Are gamers really that pathetic?

[Dogbrain]

I agree with this, actually. There is something very messed up in North American society, how it treats its children, and especially how it treats emotionally vulnerable, sensitive, and intelligent children. The current school system is a very big part of the blame here: it basically takes adolescents at the time they should be learning how to be adults and instead drops them into a savage jungle surrounded by other children, and to far too great an extent leaves them to their own jungle law.

What "blame"? This is how the system is supposed to work. The masters send their children to exclusive, private schools that nurture minds and provide excellent socialization and human manipulation skills. Those prole and petit-burgeoisie children who somehow manage to be dangerously competent must be reminded of their true place. If they are not sufficiently brutalized and ground down by "public" education, the masters risk losing their priviliges.

 

[Desdichado]

You'll have to pardon me, I suppose, as my information on the rest of the world tends to center around North America, Europe, Australia, and the major Asian countries. I'm well aware that most countries are full of bigoted nimrods, however, the US is especially diverse and retains it based on every bloody possible difference. Cripes, I mean, people here get angry at each other over whether the 'furry' genre can include reptiles.

Well, I've never known anyone to get mad about that. Or to ever ponder that question at all, now that you mention it. As you say, offensive and easily offended nimrods exist all over the place. I don't think there's any reason to postulate the in the US we're more divisive than people in general anywhere else.

So do people ask D&Ders in Prague, Argentina, Krakow, and Rostov if their books are satanic on a regular basis? Are gamers in those countries as often 'cat piss men'? Do a number of them all but 'cat in their pants' if they see a woman look directly at them?

Don't know; I didn't game with anyone while I was any of those places.

 

[Rel]

Having given this topic a bit more thought over the weekend, I've come to a further conclusion that I figured I throw out there to be chewed upon by the masses.

It seems to me that if you buy into the notion that the "cat piss men" are the "poster children" for Roleplaying and you desire to change this, you should be very open about your gaming hobby to people outside the gaming community. After all, if you are a "normal", sweet-smelling, well socialized professional adult who is no longer living in his parents' basement then you are providing a counter to the stereotype. If you are openly a gamer then the people who know you will have their perception of the hobby altered. And they will further have some ammunition against those who they encounter that cling to the stereotype.

You should also be actively trying to recruit outsiders to the hobby, provided that they aren't "cat piss men" already. Because, in doing so, you are increasing the percentage of people in the hobby that are "non cat piss men" and thereby decreasing the proportion of "cat piss men".

This appears to me to be the only viable strategy for changing the demographics of the hobby because I don't think that you can effectively drive the "cat piss man" element out of roleplaying. And "rehabilitating" the current "cat piss man" population seems to be an iffy prospect at best.

As a final thought, I'll note that I could never have guessed a week ago that I'd have ever used the term "cat piss man" so many times in a single post.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

...they just don't want to be treated like children anymore. I don't know why it is (perhaps the lack of a cultural right of passage?), but American parents seem rather shockingly unwilling to allow their kids to grow up.

Bingo.

Give the man a prize.

 

[Agamemnon]

Well as a 25 year old virgin who's never so much as kissed a girl and lives at home with his parents. I know I meet the criteria.

You and me both, Mr. B. Well, I'm a few years younger and have kissed a girl on two occasions, but besides those minor points, your situation parallels mine.

 

[Nisarg]

What "blame"? This is how the system is supposed to work. The masters send their children to exclusive, private schools that nurture minds and provide excellent socialization and human manipulation skills. Those prole and petit-burgeoisie children who somehow manage to be dangerously competent must be reminded of their true place. If they are not sufficiently brutalized and ground down by "public" education, the masters risk losing their priviliges.

As someone who was a product of a fairly elite private school I can tell you that they have their own very special kind of brutality.
The main difference is that the insulting jock in the public system is likely to be a broken-down slob by the time of your 20th reunion, whereas the insulting jock in the private system is likely to be George W. Bush.

Nisarg

 

[Desdichado]

All your other points are sound and interesting as well.

They may appear so, but they are speculative, not givens.

first, American parents, as a group, aren't as good as Italian parents. Americans have a much higher rate of divorce, family ties and life are typically less robust, there are far greater cross-generational differences in education and opinion, and children are less valued.

The divorce rate statistic is easily confirmed, but others, and your intepretations of them, are difficult, at best. Americans value their children less than Italians? I dunno; I find that claim outrageous.

Second, puting greater pressure on getting out into the world, even if it means living at a much lower level and having greatly reduced capacity to save money allows young Americans greater mobility in the search for jobs and helps to reinforce, in many areas, a pattern of marriage/romantic/family life at younger ages than is typical in many other cultures and at lower material costs.

True, but that's a consequence of the idea that kids move out when they reach adulthood, not a cause. Throughout American history, I'd bet the average age of newlyweds has been increasing. Not that I've looked up that to confirm, or anything. But Americans, in relation to many other cultures I've seen, are much more mobile.

I live in west Texas, and a Turkish friend of mine was appalled at the young ages people marry in this area, typically right after college. He explained that in his culture you can't get married unless you can buy your bride a house. Here almost all young people rent and cohabitate or marry without any consideration of such capital arrangements.

Yes and no. You've found one counter example, but ignored examples that would have shown that Americans don't get married any earlier than many other cultures, and in fact much later in life than some.

Third, American culture is very fractious.

Not moreso than anyone else, I'd wager. I also don't see how your example of identifying with a particular neighborhood is indicative of the "fractiousness" of Americans anyway.

Fourth, much of the current prejuidice stems from the fact that this insitution is actively threatened. The last two American generations, X and Y, had/have a much higher rate of adult individuals living with their parents than the two generations prior.

