Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8445938" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think you've misunderstood my point. I don't need you to tell me that avant garde is a temporary status. I made that point in the posts that you responded to.My point is that what was once avant garde is now common place or even passe. But the people for whom it is common place are, in functional and social terms, the same people who once derided it as irrelevant or pretentious or elitist.When I was a university student in Melbourne, eating sushi was unusual, even edgy. Today when I walk past a building site at lunchtime I'll see the construction workers eating sushi for their lunch. That doesn't mean the building workers are insincere in any way. But it does mean that I wouldn't take their judgements as to what is proper in food, and what is not, as a very good guide to what is possible or desirable.Part of the genius (if you want to call it that) of commercialised mass culture is that commercial producers and publishers are able to take what was, at the moment of its invention (or, in the case of sushi, it's &quot;discovery&quot; by a culture in which it was hitherto unknown) controversial or derided as pretentious or elitist or irrelevant, and absorb that and use it as the basis for their mainstream commercial products.It seems to me that RPGing is not fundamentally different in this respect.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8445938, member: 42582"] I think you've misunderstood my point. I don't need you to tell me that avant garde is a temporary status. I made that point in the posts that you responded to. My point is that what was once avant garde is now common place or even passe. But the people for whom it is common place are, in functional and social terms, the same people who once derided it as irrelevant or pretentious or elitist. When I was a university student in Melbourne, eating sushi was unusual, even edgy. Today when I walk past a building site at lunchtime I'll see the construction workers eating sushi for their lunch. That doesn't mean the building workers are insincere in any way. But it does mean that I wouldn't take their judgements as to what is proper in food, and what is not, as a very good guide to what is possible or desirable. Part of the genius (if you want to call it that) of commercialised mass culture is that commercial producers and publishers are able to take what was, at the moment of its invention (or, in the case of sushi, it's "discovery" by a culture in which it was hitherto unknown) controversial or derided as pretentious or elitist or irrelevant, and absorb that and use it as the basis for their mainstream commercial products. It seems to me that RPGing is not fundamentally different in this respect. [/QUOTE]

Verification