Dysfunctional Gamer Behaviour

[Rel]

My personal experience is this: As odious as the American High School "clique system" is, it is fairly confined to that environment. Once people enter "the real world", they find themselves exposed to (and are some degree required to get along with) a much wider variety of people in the workplace than they probably hung out with in school. As just a very brief anecdote about this, let me describe my so called "High School Reunion".

As is probably typical, our class officers were chosen for their popularity and social status, not their smarts or value as leaders. A few years later when it was time for our 5 year class reunion, they did an unimaginably poor job of organizing it. I didn't go (having heard about it only a couple of days before the event) but rumor has it that approximately 5 people out of our class of 400+ attended.

Five more years go by and it is time for our 10 year reunion. This time, they didn't even make an effort to organize it. So a few other people just sort of passed the word around among people they were still in touch with and we agreed to meet at a bar one Saturday night. This time we drew about 25-30 people, which wasn't a big improvement over the first one, but we had a great time anyway.

The surprising thing was that despite the fact that this group was from a huge variety of "cliques" we all had fun chatting with each other about our lives since high school. There were jocks, and geeks (like me), cheerleaders, stoners and every other imaginable stereotype-from-a-John-Hughes-movie that you can think of. But we got along great and everybody seemed to have a really good time.

Take that for what it's worth.

On the matter of social adeptness, especially when it comes to the opposite sex, I'll just give a few basic tips that seem so obvious that they hardly bear mention:

1) Don't be afraid to talk to a stranger. The absolute worst thing that can happen is they'll hate you and never want to see you again and they'll go back to just being another stranger and you will have lost almost nothing. The upsides can be tremendous however.

2) When you are talking to them, pay attention. Listen and HEAR what they are saying. If what they have to say isn't interesting to you, pay attention anyway. That by itself is valuable information. Look them in the eye.

3) Try and condense your thoughts into something fairly concise. Present your thoughts and then shut up and listen to their response. Use an appropriate level of tact, but I wouldn't try and disguise my views, even if they differ radically from the person to whom I am speaking. I think what I think and I'm not ashamed of it.


Like I said, those are so obvious as to be almost worthless in terms of advice.

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Ninety percent of everything is crap." Well, I guess social interactions are sort of like that in some ways. Not that most folks don't have interesting things to say (including you) but that most of what they have to say won't be interesting to you (same goes for what you have to say to them). But there will be a small subset of those people with whom you will click on one or more issues. They will become friends or lovers or just interesting people with whom you correspond. The more often you engage in those social interactions, the more often you'll get the "click".

 

[jdavis]

My personal experience is this: As odious as the American High School "clique system" is, it is fairly confined to that environment. Once people enter "the real world", they find themselves exposed to (and are some degree required to get along with) a much wider variety of people in the workplace than they probably hung out with in school.

I found that less than 6 months after I graduated from High School the whole clique system completly disappeared. People who I went to school with every day for the first 18 years of my life that never talked to me once now go out of their way to chit chat with me and find out how I am doing. Now (15 years after graduation) these very same people who tried to ignore my existance treat me like a long lost best friend. High School is a whole seperate world.

 

[Afrodyte]

a woman's perspective

A great deal of conversation has been about why gamers are unattractive to women. As a woman, I'd like to offer a few of my thoughts on that. I will be honest and say that a good deal of this could be just a bunch of hot air and me trying to rationalize something that is frankly not rational. So take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm just speaking of my perspective and my experience.

Roleplaying is one of my favorite hobbies. As such, a lot of the people I come into contact with share this interest or are at least familiar with it. Only in a very few, rare cases have I even felt a twinge of attraction toward my fellow gamers. Rather than give an extensive list of what everyone else did wrong (it varies), I'll tell you what these guys did right. It all boils down to this: respecting me as a person who has thoughts, feelings, and experiences as valid as their own. It's so simple, but so many people get it wrong.

When I had a conversation with these guys, I never felt as though they were patronizing me or being condescending. They never insulted my intelligence when I disagreed with them or used a difference of opinion or perspective as a means of judging me as a person. This made me feel comfortable around them, and I found myself being less defensive, more open and trusting.