And here's where your reasoning really gets wonky; because there's a change in popular opinion and habits, there's a backlash creating the prejudice? A prejudice that pre-existed the change?

Particularly since a very high rate of trans-generational home residency would create a nasty little situation for the current construction of the real estate market, not so many renters people sitting on houses for longer, and probably have some unpleasant consequences for the labor market as well.

Now, you're telling me that the real estate industry is driving cultural pressure for gamers to move out of their parents' basements or risk looking like losers? We're moving into the realm of conspiracy theory here...

 

[ledded]

Thanks a lot, Doc, these are the kind of answers I was looking for.

I went to check numbers about divorce, and well, they are quite impressive: in 2002 italy had the lowest divorce rate in Europe, with 7 divorces every 10.000 inhabitants. US the same year had a rate of about 40 divorces every 10.000 population. 6 times as many. You're right this, cannot be ignored.
Also, in 1999 US had a feritlity rate of 2.07 children per woman VS 1.22 Italy.

All your other points are sound and interesting as well.

So, this divorce rate differential is purely indicates that Italians are better parents?

Or could it possibly have something to do with predominant Catholocism as a religion, or other cultural mores?

How about digging up statistics about the percentage of children who finish primary schools, the rate of domestic violence, etc so on and so forth. That may help you get a less skewed view than pinning a statement like "Italians are better parents..." than one piece of data.

While I think a lot of your points have some validity, and are well thought out at times, IMO you pin too much on a singular source of data and make broad statements encompassing huge, diverse groups of people without taking into effect the literal tons of variables.

I'm gonna have to go with Joshua Dyal on this one though.

 

[eyebeams]

That seems pretty absurd to me. It would take some pretty weak-willed human being to become socially incompetent just because he feels his hobby demands it.

That's how I would characterize people who loudly proclaim their contempt for other hobbyists instead of just gaming according to their tastes.

I think a more likely prognosis is that those for whom gaming is not their sole social outlet, who have other things going for them, will not be cat-piss men.

Nope. Even antisocial people often have varied interests. I work with people who are extremely poorly socialized in my job as an adult educator. Their interests are varied, too.

Those who have no other social outlet, and who see that the standards for social behaviour in Gaming are very very low, might just slip down to that lower common denominator, due to self-esteem issues or what have you, and because the rest of the community is an enabler for that type of behaviour.

No. Gaming's fundamental problem is that people game with folks they don't like, and then they bitch about it as if the hobby owes them a social life. That is the essence of facile rants about how awful Those Gamers are. The signal to noise ratio in idiots declaring each other to be antisocial nerds is so high that the real hardcases are easy to lose sight of -- and they don't seem to be any worse than in any other marginal pursuit.

All the more reason for gamers to have some basic standards of what they expect from the people they are gaming with. You might be saving a social life.

I don't owe gamers a social life and I have no obligation to be community-minded so as to help the community wean itself of its addiction to arranging game sessions in a fundamentally dysfunctional fashion.

It isn't just in gaming, obviously. In my own "social outlets", I've seen similar phenomena.. be it in the pipe-smoking community, in meditation groups, in chi gung, even in politics or the freemasons. Even in a slightly different manifestation in the line of work I'm in (academic research). In any of these, when there are people who only have that ONE social outlet, be it just their job, or just pipe-collecting, or just gaming, they get eccentric. But in the other communities, the eccentricity will not take the extremes of social retardation you will find in the "nerd/fandom" communities (not just gaming but anime fandom, scifi, etc), because in those other communities such an extreme would be deemed unacceptable.

I'm quite familiar with academic institutions and I practice Qigong. You are simply exaggerating the relative functionality of those communities.

Lastly, your attempt to silence dissent is noted; nice tactic implying that anyone who dares to argue we need less catpiss men is probably a catpiss man, but I think that its quite acceptable and even desperately nescessary to demand that there be certain basic standards of hygene and self-control in roleplaying, and I'm pretty confident in my social abilities.

Yes. They all say that, you see. You're just a bunch of pixels from a server, as far as I'm concerned. I have no guarantor of your conduct, good or bad. The thing is, though, that I don't feel the need to really find out and come up with the appropriate hue and cry, because your habits are irrelevant to me. So it is with anyone I won't be gaming with.

On the contrary, I would say that while those who try to dodge the issue and pretend that there isn't a catpiss man problem are suffering from the geek social fallacy, those who try to actively attack people who demand social standards in gaming are almost certainly catpiss men themselves. That supposition seems a lot more logical than yours.

Well no, Nisarg, I just don't think it's anybody's business. To put it in starry vulgarity: I don't give a f***. I game with my friends. I don't game with people I don't like, whether it's because they're stinky, cheaters, dumb, or like George W. Bush. Hell, if they don't care for the EBM our group normally uses for game soundtracks, can't succinctly describe Gnosticism, parse Rick Mercer references or wing dialogue, they'll probably meet the door.

And you know what? It bothers me not one whit that there are Cat Piss Men. They're in every hobby. I don't bother with them. I don't even bother with people who aren't CPMs who I just don't feel like gaming with or talking to.

Thus, the idea of "enforcing standards" strikes me as an ill-witted escapade that I associate with poorly socialized people desperately looking for some form of camouflage. I don't care about standards that apply to people I will never interact with in any way. I have no need to describe and enforce universal standards.

It's lame.

 

[Incenjucar]

More proof that gamers aren't that pathetic: D&D and related subjects just got me a fifteen minute conversation with a nice, attractive young woman, that looked like it only stopped at my door because I didn't invite her in. Which reminds me, I need to get some refreshments in my dorm...

Yay gamer grrrlz.