Are gamers really that pathetic?

[Crothian]

BTW, Crothian, when you told your CPM he could not game with you, did you tell him why?

Yes I did. I told him his hygene was bad and myself and my group just didn't want to be around with someone with that bad of hygene. I told him in person and he just stodd there not saying anything so I walked away.

 

[Crothian]

So if I have a fungal infection in my foot I should be shown the door so I don't degrade the image of the hobby ?

Yes, that is exactly what we are saying. When we say people who don't bathe and who's hygene is horrible what we really mean is a small fungal infenction on their foot.

Actually, I'm talking about more extreme cases. Now if you take you shoe and shock off to shove your infected foot in people's faces to show them, I'd have a problem with that. But otherwise it'd be fine.

 

[Lichtenhart]

Good. I hope that shocked him enough to change his ways.
Poor CPM, for the rest of his life he'll have to think he could have been gaming with Crothian now.

 

[Crothian]

Good. I hope that shocked him enough to change his ways.
Poor CPM, for the rest of his life he'll have to think he could have been gaming with Crothian now.

Truthfully I doubt it did. Hygene was not his biggest problem, but hopefully he was able to straighten out his life.

 

[Kalanyr]

Yes, that is exactly what we are saying. When we say people who don't bathe and who's hygene is horrible what we really mean is a small fungal infenction on their foot.

Actually, I'm talking about more extreme cases. Now if you take you shoe and shock off to shove your infected foot in people's faces to show them, I'd have a problem with that. But otherwise it'd be fine.

This is fair enough. I'm just wondering how you tell Bad Hygeine apart from such things, since when I did have a fungal infection I really wasn't about to tell people about, the second paragraph in your answer illustrates why (and I seriously wouldn't blame anyone for a bad response to that).

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

snip

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

Actually, I think you have the flow of my argument somewhat confused.

The question I was responding to is why the idea of moving out of the house early as adults works for Americans. Not why the idea came to be, so I wasn't looking to unearth a history so much as what the idea does and is supported by.

And I never argued that the real estate industry is funding people on these boards to attack live at homers, just that people moving out young is a pretty important factor in

Americans probably value their own children as much as any human beings do, but it would be hard to walk down the street with a child in Italy and a child in America and claim that American culture as a whole values the presence of children as much as Italians do. In Italy people carry candy around to give to children, such a reaction is much rarer in Americans and children are frequently complained about as an intrusion in the public sphere.

But that is niether here nor there, my point was particularly on Adult children in the home or even near the home. That it seems is a given in this debate, and it is specifically what I was referring to me.

In terms of marriage, you also notice that I mentioned cohabitation. Moving out of the house supports both patterns. Even if there are other cultures that get married earlier, you cannot deny that leaving the parental home plays a huge part in most patterns of American courtship, whether it's getting married young as people do here or moving into a home with an SO and getting married late as people do elsewhere. Or just having a crib you can mack down with a hottie at. Any way you shake it, courtship is seen as hinging on a seperate home.

Again, not a case of how this came to be, just one part of the case of how this is.

In terms of the American parents, I might have been clearer there, I meant that American parents, as a group, are not as easy to good to live with as Italian parents. Everyone seems to have agreed on that point.

You can certainly be a divorced set of parents and contribute to your childrens' lives and society very effectively, it would be difficult to argue, however, that you would be functional for creating an extended family in a single residence.

I worked very hard on the fractious point to state exactly what I meant. Americans are not more fractious in that they have an inherently different human nature, they are more fractious in that they express the divisive aspect of human nature differently. Sectarianism, for instance, is a very big deal in other nations, but American protestants switch churches with great frequency and little fuss. I'm not saying it's not there, just that it is uniquely expressed. Similarly, in America neighborhoods associate based on different principles than they do in other nations.

Now, that difference is very intertwined with the way our real estate market works and I don't know that a strictly linear relationship between the market and the attitude can be defined.

But either way, the idea that coming to live in the Shady Oaks division says a lot about the values you hold certainly would contribute to the idea that making a choice for where you choose to live would be a part of the general adult decisions to pick your own values.

Mind you I would not deny that neighborhoods work differently in cities like Chicago, but even there choosing to live on the Gold Coast says a lot more about you than where your family is from, in fact it probably doesn't say where your family is from if you are above a certain age. Which is the point.

You have my reasoning wrong on the wonky bit. People were moving out of their parents homes at a fairly early age since WWII. Earlier that and it's a good bit more complicated.

