you are an introvert and being a vigin because you are an ___hole. Even if you can't help it cause you were brought up in the wrong environment or somthing, I still don't want to spend time with you. Nothing against virgins here, its just a percieved measure of social acceptance.

This IS elitism in the truest sense of the word. I choose who I spend time with. I choose who I like. Elitism is choosing for your company those who you find desirable. If you don't like that I don't choose you for any reason, then don't choose me. Its easy.

I think the Ramones said it best: "I don't wanna walk around with you, I don't wanna walk around with you, I don't wanna walk around with you, So why you wanna walk around with me?"

Change what I don't like about you then we can talk. Ask me, find out what it is, if I have not told you, I will. Most people really don't care what you do in your free time. They only really care that you don't annoy them and that you are ok to be around if they have to be around you.

The difference between leprosy and social leprocy is that social leprosy has a cure. It does not mean you have to go live with the other lepers. All you have to do is find out that one thing that bothers MOST people about you and change it.

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. (Fight Club) This means that everyone goes through the same feelings of isolation, separateness, rejection and disappointment that you do. EVERYONE understands how you feel. They have all felt it before too. The only difference, what separates the outcasts from the accepted, is how fast you get over it.
</RANT>

Aaron.

 

[jester47]

I have to confess. I at one point was the little known sidekick to CatPiss Man: Cat Piss Boy.

This all started when I was 14. My mom got a himalayan persian. The problem was that the cat was traumatised. The kids of the previous owner had pretty much chased and tormented the cat to the point that it shunned all human contact. We renamed the cat Kubla Kahn. Because of his trauma, Kubla had a problem with using the box. The cat went anywhere. Now at the time I was a messy teenager. Cloths (clean or dirty) went on the floor in one of two piles (clean and dirty) where any self respecting messy teen would put them. As it turns out, Kubla would sneak into my room, pee, and be gone before I was the wiser. Many times he would pee on my cleans. He was a sneaky bastard too. So I took to keeping my bedroom door closed. this only worked occasionally, as he was a sneaky bastard and would sneak in when I was not looking and had the door open. So I learned to smell my cloths every morning. Initially it was a brief snif, but after several times discovering a piss stain on my pants or the back of my shirt, I came to carefully inspect every garmet. It took me about a year to get to the point where my habits were good enough that I very very rarely if ever smelled like cat piss. The thing is, at school, if I got a reaction on a day that I missed the sniff, I would say "yeah, I smell like crap, cat pissed on my shirt and I missed it." At least I got points for knowing about it. Granted, dates were hard to get, but getting a car and good cat habits fixed that.

So it can be done.

Aaron.

 

[SpikeyFreak]

Not much to add, just wanted to say that I went to QuakeCon 2004 in Dallas, mostly just to have a road trip with an old buddy of mine, but partly to see all the unwashed losers that I hear about at conventions.

I was really disappointed. I would say that 95% of the people I saw were normal people. There were probably only 3 or 4 people I saw that I remember because they were super-nerds.

Next road trip will hopefully be to Texas Renn Fest.

--Normal Spikey

 

[Elf Witch]

This is such and old dead horse. It has been around as long as there as been any kind of fandom. I remember back in the 70s in Trek fandom worry about the image certain freakazoids were giving the rest of us. At a Worldon I talked to a person who had been attending them since 1950 and it was an issue back then.

There will always be social misfits attracted to hobbies like this it is one of the downside of being involved in something this creative. Think about it for a moment in this hobby you are encouraged to pretend to be someone else. And for some people that is like a siren's call.

The media plays it up big time. As someone else said they never talk to the normal people who go the cons because that is not an interesting newsbite. What would grab your attention the normal person in jeans or the the guy in the conan outfit with a huge axe?

Some of this is being taken way to seriously. Get over yourselves please. It is very simple don't play with people you don't like or who offend you.

But this talk of "cleaning" up gaming makes me wonder if part of it is a little bit of embarrasment and worry of what other people might think about the hobby you choose to be in.

Just wondering.

 

[fanboy2000]

I feel the topic of this thread goes beyond the specifics of that article. The topic of this thread was whether gamers were really pathetic, "like" it said in the article. It is not limited to discussing that specific article, and that's not what I was doing.