Also, I always felt that with these guys, their decision to listen to me and value my thoughts and feelings were not based in how eager they were to sleep with me (which is often based on how I look). It's a sad realization to find that most guys only find what women have to say interesting if they see them as potential sex partners. I'm sure they don't mean to be like this, but it's how I feel, and perhaps only more positive interactions with different men would get me to believe otherwise. With the men whom I felt attracted to, I felt as though they found me interesting, intelligent, etc. without me having to flaunt my sexual availability all the time. Let me get this clear right now: I have a very high sex drive and a highly erotic imagination, so it's not a matter of not liking or wanting sex. It's about thinking that somehow my sexuality is divorced from my ability to feel, think, and imagine. As though I were a barnyard animal, more or less. This freedom from the chains of mainstream gender roles and relations I felt when I was around them relaxed me, which made me feel comfortable to feel sexual around them. I certainly didn't act on this urge (both were unavailable in this regard), but I did feel it, which is important.

When I was around them, I got the sense that while they were aware of my femininity, they did not use this to treat me as someone I am not. I was not "just one of the guys," even though I could socialize with them and game with them and talk to them. I wasn't just "the gamer chick" either. They treated me like a lady, not a flower or a hunk of meat or a disease. Or rather, I should say they were gentlemen. I didn't feel they were being courteous just because they found me attractive (which I'm sure they didn't, but that is not the point). Because of this fact alone, I think my behavior and attitude towards them was much softer than I normally am around men I find overbearing, obnoxious, and disrespectful.

Finally, we could talk about things besides gaming. We usually could relate to each other as broke college students or as people who want to work in less mainstream professions. Maybe our family lives were the same. However, we were different enough to have things to discuss and talk about. Our talks were not debates, but a genuine attempt to get to know what the other person was about. It was not an intellectual version of a fight. This relieved me to no end, and it helped me see their sexually attractive qualities.

So, it wasn't anything particular about how they looked or talked that made them attractive to me. It was all in how they treated me, and I felt they treated me as their equal. I was not a conquest or an obstacle. I was not cast into the role of sex object, mother figure, or bitch. In other words, I felt like I could be myself around them, and this made them sort of sexy to me.

 

[Rel]

So, Afrodyte, if I may summarize your post just a tad:

You are an attractive, intelligent, articulate (those last two are amply demonstrated in your last post) young woman who greatly enjoys gaming, has a high sex drive and an erotic imagination. I'd say your screen name is appropriate.

I understand that you frequently find some of the guys you encounter in gaming turning into drooling idiots who seem only interested in you sexually. And doubtlessly that is true in some cases. But, if I may offer a slightly more generous assessment, perhaps some of them are just so overwhelmed by the goddess-like ideal that you represent that they lose all sense of normal propriety and self restraint.

I'm not trying to flatter you or overstate the case here. But you are a pretty rare gem in the gaming community. Men have long done foolish and irrational things for rare gems (fighting dragons being one of the more common ones).

I'm not in any way intimating that these guys should act less than gentlemanly around you or that you are somehow "asking for it" by being their ideal. You very much deserve to be treated like a lady. But try not to judge them too harshly.

It isn't always easy to hold one's composure in the shadow of a goddess.

 

[Afrodyte]

Rel> Actually, I don't consider myself physically attractive at all. At least, not when compared to contemporary ideals of beauty. I am in no way, shape, or form the dainty little waif idealized these days, nor do I represent what some would call an Amazon. If I had to state something about myself that I'm proud of, my body wouldn't be one of them. At least, not my physique. I could say more about my eyes, hands, and lips, though.

 

[Impeesa]

Interesting discussion. The only thing I can think of to emphasize is be yourself, and tailor the presentation to the audience. Rather than being opposed, these are in fact two things that go well together, and many people would do well to remember that.

I was at a barbecue recently, put on by our faculty sponsor (I work at a summer science camp put on at the university here). There was myself, my girlfriend, three female coworkers (all early 20s, slightly older than me), one of their boyfriends, and our faculty sponsor (a chemistry prof) and his family. I mention at one point that I game - I believe I was telling funny story about my co-gamers' young child - and he (the prof) asks what kind of games. I say "D&D, rolemaster, stuff like that." I think that's the ideal reply, someone who doesn't know about it will brush it off, and someone who does gets the information he was after. So he starts talking about his favorite character. My girlfriend makes me tell the story about the infamous Button Room, my greatest moment of rat-bastardry. The others are kind of smiling and nodding politely, so conversation moves on to other topics pretty quickly. Had there been more gamers in the room, it might not have. It's a matter of reading your audience, be it one person or several, and keeping to what seems to get the best reaction. Maintain an even composure (depending on what you're doing or talking about ), and you come across as confident and interesting - you're set.

