Are gamers really that pathetic?

[Lichtenhart]

Personally, it was my own discomfort. I moved back in after my divorce, at about 26 or so. I stayed in school and finished a few months later. Since I was done with school and had a decent job I really wanted to get out on my own. My parents were great, and I know I can always go back if I need to. But you feel like you're not a real independant person, making your way in the world, living with your parents at that late age.

What screams independence about you and your parents paying two rents when you could help them pay only one, and put the money away to help your sons study too? Did your parents rent your room to someone else while you were away? Otherwise it's just a waste to me.

I don't understand and I guess I'll have to go buy a klingon costume.

Wow, this sounds like advice someone's mom would give; "don't worry if they call you nerd, honey, just tell them your mom said nerd means cool!".

Yea.. that won't get your head dunked in a toilet...

If it's normal for nerds to have their head dunked in the toilet, that I can probably see why there is so many (according to you) people who don't wash, and in general want nothing to do with your society.
If that kind of violence is accepted and mainstream, than the society's problems are much worse than even the cat piss man's problems.

And, for the record, a tiny percentage of nerds will, due to some invention or innovation, get astoundingly rich.
The vast vast majority will not, because any career ambitions they may have will be stymied by a lack of social graces. In this culture the guy with 18 Cha is far more likely to end up making millions than the guy with 18 Int.
Those who "don't fit in" will have a lot of trouble being able to play well with others in the business world, will not be able to interact with their superiors well, will not be able to lead their inferiors well, and no matter how smart they might be will not get very far.

Like I'd said before in the thread, one of the symptoms of the socially handicapped gamer is a chronic inability to keep even the most menial of jobs. In my old gaming group in Canada (average age of about 26-27) there were plenty of times when I was the only one of two out of seven people who had a regular job, and the only other guy who did had been a McDonald's employee for the past 7 years (without ever making manager, though he constantly claimed he was "about to get that promotion"); of the rest some were just plain unemployed, some were chronic students, one was in a prolonged process of suing his old place of work for a fraudulent claim while making zero effort to look for new work, and a few were the type that would get a minimum-wage job they thought was "cool" until a few weeks later it got "boring" and they got fired, usually for missing shifts. These guys were all "nerds", and I'd bet they all had well above-average intelligence if one was to test them. And yet.. no big million-dollar futures for them.

Three simple questions:
1) Were they happy with their lives? If they were, why should they change their ways?
2) Who are you to judge? Where goes one's freedom if not getting the job you think they should have means they're useless idiots?
3) They were the only people you could find to game with? and then you tell me that there are less gamers in Europe than America? At the last Vampire larp I went there were 140 players and 20 masters. In a city of 150,000 inhabitants. My town counts 5,000 inhabitants, and I have gamed with 18 different persons that I can remember on spot. If should really think about it, probably more would came to my mind. That means about 3 different parties to game with at any time, and I say again, in a town of 5,000 inhabitants. Plenty of choice to me if you ask. You really couldn't find anything better?

 

[Elf Witch]

um, yes.. and that's a perfect example of a fandom that was once relatively mainstream that slowly got absorbed by the freak kingdom.

In the early and mid-to-late seventies, Star Trek fans were normal people in every sense of the word, who just really loved the series. There were a few really wierd people in there, some social misfits, but for the most part you had just as many men as women, you had old people, you had kids, you had familiest, etc etc.
But slowly, the number of freaks started increasing, more and more, and no one did anything to stop it, they were tolerated.. but people who were uncomfortable with this freakiness slowly started "dropping out" of Trek fandom. They left the scene, only to be replaced with more freaks.
By the present day, Trek fandom is solidly in the freak kingdom.. you can't see a reference in pop culture to Star Trek without it being derogatory, implying Trekkies are wierd, socially malajusted, perpetual virgins, slightly insane, and not good people to be around.
Its only the largeness of Star Trek that saves it, that there are still a great deal of normal people who watch ST, without being "Trekkies".



Nisarg

There are no more freaks now then there were in the 70s. I have been in trek fandom since then and I have found it to be about the same the only thing that really changes is the make of the uniforms that certain fans make.

Let me clue you in on something about SF fans they had the first con in the 40s and even back then they were sterotyped as bespectecled weak freaks who couldn't get a date if their life depended on it. This image of a maladjusted smart nerd living in his parents basement was around in the 40 long before gaming ever was thought of.

The sterotype has always been here and you know why because some people find it easier to sterotype. For example a person who learns klingon and likes to dress in costume for events and likes to practice with a bathleth is a maladjusted freak right? Just because he also happens to have a wife two kids and is a neonatalogist saving thousands of premature babies every year. But if you saw him at a con in full costume in character you would not know all those other facts about him.

