D&D Social Stigma

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Part of it is, I think, because RPGs are a "Guy Thing". It's like sports. Or cars.

I'm half-convinced it's some old evolutionary hang-up. Maybe ancient man was really obsessed with hunting buffalo. They'd talk about it, conceptualize it, plan it out ... become more intelligent hunters because of it. Now-days we're a little low on buffalo, so other things take the place of those old obsessive survival instincts.

I'm hard pressed to think of a single guy that I've known to any degree that didn't have "something". "Following" baseball, fixing cars, wine snobs, anime collectors, people devoted to their work.

Some people get into their "thing" a little too much. There are guys who obsess over baseball, collect baseballs and cards and autographs, who join clubs and talk about baseball online for hours.

I think gamers just have a long-standing socially-stubborn bum rap. I'm trying to think of ALLLLLL the gamers that I know, and I can only really say that there are two that stand out in my mind as freaky social rejects. And that's probably about the same ratio of Regular People Who Game to Crazy People Who Game as regular "Baseball Guys" to crazy collector "Baseball Guys".

I think RPGs could use a PR guy, personally. And I think the PR needs to start in the community, as well. Gaming is just something that people DO ... like biking, playing pool, or playing X-Box. But even I have this long-held deep-seated belief that "most gamers are weirdos" ... the reality of the situation just doesn't wash, though.

--fje

 

[eyebeams]

Stigmas only fall away from hobbies that are getting more popular, not less.

 

[stevelabny]

It's been my experience that the ones who are the loudest and most outspoken about being gamers are usually the same ones who perpetuate the negative stereotypes.

Possibly. But as I previously stated, there's a BIG difference between making it a crusade, and making it a conversation. I am NOT suggesting being loud and outspoken. I'm suggesting being NORMAL. For example:

Sunday, the gaming group I run finished our almost 2 year , 1st-20th levl campaign. After we finished, we showed up to a non-gamer friends house for a BBQ. Late. Other friends of this friend were there. These included a "normal" looking couple and a small pack of gay guys. As we started stuffing our faces, I mentioned that we were late because our d&d game ran long. I didn't go on some long rant about why d&d is acceptable, I didn't ask everyone there if they wanted to play. I just mentioned that that's what *I* had just been doing. The same way I've previously said "I was at the zoo" or "I was at a baseball game" or "I was with the gf's family" Because playing d&d is just as normal as any of those activities.

At the BBQ we also discussed movies, tv shows, the new nyc subway bag-searches, the possibility of making my backyard habitable, baseball and food. Then we sat down to play poker.
I'm sitting next to the "normal" guy while we were playing poker, and he mentioned that he plays Warhammer and we started talking about gaming in general.

See...my casual mention of d&d as something I do, led to his admitting that hey, he games too. And led to a whole discussion. Did everyone else at the party do the same? no. Did I bore them? no. But now I know that the next time I see this guy, we can talk about gaming again, and who knows, maybe possibly we can one day game together.

Same thing can happen with ANY hobby. When I mentioned movies, I found out the movie tastes of almost everyone at the party. When I mentioned baseball, I found out which people weren't baseball fans, and which people were.

When I mentioned that I'm a Buffy and Angel fanboy at a prior BBQ this summer to a friend's brother's girlfriend, did she mock me for being a geek? No, she got me some Buffy-swag from her job at the local tv station. conversation = free stuff.

The more I read threads like this, the more I'm convinced that people just don't know how to talk. They either think everything they do is "personal" or think that everything they say is going to be a target for ridicule or a fight. But if you don't TALK to people, you don't find the others who SHARE your interests.

What I really want to know is...how did you guys (you guys = those who dont talk about their interests) make any friends? Do you still hang out with the same people you met when you were in school? Do you spend months working with someone before you dare ask what they have planned for the weekend?

And if you talk about all your interests except for d&d, then you're proving my point that you are the reason the stigma still exists.

 

[fusangite]

I think some people are stumbling over a statistical argument buried in here. Stereotypes come not from who constitutes the majority of a community but rather from what groups are over-represented in that community when compared with mainstream society.

The stereotype of gamers are socially inept men with eating disorders comes not from the fact that these people constitute the majority of the hobby but rather from the fact that they represent a significantly larger percentage of the D&D community than they do of society at large. At no point do these people have to become the majority in order to create a stereotype.

