Are gamers really that pathetic?

[dreaded_beast]

I think it would sound like you were attracted to white women. Not without some reason too. I've noticed that plenty of white women are attractive.

dreaded_beast, it's either offensive to you that he likes Asian women or it isn't. I don't think his own ethnicity should matter.

Just sayin' is all.

Apologizes for going off-topic.

I will leave it at that.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Nisarg,

I believe your experience is contrary to the statistics.

Aaron.

Must be mine is, too. In order to actually enjoy the hobby, I had to convert a couple of my non-gaming friends into gamers, because I could no longer tolerate being in a room with all but one of the people I've ever known in real life who game. I've met more maladjusted, mouth-breathing, foul-smelling trolls via gaming than any other facet of my life, including my stint collecting comic books.

The stereotype exists for a reason. I've met far too many of them.

 

[Dogbrain]

Probably not. For example - did the article say how many gamer-males were present who didn't react that way? How many well-adjusted, washed, and otherwise capable gamers walked by, without taking more than a glance at the lady?

What is a majority of guys at the con, Alex?

But "The vast majority of men at the convention are rather normal." just doesn't make for "interesting" press, does it?

 

[Rel]

Must be mine is, too. In order to actually enjoy the hobby, I had to convert a couple of my non-gaming friends into gamers, because I could no longer tolerate being in a room with all but one of the people I've ever known in real life who game. I've met more maladjusted, mouth-breathing, foul-smelling trolls via gaming than any other facet of my life, including my stint collecting comic books.

The stereotype exists for a reason. I've met far too many of them.

So, in other words, the fact that so many of the gamers that you were familiar with proved intolerable forced you to recruit from outside the existing gaming population. That sounds like a win for the hobby from where I'm sitting.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

So, in other words, the fact that so many of the gamers that you were familiar with proved intolerable forced you to recruit from outside the existing gaming population. That sounds like a win for the hobby from where I'm sitting.

Absolutely. The post might have sounded salty, but I'm not really bitter... Anymore.

But Nisarg does have a point that by our tacit approval of a very ugly subset of the population, we are allowing those very visible people to be our representatives to the world at large.

And then we wonder why people have such negative stereotypes of gamers. :\

 

[fanboy2000]

But Nisarg does have a point that by our tacit approval of a very ugly subset of the population, we are allowing those very visible people to be our representatives to the world at large.

Eh? Approve what? It's not like it's our job to make sure everyone has a date.

[sarcasm]
What would you sugest we do? Fix-up anyone who hasn't had a date with a hooker? I know, we could have a dating service for the socialy challenged. We could set gamers up on blind dates.
[/sarcasm]

Seriously, if some's first experance touching a girl is E3, then they have personal problems that, quite frankly really arn't any of our business. I doubt game designers like Monte Cook, Gwendolyn Kestrel, Ed Greenwood, Bill Webb, or Keith Baker are going to stop designing games because some guy took his picture with a booth babe at a con. Hasbro isn't going to close down Wizards because some of their buyers didn't get a date untill they were 30.

 

[jester47]

Must be mine is, too. In order to actually enjoy the hobby, I had to convert a couple of my non-gaming friends into gamers, because I could no longer tolerate being in a room with all but one of the people I've ever known in real life who game. I've met more maladjusted, mouth-breathing, foul-smelling trolls via gaming than any other facet of my life, including my stint collecting comic books.

The stereotype exists for a reason. I've met far too many of them.

Of the people I met last weekend, and many of the others I people watched at Gen Con, my experience in the RPGA, and from gaming in my high school days, I have found that most (95%) of gamers, are regular normal people that do not fall into the sterotype.

But that is my experience. However, my experience with gamers en mass indicates to me that your disgusto-groups are statistical anomilies. But this is a conjecture based on my experience. So who knows.

Aaron.

 

[jester47]

But Nisarg does have a point that by our tacit approval of a very ugly subset of the population, we are allowing those very visible people to be our representatives to the world at large.

And then we wonder why people have such negative stereotypes of gamers. :\

I will say that I find this to be a valid point. We can exile them from our groups, but we can't really keep them from existing. And there is also the fact that the "exile point" varies from person to person. So there really is no solution. However we can take solace in the fact that most other hobbies (even sports fans, who I will point out have conventions a lot regularly then we do) have thier undesireable segments also.

Aaron.

 

[Nisarg]

Nisarg, nobody has to apply for a license in order to be a roleplayer. Therefore neither you nor I, nor anybody else is in the position of denying anybody access to the hobby, outside of the normal selection process of whether or not you wish to game with a given individual. We are also not putting in bouncers at the front of hotels where Cons are being held in order to only admit the cool people, as one might see outside a New York nightclub.

I don't see how it would in any way be healthier for the hobby to try and excluded anybody who wants to play.

I do.
If for every cat-piss man we have we lose five socially adjusted people (three of them women), I do see how it would be healthier for the hobby to not have cat-piss men in it.

And no, obviously we can't put bouncers at the entrances to conventions. But in our local gaming groups, clubs, FLGSs, etc., we can make a point of not just "tolerating" antisocial behaviour, and having the same standards in our gaming groups for hygene and behaviour that we would have in any other social environment. The Geek social fallacy is what keeps too many gamers from doing that, so they tolerate the guy that smells terrible and obviously hasn't bathed, the 30 year old guy who hits on the 16 year old girl who is at a gaming table for the first time (or the 16 year old guy, for that matter), the guy who can't stop interrupting or shouting, or who won't stop talking period, or who jumps in with wildly inappropriate comments. Too many gamers tolerate these people because they think gaming has to be "inclusive".

Inclusive doesn't mean I have to tolerate cat-piss man at my table. And if no one tolerated cat-piss man at their table, we would quickly be free of cat-piss men; they'd either leave for other fandoms that would be more "accepting" (read: enabling of their psycho-social disorders), or they would bathe and start acting their ages.

Nisarg

 

[Roman]

I am one of those 'undesirables' (BTW: That is what Hitlerites in Nazi Germany called certain ethnic and indeed also social groups they did not like, so you may want to watch what you say more carefully.). I am 22 and I have never had a girlfriend nor have I ever kissed or touched a girl. The question is, Nisarg (and others who advocate getting rid of us 'undesirables'), how the hell are you going to tell me apart from anyone else? It is not as if I wear a sign on my forehead saying "virgin at 22 - never been kissed" or something like that. You would have to ask me directly. I can just picture the DMs following your advice asking every potential player whether they have ever had a girlfriend before being accepted to the group. Even some kind of foolproof test, however, would not prevent us 'undesirables' from gaming, since the 'undesirables' could still game in each other's gaming groups. Sorry, there is no way to get rid of us unless you wish to resort to the methods of those who used the designation you give us before you.