The universal, in so far as we've characterized it, negative reaction to people living with their parents comes a bit later. Before 1950 I've heard or seen living at home referred to as a curiousity, but not as a sign of idiocy, though idiocy would certainly be an explanation.

As the reality of the difficulty of moving out increases, the behaviour of moving at home is going to attract more attention, and much of that attention is going to be negative.

If you're big into mimetism or even general rhetorical theory, you might argue that the idea is working to defend itself, but I'm not making that argument here.

I would point out that much popular wisdom is pretty wonky in it's own right, and that when the Gen Xer reputation for slacking was discussed it was often discussed in light of the fact that they had a higher rate of living at home. The idea that the fact that more people were living at home might have something negative to say about the idea that slacking=living at home was not explored.

Very:
"You're a slacker because you are living at home, and you are living at home because you are a slacker."

Voila, circularity insues.

I hope this explanation explains some of what I was trying to do, though I might add that I was deliberatley ignoring explanations like, 'it's a part of the American dream,' or, 'cause of our pioneer heritage,' not because I think they are irrelevant, though that is possible, but because I thought a more material explanation would be more interesting to an audience that would ask such a question in the first place.

Plus, those explanations had already been discussed.

Personally, I do think that the living at home=slacker trope is pretty flawed, and that is because I have known Italians. If you live at home and you are as gentle, gracious, and good natured as the Italians I have known and liked then you are welcome at my gaming table any day of the week.

Ditto with unemployment. I got no call to be down on a person who is pleasant to game with just cause they don't make the money I do. Same with someone who makes a lot more money than I do.

The problem with CPM is not that he lives at home or has no job, the problem is that he smells of cat urine and hits on 16 year olds.

Or at least, those strike me as the real problems of the many that have been mentioned thus far.

Now whether moving away from home young is a good idea or not is a subject for another thread, but it does seem like an explanation of the behaviour is necessary for understanding how it entered this thread as unusual, much less a problem, in the first place.

Also, and this wasn't in the above post, but for the record, Turks are not Arabs, and Islam is a religion not a culture. Using the marriage customs of a Lebannese population to comment on Turkish customs is like using Italian customs to comment on Mexican ones. Yeah, they're both Catholic and their histories are intertwined way back when, but they live in completely different places and have very different societies.

It's not necessarily a relevant point, the argument wasn't meant to be one over Turkish religion just a demonstration of the way home owning and courtship can interact not a counter-example, but it's just something that's important to know.

And again, I didn't mean to comment on Parenting in Americans just the suitability of said parents, again as a general group, for encouraging people to live with them. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

 

[Nisarg]

Then the people who own these stores need to take action or other people who shop there need to complain to the owners. I've refused to shop at storeds who had bad customer service, and we've had threads here complaining about how bad customer service is not that uncommon. Perhaps people need to ban together to help in this area.

Absolutely, and part of that banning together is not seeing the FLGS as "evil capitalists" for expecting and holding up certain rules of behaviour in their store. They aren't oppresive evil profiteerers just because they don't want you shouting about "raping everyone in the halfling village" in their retail space.

Nisarg

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

If you're big into mimetism or even general rhetorical theory, you might argue that the idea is working to defend itself, but I'm not making that argument here.

Please don't. Mimetics makes my teeth itch.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Please don't. Mimetics makes my teeth itch.

yeah, in general it's an odd sort of idea, but I do like Neal Stephenson books so it can't be all terrible.

It does strike me as pretty unnecessary given how well the humanities deal with these issues, but I suppose if you don't want the humanities you'd need something like this to cover the ground.

Back to Topic:

I agree that game stores should feel free to regulate the environment. I, for one, am particularly appalled that anyone should think or be allowed to think that a gaming store is an appropriate environment for any sort of flirting.

I have to say that I prefer stores that keep the actual role-playing in a more out of the way corner.

Not that I think that it's a shameful activity, but it is sort of intimate, more so than chess or bridge, in that it requires a fairly high level of interaction between the people involved.

Having it out in front of the register, even the role-playing is respectable or interesting, creates this odd sort of social obstacle you have to work around to get any business done.

Card and board games present the same sort of, this is an active and fun - in a gamist sort of way - feel without making you feel like your intruding on people's attentions.

Though, I have to say one of my favorite raised eyebrow moments in a game store involved a session of illuminati and one of the players saying, "...and the lawngnomes will attempt to destroy Britain..."