RPGs and mental health issues

[Janx]

I don't think the intent of anybody's filters is to be mean or exclude perfectly fine people.

we're all just taking our experience and identifying common traits of the people we wish to avoid.

It's not life or death. It's not like we're trying to filter out terrorists who are trying to infiltrate our country and blow us all up. And you're not dooming the occasional false positive to hard labor in a penal colony.

I suppose it would be great to have a home psychopath test (please pee on this test strip and submit your results before you can join our group).

I suspect you could combine every body's list of criteria and pick out an improved list. I can certainly see reasons behind [MENTION=1297]Olive[/MENTION]'s list, but as a programmer, I also see how it's not as precise as I'd like it to be.


So far, ideas I see are:
not struggling to survive (place to live, able to afford food, rent, utilities)
has other hobbies/interests (not hyper-focussed creepy on just one topic)
has other relationships (friends, SO, whatever, not a total hermit loner with no social skills)
is clean/not smelly (avoid social awkwardness with people who should know better)
doesn't dress skanky or wierd (EW had good reasons on the skanky part, it might be eye candy, but it'll probably be drama. I think any kind eccentric wardrobing is a warning sign that this person doesn't fit in with others)
likes animals (as opposed to someone who won't touch or tolerate any animal)
likes music (might not share your interest, but has a preference. Versus "I do not like music at all")


I've taken EW's and Olive's criteria and merged/modified them. I think there were some nuggets in Olive's example, but as worded, they struck others as too broad. I tried to reword them to strike at the heart of what I felt was the objective.

I added the last two, because other experience of mine has shown that these are interesting metrics to apply. There is something inhuman about somebody who doesn't like animals at all. Or music. At the minimum, most people do, and somebody who doesn't is pretty alien. You will likely find they do not mesh socially with everybody else.

 

[Elf Witch]

I have always been kind of judgmental on people who don't like animals. There is a difference between people who don't want pets because of the cost and mess and out and out not liking any animal.

I have never met anyone who hates animals and was a still a nice person usually they are cold judgmental heartless selfish people.

I can't see how any one kind find at least one type of music that they like.

 

[Umbran]

Interestingly, May is apparently Mental Health Awareness Month.

An acquaintance of mine who is a mental health professional wrote a piece, of which I will quote only a small part that is perhaps relevant:

Whenever you are discussing issues that pertain to people with mental illnesses, and that discussion is happening in a group of more than four people, remind yourself that one of the people in this discussion is one of the people under discussion. You just don't know which one.

 

[nedjer]

I don't think the intent of anybody's filters is to be mean or exclude perfectly fine people.

we're all just taking our experience and identifying common traits of the people we wish to avoid.

It's not life or death. It's not like we're trying to filter out terrorists who are trying to infiltrate our country and blow us all up. And you're not dooming the occasional false positive to hard labor in a penal colony.

I suppose it would be great to have a home psychopath test (please pee on this test strip and submit your results before you can join our group).

I suspect you could combine every body's list of criteria and pick out an improved list. I can certainly see reasons behind @Olive 's list, but as a programmer, I also see how it's not as precise as I'd like it to be.


So far, ideas I see are:
not struggling to survive (place to live, able to afford food, rent, utilities)
has other hobbies/interests (not hyper-focussed creepy on just one topic)
has other relationships (friends, SO, whatever, not a total hermit loner with no social skills)
is clean/not smelly (avoid social awkwardness with people who should know better)
doesn't dress skanky or wierd (EW had good reasons on the skanky part, it might be eye candy, but it'll probably be drama. I think any kind eccentric wardrobing is a warning sign that this person doesn't fit in with others)
likes animals (as opposed to someone who won't touch or tolerate any animal)
likes music (might not share your interest, but has a preference. Versus "I do not like music at all")


I've taken EW's and Olive's criteria and merged/modified them. I think there were some nuggets in Olive's example, but as worded, they struck others as too broad. I tried to reword them to strike at the heart of what I felt was the objective.

I added the last two, because other experience of mine has shown that these are interesting metrics to apply. There is something inhuman about somebody who doesn't like animals at all. Or music. At the minimum, most people do, and somebody who doesn't is pretty alien. You will likely find they do not mesh socially with everybody else.

There should be no such list. People are individuals and should be viewed as such. The list is d20 meets the Stepford Wives.

 

[Janx]

There should be no such list. People are individuals and should be viewed as such. The list is d20 meets the Stepford Wives.

Obviously, I disagree. I believe that it is human nature, and part of our wiring to categorize, sort and filter information. If I'm right, you, yourself are executing on filtering criteria, despite your preference to not do so. You may not even be aware of it. But cognitively, that's what is probably going on when you meet people.

I think that listing them out, and thinking about the criteria is actually a good thing. If a person considers their criteria that they're brain was already applying, they may be able to revise it to be better refined and to reduce rejecting perfectly fine people.

it might be an ideal to consider each person as individuals, but your brain is automatically sorting and filtering them againct criteria. How else would you make a decision about them. Otherwise you'd be all "I won't let Bob into the group and I don't know why." The "why" is the criteria.

