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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ExploderWizard" data-source="post: 6252038" data-attributes="member: 66434">If this is the metric for "nasty" then I hope no one here ever has to experience REAL nastiness. Online arguments, even heated ones, barely break the unpleasantness meter, much less head down the nasty road. Most people are unable to see how crazy thier own brand of tribalism is to outsiders. A normal pleasant lengthly debate of the merits of various rpg systems seems like an engaging enjoyable experience for us, but to a non-gamer looking at all the time and thought we put into what are essentially kids games, we appear quite a bit nutty. Now escalate that debate to even a civil argument and we are full blown looneys. Oftentimes, people won't bring up what really bothers them or express true feelings until a discussion gets a bit heated up. This is the point in the conversation where the cards are on the table and meaningful exchanges can take place. It is also sadly, the point at which the subject matter is fumbled and lost in personal attacks. It is natural that our interests and outlooks, even for trivial things become part of our identities  and during the heat of discussion any assault on those interests is a personal attack. It is also safe to say that the internet magnifies any unpleasantness by a factor of 10 or more. I am rarely surprised at what someone will say from behind thier keyboard bunkers these days. In many ways it serves as a virtual consequence-free therapy. The opportunity to blurt out an unflitered stream of conciousness and just get it out is often an irresistable lure for some who have no other outlet. Overall, based on both the online and in-person interactions with quite a few members of the gaming community I would say that we are actually quite decent to each other as a whole. If we were not then the incidents of unpleasantness wouldn't be so noteworthy.</blockquote>

Verification