Oh, I can second another piece of advice too - take up teaching. Seriously, I've done public speaking for like 8 years (speech arts and drama - mostly poetry/prose sort of stuff), and just a few weeks of experience working with a class full of kids for an hour was still like night and day in terms of confidence speaking to people.

While I'm at it, I can confirm something else, too - fusangite isn't a social moron, just as he claims. Not that I've ever met him.. but he made an 'alternative' party into a viable choice, and that's damned impressive given the political climate around here at the time. *hides from non-political mods*

--Impeesa--

 

[Umbran]

Actually, I don't consider myself physically attractive at all. At least, not when compared to contemporary ideals of beauty. I am in no way, shape, or form the dainty little waif idealized these days, nor do I represent what some would call an Amazon.

Hm. This is probably an aside...

There's a number of strong arguments that the "contemporary ideals" as seen in media images - like that dainty little waif - have little to do with what men actually find physically attracitve, and have more to do with the media trying to construct a self-sustaining money making machine.

Few women meet that "contemporaty ideal". So, you've got a choice - either men are continually walking around dating and marrying women who they find unattractive, or that contemporary ideal doesn't mean much...

 

[talinthas]

Even the most maladjusted gamer has Passion. All it takes to be more socially adept is to learn to channel that passion into other skills.

We've all seen that poor gamer who stutters and can hardly say one sentance without sweating or looking away, and we've all seen that same dude become the mighty CronZag the Warrior King, and explode in intense moments of roleplay.

Life is just another session of the game. I used to be indrawn and totally shy. It didnt help that i was also indian in a predominantly white area. The only way i changed was to realise that my talents as a gamer and orator could be applied to the real as well as the imagined. See, i used to be very quiet, but at the same time, when something struck my fancy, i exploded like a smoldering coal exposed to gasoline. Dragonlance for instance, made me become a different person. Soon though, i figured out that if i can learn to use that passion, that energy, and just communicate to the real world, i'd have a much easier time. Smiling helps =)

But yeah, i went from a nerdy pariah at my high school to an incredibly popular nerd =) I still played D&D and MtG, but people were willing to talk to me. Why? Because i learned to use my imagination for something other than character generation =)

All gamers have the potential to be vibrant people. We can all get incredibly excited while having discussions on saving throws or matrix and buffy. Is it that hard to use even half of that to talk to a girl or some other mundanes? Music, movies, tv shows, pop culture. Everyone knows about them, but gamers as a breed go much deeper into them. All you have to do is come back to the surface a bit, but maintain the intensity you have deep in the nuances.

Of course, i didnt get my first girlfriend till college, but i wasnt looking too hard. Still though, three years later, we're still dating, and she's a rog/assassin in my Dragonlance campaign, so something must have worked, right?

 

[fusangite]

Impeesa says

While I'm at it, I can confirm something else, too - fusangite isn't a social moron, just as he claims. Not that I've ever met him.. but he made an 'alternative' party into a viable choice, and that's damned impressive given the political climate around here at the time. *hides from non-political mods*

Just to clarify, I do not currently support the entity that became a viable choice as this news release notes. But I appreciate the independent confirmation -- and the fact that someone is capable of guessing from this very limited conversation who I was. I actually find it rather creepy.

Anyway, of course, social moronhood is a highly localized phenomenon, largely dependent on audience. As many can attest, my capacity to do things in one sphere does not necessarily translate into others.

 

[Joker]

First (Let me sound knowledgable once ), we must define dysfunctional/abnormal behavior:

1.) Defining dysfunctional/abnormality as a deviation from statistical norms.
2.) Defining dysfunctional/abnormality as a deviation from ideal mental health.
3.) Defining dysfunctional/abnormality as a failure to function adequately.
4.) Defining dysfunctional/abnormality as a deviation from social norms.

I wanted to explain these four points and give examples but I just drank/drunk (do you know which one it is Eric "English teacher" Noah ) something weird so I can't think properly.

See you later. If I don't forget.