 

[haakon1]

Move. If you live where I do (Redmond, WA, hometown of Microsoft), there's so many geeks per capita, D&D's not that weird. If you say you play D&D, people here are more likely to say, "Oh yeah? Like with the funny dice and all? I didn't know people still did that. You should try World of Warcraft", rather than: "Back, evil blasphemer!". Similar effect in Silicon Valley or Austin, TX, I'm sure.

Or you could live in NYC or San Francisco or London or parts of stoic New England (even small towns), which are socially "liberal" in the sense of not really giving a . . . what anybody does. SCA? Dress up like cartoon characters? Whatever, it's your business, we don't care.

By contrast, I'd stay away from places where they think dinosaurs and cave men lived together 4000 years ago, 'cause Jesus is the best philosopher . . . :\

 

[Aeson]

Actually, I erred...it's a GE ad. (I misremembered.)

It's still being run; your best bet for seeing it is on one of the Sunday morning news shows (Face the Nation, Meet the Press, etc.); that's where I've seen it. There's a 30-second and a 60-second version of the ad; only the :60 has the PHB scene in it, though both versions are pretty cute.

- Mike, your friendly neighborhood advertising guy, who's also a game geek (and is pretty open about it. )

I guess I need to keep an eye out for it.

 

[haakon1]

GE Commercial

I'd say in some places the stigma might eventually vanish if local news and other media didn't keep it alive. Take the commercial where the geek is giving the supermodel a copy of the PHB. Nice and funny, esp to see the PHB on national TV, but look at the commercial again: the guy portrayed is still a geek and the viewer is not supposed to take it seriously that he's actually dating this women, etc. The commercial is using (a technical term I don't remember the name for, but it involves using radically juxtaposed images for comedic effect).

I liked that commercial a lot, and thought it was a positive image. The voiceover said he was professor of nanotechnology, and he kinda looked like Bill Gates. The punch line of it was that the new GE appliances were "a marriage of brains and beauty".

So, they are associating geekiness and brains with D&D. I don't have a problem with that stereotype. There are indeed more nerds than jocks in D&D games I've played in, though of course there's some of each, and people who are both.

 

[haakon1]

Fair enough, magnet-boy, but that brings us back to your 3rd point. In all seriousness, to what degree is this issue one that predominates in the USA? It seems to me that the majority of posts confirming the sterotype seem to refer to experiences in that country.

As an American who lived in the UK for 3 years, I'd say I never got flak about it there. But it's pretty rare for people to care in the US either. I think, as with most things, most people don't really know what is or care.

 

[Rel]

One thing that I've observed that I doubt is particular to me is the fact that I have gotten much less "disapproval" regarding my gaming hobby as I've gotten older than I did as a kid. I live in the american south and I encountered a bit of religiously based anti-D&D sentiment as I was growing up. But I got a lot of religiously based anti-drinking, smoking and sex sentiment as I was growing up too.

I think that many adults naturally seek to provide guidance (even if it turns out to be misguidance) to the youths they encounter. Whereas they wouldn't dream of trying to dictate what another adult would do, they view children as a "work in progress" and in many ways they are correct. So when my friends and I were that age we would not talk about our D&D hobby around others for fear of getting a lecture from some adult or other. And it certainly wasn't the coolest thing in the world to discuss with the high school girlfriends.

As I got older, I came to understand that there was nothing inherently wrong with my gaming hobby and if people didn't like it that was fine. I wasn't forcing them to play it. If they voiced their opinion in mild terms, like "D&D? I've heard it was kind of addictive..." then I'd reply in a similar tone: "Well, it certainly addicted me to reading. I've probably read tens of thousands of pages of history and literature as a direct result of my hobby." And if a conversation strikes up from there, fine. If they choose to be nasty about it then I can be nasty too.

Mainly I've learned that the person in charge of me is me. As a result I'm a lot more confident about speaking my mind now than when I was a kid. I think that confidence comes through when I occasionally talk about my hobby, what I enjoy about it and the tangible benefits I've realized from its pursuit. I think that people are less likely to try and attack or condemn me because they sense that I'm not easily cowed. And I'm most certainly not beholden to them.

That is not to say that I'm an "in your face" type of gamer. Quite the opposite. I have to deal with a lot of different people by virtue of my job and I'm routinely told that I'm fairly charming and personable. But that doesn't mean that I let people push me around. If the topic of gaming comes up in some fashion then I'm happy to discuss or even defend it if necessary.

I don't evangelize about gaming but I'm certainly not ashamed of it. Whether that "advances the cause" of the hobby, I don't know and I don't care. I'm not the ambassador of gaming. I'm the ambassador of me.