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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sniffles" data-source="post: 2973239" data-attributes="member: 30035">Gosh, you're old, Quas!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> (she remarks loftily from a perch 6 years ahead of you)  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I can't remember if I ever looked at this thread before. I think I did, but don't recall if I posted and don't feel like checking back through the whole thing to find out.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I used to have the opinion that many people seem to have that gamers are hygiene-challenged and socially inept. When I attended a SF&F convention each year I avoided the gaming room as if it contained radioactive waste, at least until my fiancee and all his buddies started obsessively playing Magic: The Gathering. Oddly, at the time I was behaving this way, I was also a gamer. I played every week. Sometimes 3 or 4 times a week. It's so easy to get into that 'us' vs. 'them' mindset.In my experience, gamers aren't any more or less socially inept or lacking in personal hygeine than the rest of the society in which they live. There are people with poor social skills in every social group. It's just that human beings remember people who make an impression on us, and bad things tend to make more vivid impressions than good things. If someone makes a bad impression by behaving strangely or being physically offensive, we're more likely to recall that than we are to recall meeting 5 nice ordinary people. Some people look at me a bit oddly when I tell them I attend a science fiction convention every year. They assume it must be a really weird place full of weird people. And it is. But they're mostly nice weird people who are fun to be with. And I always try to tell the curious that when I used to attend conventions of the Society for Photographic Education (an organization of photographers and teachers), I met the same kind of people and did the same kind of things - just not while wearing elf ears or a Klingon costume.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /></blockquote>

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