Scurvy_Platypus
Explorer
Spell said:but don't you think that all the aggro attatched to her figure is a bit too much?
Honestly?
There's a certain level of "group-think" that goes on. Nothing special. It happens to any group.
My wife for example was just talking about a graduate student in her field that's getting hired for some 6 figure salary. She does environmental science stuff at Princeton University.
The advisor (who's also her boss) went on this long half-rant basically implying that the student "owed" him for the time he's spent guiding and advising the student on his research, and how the student is throwing it all away. Almost everyone else in her group doesn't have nice things to say either, and it's all because he's joining some think-tank. And not a "conservative" one, or one that's opposed to environmental sciences. My wife thinks in this case that it's just a matter of people having believed that they've put in so much time and effort and make so little money, it's got to be worth _something_. Seeing someone walk out of the field like that and into a position earning 3 times more they they do, and he's fresh out of grad school, it's not hard to think that people might be a bit bitter about the last 10 years of their career.
Lorraine Williams, Kevin Siembieda, John Wick, Ron Edwards... they're easy punching bags. Lots of people seem to need a reason to dislike and rant about others.
Are they blameless? Nah.
Then again, I've read some of Gygax's editorials in early Dragon and can't say I really like a lot of what he had to say either. He worked pretty actively against his share of stuff back in the day. He certainly was no kindly Santa Claus like people seem to think sometimes.
Heck, looking at movies... Keanu Reeves is a popular punching bag.
But you know what? I find an awful lot of the criticism heaped on Keanu applies to Anthony Hopkins and Christopher Walken. But Hopkins and Walken get a pass. It's popular to bag on Keanu.
However people want to dress it up, it boils down to "some people are looking for a reason to hate someone else."
I've got better things to do with my time. People are people and some are nicer than others. Nobody is completely irredeemable, and nobody is above criticism.
If people object to the way that someone does business, you spend your money elsewhere and make sure the people know why the money is going where it is. Otherwise it's a bunch of pointless chest thumping and raising your blood pressure for no good reason. I refused to buy 2E stuff in part because I objected to TSR's business practices. I object to White Wolf's support of a game that I consider to be objectionable, and therefore refuse to give them or their subsidiaries (like Sword & Sorcery Studio) any of my money.
Simple stuff really, and doesn't require any of the drama that forums seem to love.