As for trek having a lot of freaks in it are you aware that Starfleet one of the biggest clubs raises a lot of money for charity?

Everything you are saying has been said many times before by others it is nothing new. Like I said before I think a lot of this is worry that you will be judged this way for being in this hobby.

 

[Incenjucar]

It also has zero to do with nerddom. I worked retail at a drugstore for three and a half years (Only got out of there two weeks ago, in fact), while working may way up through some college credits. While there was a semi-nerdish floor manager (In that he knew computers in-depth so that he could play games on them), and a definate number of geeks (like the guy who was a film major but wasn't actually planning on leaving the retail store any time soon), the majority of people who were stuck there are, gasp, average joes. And, while I did know a few fallen nerds in the town (Guy who got the highest SAT scores in the state at one point was at McDonalds last I saw him... and HE actually had drive, just not enough ego), most people with a brain in their head just outright left after high school for bigger and better things. ...which is why the town was so bloody dead for people to hang out with all those years... *grumbles*

The point is, whether someone falls doesn't have that much to do with whether or not they're a nerd. It's that whole "I will" versus "IQ" thing. The first matters more, and any sector of society can have it; though I wager part of the reason 'jocks' instinctively pick on 'nerds' is because of awareness of the nasty synergy confidence and intelligence gets later on in life. Good way to smash the competition; make them so introverted and afraid of the world that they won't even bother.

 

[Elf Witch]

I had a friend who used to get flack for living at home. Come on you are 25 you have a good job why don't you move out get your own place. I was one of the few who knew the real reason was because her father was a gambler and it was her salary keeping a roof over her younger siblings heads, but since she didn't say anything except to her closest friends people assumed that she was taking advantage of her parents.

Since you don't always know what goes on in someones private life maybe it is not such a great idea to be so quick to judge.

As for people who have low paying jobs maybe they are underemployed because of emotional or mental illness and it is keeping them from fulfilling their potential. I don't see what someone's job has to do with their ability to game. Or are you actually saying that only people in a certain income bracket should be allowed to game? :\

If someone is doing something that offends you at the table then talk to them it is that simple if it gets to annoying talk to the group. If yhe problem can't be solved ask the person to leave or you leave the group.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

You can't just not be a nerd, you also have to fight for what's good about being a nerd.

Note this comment:

Would that be Jason the Ubernerd, the one who enjoys doing homework and taking tests, and everyone else in his class despises?

Yes, he's clearly a great example of a positively-presented roleplayer.

Nisarg

So Jason is a dilligent, curious, individualist, and that's the sort of person we don't want to be role-playing?

Actually:

Jason is cruel, petty, vinidicative, and prefers crushing his fellow students and siblings to honestly playing with them or helping them to appreciate what he loves.

But this is not what Nisarg and most critics will point out. Because by having those positive traits Jason is already a nerd, because the negative traits are a given. And that's not Jason or Nisarg's fault that's the way any stereo-type works. You take a set of good elements and bad elements and associate them with each other because the point of a stereo-type is to prevent the norm, with its faults and virtues, from being challenged.

To do the best sort of good you have to take Nisarg's advice and act contrary to the bad parts of a stereo-type...

...but you also have to defend what's good about it.

Go out and become more beautiful than the average man, be Buffy, but if you do that then defend what's cool about being Spock.

Because yeah it's wrong for a man to not keep up with his hygiene, but it's worse for a man to attack a kid, even a fictional kid, for doing his homework.

 

[Incenjucar]

Because yeah it's wrong for a man to not keep up with his hygiene, but it's worse for a man to attack a kid, even a fictional kid, for doing his homework.

Very well said.

As for the rest of it, that's part of what I've been trying to do lately (I've become a big fan of championing odd causes over the last several years... ).

Alas, it's expensive as heck. Between the hair gel, and all the soap I use in my two-a-day minimum showers (helps that I live in a dorm and have an hour-long power walk every night, in a fricking overheated city), all the deoderant I apply (to the point where I've learned that too much changes your skin color...), the conditioner to keep my locks healthy (and since it's between "Solid Snake" and "Aragorn" right now.. that's a lot of goop...) the sun screen I use because I look better pale...

Now I know why so many nerds are unkempt -- they use all that money on D&D books instead.

Maybe there should be a fundraiser for "Nerd Beautification"...

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

What screams independence about you and your parents paying two rents when you could help them pay only one, and put the money away to help your sons study too? Did your parents rent your room to someone else while you were away? Otherwise it's just a waste to me.

These are excellent points, Lichtenhart, and most studies will point out the advantages of your perspective, particularly from an economic stand point.