And that is the point of reviewing people's ideas of a criteria. To see what's too broad and poorly defined. to think of your own criteria that you may never have considered before and to be better. Not just in weeding out "bad" people, but in accepting "good" people who you may not have considered before by some previously held standard.

 

[Umbran]

There should be no such list. People are individuals and should be viewed as such.

As a practical matter, folks may not have the time required to really know the individual and judge them before they have to choose whether or not to let them into their homes. Use of guidelines like these will falsely classify any number of people, yes. But it isn't like some right of theirs is abridged if someone does this.

In the end, judging people individually actually means most people are excluded outright, as not being known well enough to judge! They are the mass of "I don't know you", judged as not allowed not on their own merits, but on the lack of information. How is that better than using a guideline?

Ultimately, a game is a private social gathering, and folks can choose who attends any darn way they want.

 

[Janx]

As a practical matter, folks may not have the time required to really know the individual and judge them before they have to choose whether or not to let them into their homes. Use of guidelines like these will falsely classify any number of people, yes. But it isn't like some right of theirs is abridged if someone does this.

In the end, judging people individually actually means most people are excluded outright, as not being known well enough to judge! They are the mass of "I don't know you", judged as not allowed not on their own merits, but on the lack of information. How is that better than using a guideline?

Ultimately, a game is a private social gathering, and folks can choose who attends any darn way they want.

No only that, but the act of deciding if the individual is OK, is done by comparing the person to criteria. Didn't try to kill me, check. Didn't steal my stuff, check. Didn't appear to be a Nazi party member, check.

I believe everybody IS considering each person as an individual. We're talking to them, looking at them, and seeing if they creep us out.

If we were going to Match.Com and letting the computer do a search for all people with jobs, SO's and didn't smell before we even saw the list of candidates, that would be NOT considering them as individuals.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

nedjer
There should be no such list. People are individuals and should be viewed as such.

From what I understand of human psychology, you're probably using such a list to sort through people you meet, consciously or not.

 

[Janx]

From what I understand of human psychology, you're probably using such a list to sort through people you meet, consciously or not.

that was my other point. Brains are comparison engines. It categorizes things, and uses that to rapidly bring memories to mind, identify objects, and make decisions.

I like chocolate ice cream, so I ignore all the other flavors on the shelf while I scan for chocolate flavors so I can make my selection from the shorter list. People do this all the time. I simply see it because I write this kind of software all the time.

None of this makes people mean or bad. I know Danny's black. If I were at an Enworld meetup and Danny was one of a few black people in the room, and [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] was asking me to point out Danny so he could introduce himself, I might say "He's the black guy by the punch bowl." I'm not being mean, judgemental or racist. I'm just using the fastest means to filter the list of people in the room so I can point it out another person.

If I were self-concious about political correctness, I suppose I could struggle to define Danny in some way that narrows the candidates in the room to something that differentiates him from everybody else without using skin color or weight as a descriptor.

the usual goal of any categorization is to use the fewest, simplest search terms to bring about the smallest result set of desired values. "Black guy in a Sabaton t-shirt" might be sufficient. It's possible that only one person in the room is wearing a Sabaton t-shirt, but you'd have to wade through all the people to view all the shirts to know that. Being able to quickly see there's 3 black people makes it very easy to scan their shirts and spot which one is the Sabaton wearer.

What I caution, is knee jerk reactionism to "labeling or categorizing people is bad" because of a desire to avoid negative stereotyping or racism. Treating people badly is bad. Some people define arbitrary categories to justify treating those members badly. Obviously, that's bad.

I don't think anybody here wants to treat anybody badly. Hopefully nobody's a racist or mean to people with mental illnesses. This topic has strayed to how to filter people you choose to spend time with from "have you noticed that some of your players might be crazy?"

I wouldn't know a crazy person* unless their behavior was extreme. In which case, I think I can justify being cautious around somebody who's difficulties are extreme enough that you should be cautious for the behavior COULD hurt you.
*and I probably just offended somebody. I don't know the definition of crazy, but I assume it means, trying to kill me or make me wear a suit of jello to protect me from Al Gore's mind control waves. People with diagnosed mental illnesses don't automatically ping on my crazy-meter.

 

[El Mahdi]

Interestingly, May is apparently Mental Health Awareness Month.

An acquaintance of mine who is a mental health professional wrote a piece, of which I will quote only a small part that is perhaps relevant:

Whenever you are discussing issues that pertain to people with mental illnesses, and that discussion is happening in a group of more than four people, remind yourself that one of the people in this discussion is one of the people under discussion. You just don't know which one.

Or that one person may actually be all four...

(think about it...)


Seriously though, that's an excellent thing to remember. Thanks Umbran.