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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voneth" data-source="post: 203315" data-attributes="member: 1016">Until a couple of years ago, I lived in rural communites. There was still a pretty stiff stigma, I had a coworker who acted worried about me until she saw that I wasn't going to change much and just mostly harmless.The oddest thing about gaming is what it has taught me about self-image and self-esteem. I was introverted and then became an extrovert in my gaming group, now I am in PR and I help with our business development, can't get much more extroverted than that. I still won't volunteer that I am a gamer though and I still feel nervous about telling someone about it, which has been very educational since I am a white male whos not a sports nut.If just my hobby makes me feel vulnerable to social judgement and perhaps a "glass ceiling" at work, how do those with alternate lifestyles and cultures feel about the level of judgement they could face? It's made me a little more tolerant of others since I get a small taste of what they face.My ex-wife started out as an occasional gamer, but after we married, she saw the game as competition to her attention. She also kept saying that "You know when you go out in the real world, no one plays these games." Then a week later, I found out that a few of our neighbors did the "oh we played it, but grew out of it" scenario. It still took the air out of her sails. My ex still mentions that she worries that since I am into fantasy (in comparison to her regular diet of fantasy genre books she reads) that I will get our son confused on the level of reality and fantasy. Now a days I compare a lot of gaming phenomenon to the "drug days" of the 1980s. You'll discover a lot of people than you expect who tried it at least once to see what all the fuss was about. When it turned out to be just a ... game, then they went on to more exicting things. I also have nicknamed the time DND was under attack as the "Second Red Scare." It's sort of a play on words about how the media/religion attacks where as much a witch hunt (no pun intended) as the McCarthy era and the tradtional color of devils = red.Something I have noticed is that gamers have also spread themselves out in the last few years. There are gamers who have secondary hobbies such a computer games, and anime clubs. It seems to me that this has been pretty beneficial on their part. They expose others to the existence of gaming in an atmosphere where it would seem a little pointless to claim that the other hobby members had "more of a life." Though some still do. So gaming has sort of seeped into other pop culture hobbies and become a part of them to a degree. Perhaps there will be a standard some day that a pop phenomenon is not considered geek chic until a role-playing game is related to it.Ironicly, the people at the bottom of the gaming totem pole are the younger players, especially young teenagers who seem to don’t have anger management skill yet and still seem interested in ccgs or cmgs.  If gamers continue to lambaste these guys, they will cut off the new blood for future generation of gamers. The irony doubled by the fact that those who make the most noise about those “kid” gamers are those who seem to be on a same emotional level as these youth. just some observations</blockquote>

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