Italians are famed even in America for having very high rates of home ownership and the sort of practice you discuss above, when imported to America with Italian families, is often given a great deal of credit when trying to explain the meteoric rise of Italian immigrants into the American middle class.

I, obviously, agree with this point of view, though I live with the American one. One of the great joys I took in meeting some Italian friends of mine the other day is that there was none of the anxiety I sometimes feel when explaining where I live and how I got there.

That said, I will try to give you some hard reasons, Lichtenhart, for why the prejuidice against adults living with their parents is so ingrained.

There are advantages to the American emphasis on seperating from one's parents:

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.

Second, puting greater pressure on getting out into the world, even if it means living at a much lower 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.

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.

Third, American culture is very fractious. As Joshua pointed out earlier, human beings are generally divisive, but Americans don't harbor settled divisions. Instead, the culture as a whole favors quick and shallow, but nonetheless incredibly heartfelt divisions. As a result, neighborhoods are not something you are born into or live in so much as choose based on the advertised lifestyle of the neighborhood and how chimes with your self-construction and economic possibilities.

As a result, moving into one's own home is very frequently seen as the first step into the self-decision and actualization that characterizes adulthood.

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. Theories about why this shift is occuring are many and range from:

-high divorce rates create a new need for hearth and home to
-changes in the labor market

regardless of why it is happening, the general tendency in the face of this shift will be for the issue to gain much more attention with much to most of it being negative as the culture tries to prevent the general trend from backsliding.

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 and probably have some unpleasant consequences for the labor market as well.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

What screams independence about you and your parents paying two rents when you could help them pay only one, and put the money away to help your sons study too? Did your parents rent your room to someone else while you were away? Otherwise it's just a waste to me.

These are excellent points, Lichtenhart, and most studies will point out the advantages of your perspective, particularly from an economic stand point.

Italians are famed even in America for having very high rates of home ownership and the sort of practice you discuss above, when imported to America with Italian families, is often given a great deal of credit when trying to explain the meteoric rise of Italian immigrants into the American middle class.

I, obviously, agree with this point of view, though I live with the American one. One of the great joys I took in meeting some Italian friends of mine the other day is that there was none of the anxiety I sometimes feel when explaining where I live and how I got there.

That said, I will try to give you some hard reasons, Lichtenhart, for why the prejuidice against adults living with their parents is so ingrained.

There are advantages to the American emphasis on seperating from one's parents:

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.

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.

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.

Third, American culture is very fractious. As Joshua pointed out earlier, human beings are generally divisive, but I don't so much refer to settled divisions of race, class, and ethnicity as I do to constructed differences of lifestyle, interests, and opinion. In Italy, for instance, it would be largely unheard of for a congregation to split its resources and membership over relatively minor theological differences, yet this is a given of American religious life. As a result, neighborhoods are not something you are born into or live in so much as choose based on the advertised lifestyle of the neighborhood and how that chimes with your self-construction and economic possibilities. You don't live in the neighborhood you grew up in or have an attachment to, you live in the neighborhood for young urban hipster or the neighborhood for up and coming corporate employees or the nieghborhood that you can afford that has the sort of crime and social life you're willing to tolerate or enjoy.

As a result, moving into one's own home is very frequently seen as the first step into the self-decision and actualization that characterizes adulthood.

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. Theories about why this shift is occuring are many and range from:

-high divorce rates create a new need for hearth and home to
-changes in the labor market

regardless of why it is happening, the general tendency in the face of this shift will be for the issue to gain much more attention with much to most of it being negative as the culture tries to prevent the general trend from backsliding.

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.

 

[Nisarg]

If it's normal for nerds to have their head dunked in the toilet, that I can probably see why there is so many (according to you) people who don't wash, and in general want nothing to do with your society.
If that kind of violence is accepted and mainstream, than the society's problems are much worse than even the cat piss man's problems.

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.

That said, and given as stipulated that society has a lot of changing to do, there is no question that any individual in that situation needs to learn how to be social, how to be able to interact with society, for their own good and society's. Its unfortunate if some people do not somehow get that lesson in adolescence, but it does not exclude them from still having to learn it in later adulthood.

3) They were the only people you could find to game with? Plenty of choice to me if you ask. You really couldn't find anything better?

Let me clear up that the guys I were describing were NOT cat-piss men, they all did have a sufficient degree of social capacity to be good gamers, and they all were very good gamers. My posting of their example was not in reference to that, but to nerds.. you can be a nerd without being a "catpiss man". I was specifically responding, in that post, to the argument that being a nerd automatically means you will end up "making wads of dough" or having a bright career future.

Nisarg

 

[Lichtenhart]

*snip*

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.