RANT: My sister thinks you're all losers

[jgbrowning]

fat (or scrawny)

I'm fat.

unwashed men with bad hygiene,

I am often unwashed and my hygiene isn't perfect. I try to not be offensive, however.

tattoos, piercings (my wife's ears perked at this point, as she has both piercings and tattoos.) These men (sorry female ENWorlders, my sister assures me that you are men claiming to be women) have no female friends or romantic interests, unless they're wierdoes, too.

No tats or piercings. Have a lovely wife.

According to her, people who post on a board like EN World frequently do so because they are unable to interact with the real world in a meaningful way - in short, there is something wrong with them.

To be honest, yes. I am unable to interact with the real world in a meaningful way. I have problems with "real" "world" and "meaningful" especially.

but insisted that all EN Worlders are uneducated losers with serious psychological deficiencies and a cornocopia of aberant behaviors, but no education, no jobs, and no real, substantiative value as people.

I dropped out of college. I have no job besides writing RPGs, and I don't think I have any real substantiative value as a person.

But, I'm terribly happy and try to treat people (almost all of which I have no idea why they act the way they do) with respect and consideration. I was realizing today that were it not for the fact that I don't think one should be mean to others, I'd probably be a seriously dangerous person. I try to have no illusions about myself and my capabilities were situations different.

So, the moral of this story, IMHO- your sister's right and wrong. Unfortunately, both the rightness and the wrongness of what she said is ugly. We don't like ugly truths, or ugly fictions.

joe b.

 

[Mista Collins]

AS THOUGH SHE KNEW THEM!

Maybe she is a lurker, and I am not talking about the D&D monster.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

This assertion

I don't think I have any real substantiative value as a person.

And this one

But, I'm terribly happy and try to treat people (almost all of which I have no idea why they act the way they do) with respect and consideration.

are mutually exclusive, IMHO.

You're an entertainer, a publisher, a world traveller, and, most importantly, a reasonable guy.

These are things of substantiative value.

 

[jgbrowning]

This assertion

And this oneare mutually exclusive, IMHO.

You're an entertainer, a publisher, a world traveller, and, most importantly, a reasonable guy.

These are things of substantiative value.

To be honest, I don't know. I think "substantiative" and "meaningful" are tremendously maliable opinions the more I learn about different cultures and especially about different cultures in different time periods.

Perhaps what I'm doing is substantiative and meaninful to some and not to others. But I'm uncertain as to why I should really care about it to begin with, and have a lot of problems understanding why it seems like so many people really do care about their place within their cultural group.

Like I said, I have a hard time really understanding people. I get it as in "they're doing this because of this" but I don't get it as in "why on earth do they care about this?" I think in ways I'm more at home surrounded by strangers who don't speak my language because I can think more highly of them since I can't understand their unrelenting pettiness concerning themselves and others.

So to bring it back OT to your sister, I don't really think I have any value to her. And I'm not too upset about that, I suppose.

joe b.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

So to bring it back OT to your sister, I don't really think I have any value to her.

joe b.

Ironically, YOU do have value to her: as low as her opinion is of D&D and ENWorld, she's really excited about d20 Linguistics.

 

[jgbrowning]

Heh. Now that is funny.

To expand a bit. I think its so funny because I think we all have some value to everyone else if in no other way but to go "there go I but for the grace of god." Traveling around I've realized that putting a "value" on a human is a dangerous thing for many different reasons, but an unavoidable thing that's as natural as breathing. Its hard to take anything my culture thinks as serious seriously after becoming aware of so many different things other culture's take as serious. And trying to get two inculturated people from different culture groups to have respect and concern for the other is like trying to mix oil with water. I'm surprised we don't fight even more than we do.

So I don't have value to your sister, until she realizes I do have value. Ah... that's just too funny.

joe b.

 

[fusangite]

I don't remember now what we were talking about, but I made some reference to EN World, and my sister started in on this tirade about how people who post online about a fantasy game are no-doubt wierdoes: fat (or scrawny), unwashed men with bad hygiene, tattoos, piercings (my wife's ears perked at this point, as she has both piercings and tattoos.) These men (sorry female ENWorlders, my sister assures me that you are men claiming to be women) have no female friends or romantic interests, unless they're wierdoes, too.

She's not completely wrong. It is probably true that ENWorlders are significantly more likely to have eating disorders, bad hygene, a lack of romantic prospects and be male than a demographically representative group would be. She may be taking the generalization a little too far but it's still pretty descriptive.

According to her, people who post on a board like EN World frequently do so because they are unable to interact with the real world in a meaningful way - in short, there is something wrong with them.

Again, this isn't totally wrong. It's just that she is stating that something that is over-represented in our group is universal in our group.

I love roleplaying and see nothing abberant about it.

It is a little pathological. But then, at this point, most people in society are trying to split their consciousness from their identity through drugs or something even more self-destructive.

I know that a significant portion of ENWorlders hold advanced degrees, and that many of you hold jobs where you make valuable contributions to the rest of society, or at least a respectable income. In short, I know that EN Worlders are regular folks.

Regular folks are under-represented in this group. Fat, under-employed men are over-represented. But that's okay. I like hanging out with other weird, fat, under-employed men.

It does seem like she's completely from space on the piercing and under-educated front. My bet is that ENWorlders are less likely to have piercings or tatooes than society at large and probably do have an average level of education. Still, we have chosen to take a children's game of let's pretend and create an adult version. We can't pretend that our psychological needs are exactly normal if this is how we have fun.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Anyway. Thanks for commiserating. Michael Morris is probably right about closure.

I concur. It seems unlikely that the thread will go anywhere particularly good from here, and I've been asked to edit one of the posts above anyway, so I'll just close it. I think all that needs to be said has probably been said.

Cheers

 

[Turanil]

Tell me about your sister: does she like NASCAR???

Also, do you know that almost universally, when someone is criticizing some abstract people (like an Internet community, or "homosexuals" or "jews" or whoever), or individuals he/she doesn't really know, that person is unconsciously speking about... himself/herself.

Maybe it's time to present your sister with a true NASCAR fan.

Back to the losers of ENworld. There may be around for sure, maybe including myself ( ), but there is also at least one married astrophysician that I know personally, and one guy here who is building a house that surely costs more than 1 million of dollars... (What your sister does in real-life? And about her house?).

Cheers.

 

[Dirigible]

all EN Worlders [have] no real, substantiative value as people.

Hey! Teflon Billy punched the lead singer of the Cult in the face. That's gotta be worth something.