Ashamed of being a Gamer?

[DrunkonDuty]

I don't discuss RPGs at work. Then again, I'm not very social at work. And when I do chat with co-workers I try to keep it light and on topics we can all contribute to. This means I usually talk about work, the weather, how bad my hangover is.

At home and among friends I'm pretty open. I don't make it my first topic of conversation when I meet someone for the first time. But I've got plenty of stupid geeky stuff lying around, including a shelf full of gaming books so any visitors will quickly work it out.

But I prefer to describe myself as a "massive nerd" without going into details of RPGs. Frankly, it just takes too much explaining what the hell they are.

cheers.

 

[Nytmare]

It's odd, we were just having this conversation over at KOL not even an hour ago.

I walked into an Enterprise Rent-a-car yesterday and stumbled into a game in progress between the employees. I was amazed and blurted out an "Oh my god, are you guys playing D&D?!" and the players turned as one and leveled a look at me that made my stomach drop.

It was only as the overly excited DM ran up to the counter to help me and chew my ear for a half hour that I realized that he must have been torturing his non-gamer coworkers for about a week and that he just didn't understand or realize that a fairly large chunk of the universe does not, and will not give a crap about your hobbies, no matter how much you try to convince them that they're going to freaking LOVE those green eggs and ham.

I am a gamer. Am I embarrassed by that? No.

BUT, there are a lot of time that I'm embarrassed by other gamers.

...Actually, no. Let me rephrase that. I am a loud and obnoxious person, and I am embarrassed by other loud and obnoxious people who don't know how to reign it in when they are in public; and unfortunately, in the circles that I run in, 95% of those people are gamers.

Sitting in a restaurant, or on a crowded bus, or in the lobby of an Enterprise Rent-a-car, having to listen to someone recount, round for freaking round, and in a booming get-it-to-the-back-row-of-the-auditorium voice, how last week he marched to King Dwarfhammer's castle and murdered 27 orcs and one of them was riding on a dire wolf and he got three crits on the dire wolf, so they decided that meant that he cut off it's head, so then he made its head into a helmet...

I don't want to sit through that conversation under any circumstances; but especially not in a place where it's going to be mistaken for the unmedicated rantings of a mental patient.

Professionally, I travel in a lot of different circles, and a lot of them lean very heavily towards "artsy" or "geeky" so I can usually get away with people knowing my dirty little secret. That being said however, I do not advertise, and I make sure that I keep a separate online presence for the people who don't really know me.

I am not a public figure, but there are times where my job makes me pretend to be one. A lot of what I do relies on a facade that's two parts politician and one part rock star, and having someone google my name and email address and tie me to a hobby they deem as socially unacceptable could be disruptive.

The center piece of my house is the game room. There's a huge, custom built game table that dominates the room. The walls are lined with bookshelves that have a couple of hundred board games and RPGs on them. Most of my work friends have never been past my front door.

I'm not embarrassed about being a gamer, but I know that some things will be easier if people don't know.

 

[DMKastmaria]

I've never done the "Gamer Shame" thing.

And while I realize that some folks are in delicate and unfair positions, in general, if you go around acting all furtive and ashamed about what you're doing, you can hardly be surprised when others choose to agree with you.

 

[Cor Azer]

Not ashamed one whit.

But I also have enough sense to not deluge disinterested folks with the minutia of my life. Folks I interact with regularly know I game, but unless they ask for clarification (ie, show interest), that's about where it stops.

 

[OnlineDM]

I started another thread on this topic a year and a half ago, which I resurrected six months later. This was also related to a pair of blog posts.

I, too, work in finance, where I haven't met a lot of gamers. I have met a couple, however, and it helped. I found out that they were gamers when I talked about arranging a work trip to Indianapolis in 2011 so that I could have my plane ticket to GenCon covered by my company. The guy who arranged events for me to speak at turned out to be a gamer, too.

Since then, I've become much more open about my hobby. I don't go out of my way to advertise it and recruit co-workers to game, but I no longer have any fear about "letting it slip". I like to play role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons. I guess I'm a senior enough person in the company now that people aren't going to berate me for whatever I'm into.

 

[DMKastmaria]

Not ashamed one whit.

But I also have enough sense to not deluge disinterested folks with the minutia of my life. Folks I interact with regularly know I game, but unless they ask for clarification (ie, show interest), that's about where it stops.

This should really be a given, though. I don't boor people with my love of cooking, either. But I'm not going to take off my apron, just because I have to answer the door.

Allright, I don't wear an apron when I cook, but you get the idea.

 

[Cor Azer]

This should really be a given, though. I don't boor people with my love of cooking, either. But I'm not going to take off my apron, just because I have to answer the door.

Allright, I don't wear an apron when I cook, but you get the idea.

It should be a given, but alas, one of the reasons negative stereotypes exist is because some don't have the needed common sense.

 

[Water Bob]

One thing that amazing me is that I look at US football, and it is full of rabid fans--more than that. Let's call them fanatics. They dress up and paint themselves for the game. They read books and discuss it among their friends.

It's really the same type of activity as being "into" RPGs or someone who loves Star Trek.

Yet, the former is socially acceptible among the public at large while the other two are socially frowned upon.

It's an interesting dynamic about our culture.

 

[kitsune9]

WTH? How can they legally fire you for that? Your interests away from work are of no one else's concerns but your own. Weird.

Definitely. Just like they can fire you for your pictures on Facebook, or your political affiliations, or just about any other thing if you don't mesh with the organizational culture. It's called employment at will in which a company can terminate you for any reason or reason at all so long it's not based in discrimination (your gender, age, religion, etc, etc.).

 

[wingsandsword]

WTH? How can they legally fire you for that? Your interests away from work are of no one else's concerns but your own. Weird.

Hoping to not go too far into politics for this board, generally speaking, in the US, they can fire you for (almost) any reason, at any time. It's called "at will employment".

The only illegal reasons to fire somebody if you are doing it because they are a "protected class" (Race, Color, Religion, National Origin, Age 40 or over, Sex, Disability, Veteran or Military status, or genetic information), those protections are in Federal law. Some states add some additional protections like LBGT status.

Generally speaking, in the US it's legal to fire an employee because of the car they drive, the sports team they like, if they are LBGT, what street they live on, or what they had for dinner last night. . .just as long as it's not one of the specific reasons listed above.

I'd say more about the entire system, but my commentary on that would go way far afield of this boards politics rules.