Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wonger" data-source="post: 1726943" data-attributes="member: 17516">The original topic of this thread was "are gamers that pathetic".  Specifically, as pathetic as presented in that article.If you have ever been to Gen Con, I think you have to state a resounding YES.  Yeah, there's plenty, perhaps a majority (maybe barely) of people that are perfectly "adjusted" or "normal" there.  I'd like to think I am one of them, and I've seen plenty of gamers that are.  But, unlike at a baseball game, or a day at the beach, or walking down the streets of the city - at the Con (and in our hobby) you can usually tell who isn't just by looking, after talking to them you'll know for sure, and when you glance around you can see that their numbers in the gaming community are staggeringly higher than almost any other "geek" culture (such as performance car geeks, sports geeks, gambling geeks, etc).I honestly don't understand how anyone can think otherwise.  If 10 people are standing around, 5 look like any other schmo on the street, 1 is grossly overwieght, 1 is wearing a Klingon costume, 1 looks kind of unwashed and is wearing a gawdy comic book t-shirt, 1 is wearing chain mail, and 1 is super quiet standing off to the side timidly looking at something, I'll give you one guess as to where you are: some sort of gamer/sci-fi event.  We as grown men go in a basement, speak in funny voices and play with plastic miniatures.  Things like that article are dead on!  Can you imagine if Triumph the insult dog went to Gen Con?  He wouldn't even have to try.Having said that (and I'm glad you all accept it now!), having some sort of social agenda to exclude someone from a gaming group because they are a huge dork, and therefore improve the hobby is ridiculous.  If someone wants to be a dork and are happy totally geeking out, more power too them.  Most likely, at the gaming table, they are an asset with their uber geek knowledge of the rules and their passion for the game.  Also, just as the article suggested, most nerds are really, really nice honest people.  Last year at the Con, me and my "normal" friends walked into the main hall with our uber-geek gaming buddy.  Very quickly he outpaced us and blended in - a fish in water.  He had a better time than any of us and more power to him - it was one place where he could get along famously with everyone and perhaps us "normal" gamers were the outsiders...made me want to go by a bunch of dork books just to keep up!  Of course, I was at the Con, so maybe none of us are as "normal" as we'd like to think!Cheers!</blockquote>

Verification