Interesting criticism I found about us "RPG guys".

[Dausuul]

Sorry for the confusion. I'm saying it is more prevalent comparatively. While there is similar behaviour in other communties, you can't say there isn't more of it in the RPG community on average.

I can say that and I do say that. I follow politics pretty closely; given the forum rules, I won't post specific examples, but this exact kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME--very public disputes over very stupid and trivial stuff, among the people who govern entire nations*.

We're just a microcosm, and a fairly benign one at that.

[size=-2]*I won't name specific nations either. I daresay it happens in every country, though some are more public about it than others.[/size]

 

[Umbran]

Sorry for the confusion. I'm saying it is more prevalent comparatively. While there is similar behaviour in other communties, you can't say there isn't more of it in the RPG community on average.

You can't say it is more prevalent, either. It isn't like there's been a comprehensive survey, or something. We are all working from anecdotal evidence.

But, let's be clear about something - the market research surveys we've seen in the past decade or so suggest that the number of RPG players overall is in the millions. EN World has almost 90,000 registered members, but the number of active people arguing at any time is probably down in the hundreds - so, not an appreciable fraction of the overall population.

Just another time to point out - the people you see on message boards do not represent gamers as a whole.

If the "RPG guys" are only the ones on the message boards, then compare apples to apples - compare us to the real invested fans of any of the other things mentioned, not to run of the mill folks. I think the position that we're different begins to melt when you do that.

 

[Edgewood]

Flamewars on the internet certainly don't stop with just fans of a game/sport/movie/TV show/actor/musician or band. Professionals also fall victim to this behaviour. I belong to a forum called Blue Line which is a forum for Police Officers in Canada. You would think that there would be a sense of brotherhood there and mostly there is but there are those members who will tear you down if you start to site case law (especially when it comes to impaired driving cases) that they don't agree with. Or they start to argue about the use of the taser in a given situation. It can get downright ugly on that site at times. So I don't think RPG gamers are the only ones who behave this way. It's human nature I think.

 

[Pig Champion]

I guess we can go back and forth on this for a long time. At the end of the day my experience reaches further than this forum (it seems implied I'm talking about Enworld exclusively but I'm not) and I've seen more of this kind of behaviour in RPG's than any other hobby I'm invested in, both on and off the internet (excluding as I said, punk and sports). Again, I'm not saying it doesn't happen elsewhere but that it is more common in RPG's.

The guy who made the comment must agree with me. And so the world turns and another line in the sand is drawn i'll just agree to disagree rather than go any further.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Man; I hate these priates vs. ninja threads!

 

[Herschel]

There are "flame wars" everywhere. This site is really "light" when compared to many other ones I see. Here things are kept pretty tight, sure, but still. Try going to some of the sports boards where moderation isn't as tight and even fans of the same team discussing a single player (and sometimes it's even a backup player) can escalate to extreme nastiness.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm curious to hear what my fellow RPG guys () think about this

This is fairly true for both music and RPG's: They foster a sense of ownership.

You control your game.

Music speaks to you, personally.

Thus, when there is criticism of some element of one or the other, it isn't just a criticism of a thing, it is perceived as a criticism of you.

Movies, books, even videogames, almost any creative media, can have this element, but these are more commonly consumed in collective -- with a group, whose opinions differ -- or in passive -- most people don't create them -- or from the outside in -- you are educated about a novel.

Music and, well, RPG's, are some of the stronger things in society that develop these personal appeals. But videogames do, too (see: console wars).

 

[ggroy]

It's easy to look at a flame war and say "they're only doing that because of the anonymity afforded by the internet, they wouldn't behave like that IRL" - but equally easy to look at film footage of sports-related violence and other extreme "fan behaviour" out in the real world and write the previous assumption off as completely inaccurate. Sadly, people can and do behave as obnoxiously IRL - and oblivious of witnesses, cameras etc - as they do on the "anonymous interweb tubes".

ie. "Disco Demolition Night" in Chicago, in 1979.

Disco Demolition Night - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-fEtF9NKfc"]YouTube- Disco Demolition Night - The Day Disco Died...[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpQfCcsqQ0E"]YouTube - 1979 Disco Demolition Night, Local News Coverage[/ame]

 

[Banshee16]

For my money, it's "Forum-users are a bunch of thin-skinned rage-oholics". It's just that a lot of gamers are also forum users.

But, it's the internet. People look upon it as a license to freak out, say whatever inane crap they want to, and to ditch most responsibility (and personal standards).

Good luck.

I would agree with this statement. You get the whole rege-oholic thing everywhere online....not just among gamers.

Read about the Olympics on the CBC site, and you get people flaming away. Read about the hockey playoffs, and you get people flaming the fans of one team or another. Heck, read websites where scientists are discussing various topics related to theories they're working on, and some of them are flaming each other.

I think gamers, as people who are typically pretty tech and internet savvy, just have more exposure to instances where this kind of behaviour can take place.

And because gamers are a minority, people are more likely to remember instances where gamers are acting in rage-oholic fashions. We tend to remember unlikely events/low probability events associated with minorities, better than we do when they're associated with a majority.

Banshee

 

[Nymrohd]

Someone discovered the anxiety of choice? Making choices and the fear of making the wrong one (because of many alternatives, irrevocability, high expense or general investment of resources) is likely the one primary mechanic of living life as a human. Add to that our increasing sensitivity to anxiety because our lives are overloaded with choice in comparison to a couple of generations ago (don't even try to compare with 50+ years ago . . .) and of course any high involvement choice (choice that involves self image, social standing, hedonistic pursuit or percieved risk) will be personal.
A hobby is by default a high involvement choice. It is a hedonistic pursuit, it affects as socially and for some it affects self image as well. And as mentioned before, anything that creates doubt over our choices in what RPG we like triggers cognitive dissonance. Normally the level of anxiety caused should not be high but this is no longer the case. Our lives are anything but relaxed and magnify the effects of even minute triggers.

And I'll also agree that gamers may easily feel that this occurs more often among gamers than others. It's simple selective retention. Alarmingly it might be selective distortion which would indicate a subconsious guilt for the gaming choice (and thus a tendency to evaluate it negatively and retain information that do so). I am just saying that the fact people tend to increasingly notice the bads of things that interest them instead of the goods probably indicates low self esteem and issues with self image; noone likes to hear it but it is a rampant problem in our societies.