Fair enough. I think the article is a good read because of what it dosen't say. Really, I dosen't make video gamers out to be the pathetic losers the origanaly post claimed it did. I think that's an important point.

Are you honestly trying to pretend that:

Ahem. I'm not trying to pretend anything. I simply disagree with you. Contrary to popular belife, people can simply disagree. Try it sometime, you might find that you enjoy it.

a) there isn't a serious ratio of people in gaming who are social rejects of some kind or another?

Yes, I actually think that. Of course I have the exact same pices of evidence you do to back-up my conclusion, an article about booth babes at a video game convention and personal experiance.

b) the general view of gamers in popular culture is of the worst kind of those rejects? Smelly unwashed dateless wonders at best, potential high-school shooters or deviants at worst?

When you live in world (as I do) where mothers run CCG legues because they love to play, when guy, his son, and his current girlfriend are playing the same CCG and having a blast, when two of your closest gaming friends are married, one of them with a baby, when you ran a game at the local pizza parlor for two years, when you've sold the latest D&D bookk to highschool cheerleader and her exact opposit on the same day, then yeah, I'd have to say that isn't the popular view of gamers.

Where I live, the local gaming club has whole familes playing. While everyone seems to agree that unwashed, smelly, and stinky people are the sterotypical gamer, not everyone (as this thread indicates) belives it.

c) it would be BETTER for gaming if that perception was changed?

Sense I don't think that the perception is as pervailent as you do, then this has no real meaning to me. It's rather like the question "have you stopped beating your wife yet."

d) the only way for that perception to change would be for gamers to take some responsibility for who they allow to be "poster boys" for their community?

Sigh. If you don't want to game with someone because you don't like them, go right a head. I don't care what the reason is. To exclude someone from your table "for the good of the hobby" is elitest.

In all honesty, I'd rather take an inclusionist attitude toward the hobby. Oh, I have my limits, but they involve extreems like people who think they are werewolves.

Anyways. Just make a note that I dissagree with you, it does happen sometimes.

 

[Desdichado]

I still stand by my conclusions. When I play, or DM, or design worlds or monsters or whatever, I'm escaping. In the world of my imagination, I'm free. Whenever I'm forced back into the real, I'm sad because I prefer the illusion. If something bad happens in-game, I can always think "it has to work out in the end, it's a story and that's what stories do".

Yet, you refer to gaming as an escapism as if it were a truism that everyone plays games to "escape". I don't think that's true. I don't escape; I'm actually quite satisfied with my life in general, and hardly want to escape to a life anything like that of a typical D&D adventurer.

 

[Desdichado]

Obviously, you haven't followed the housing market in Salt Lake City for the past 29 years. Dodge logic? Hardly. Follow my life for the past 29 years.

Dodgey logic, not dodge logic. And actually, I am passingly familiar with the housing market in Salt Lake City, having a brother that lives there. He is a student with a part time job with a new wife who just graduated (and is yet unemployed), and yet he is able to afford an apartment. And besides, you referred to situations that are common all over the US as the causes of it being hard to find a place to live.

 

[Desdichado]

Next road trip will hopefully be to Texas Renn Fest.

You mean the big one in Plantersville? Hate to disappoint you; my experiences there were that it is mostly normal people too. I mean, yeah, there's always a girl or two wearing nothing but some skimpy chainmail (although I only remember once that I cared to actually look at said girl) and a freak or two, but you have to go out of your way to notice them.

 

[Lichtenhart]

Is it really that important for you people to leave home the soonest possible? I can understand if one has to go to a far away university, but otherwise?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

<RANT>
As for the inclusion thing, why should I spend time around you if I don't like you? 1) If I let you hang around me and I don't like you I AM ALREADY LYING TO YOU. 2) Why do I want to punnish myself? I don't.

<snip>

</RANT>

When I suggested that gaming should be inclusive, I mean in general, not that if you game you should allow anyone to game with you. An individual should decide for himself who they want to hang around with. What I don't like hearing is the idea that people who do not act like others want, or smell like others want or whatever, should be driven from gaming in order to improve its image or acceptance to the masses. That is elitist garbage.