Addendum to the Angry Nerd Post

I wanted to add a few things, but decided to make a new post so anyone checking this semi-regularly would not miss it. First, I want to clarify that none of the types I spoke of were reflective of any one individual or event. I have been lurking on gaming forums and blogs for quite some time and these are an amalgam of instances I have noted recurring often. If someone thinks I was directing a comment at them particularly, please make yourself a nice cup of chamomile tea and listen to Carly Simon before getting all offended. Second, I wanted to be clear - I am not saying that people should not be upset when things don't turn out the way they would like. It is okay to feel disappointed and hurt when your expectations are unmet. However, there is something to be said for behaving in a dignified manner. And I must admit, much of what was written is in fact directed at a specific person - my teenage self. I was a tremendous asshole when I was younger. For all you who rage and ramble, bite and bait -  I have been there, done that, and probably was far more horrible and grotesque in the act. This sort of thing is unsustainable - if you do not learn to quell the fires raging inside, you will be consumed by them. But doing so requires sacrifice, and worse. It is easy to forget that youth should be both pitied and exalted for dancing upon the edge of the knife.

I will offer a quote here, from a critical essay written by T. S. Eliot on the subject of Shakespeare's Hamlet. "The intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or exceeding its object, is something which every person of sensibility has known; it is doubtless a subject of study for pathologists. It often occurs in adolescence: the ordinary person puts these feelings to sleep, or trims down his feelings to fit the business world; the artist keeps them alive by is ability to intensify the world to his emotions. The Hamlet of Laforgue is an adolescent; the Hamlet of Shakespeare is not, he has not that explanation or excuse."

 I will offer my thoughts on one more type, which was omitted from the first post - the opinionated, know-it-all blogging gamer lady. Lived experience, age, should provide an ever-growing repository of understanding, of compassion and acceptance of the foibles of men (and women). Yet you use this gain as a means of forgetting, a way to abolish the memories of a youth spent raging and railing. You divorce yourself from truth, deny the legitimacy of young emotion, forgetting a time when passion trumped reason, and depth of care was measured by magnitude of response. Wisdom should mean appreciating such fervor, not dispensing stupid platitudes about the superiority of learned apathy. You grow old and forget the horror of becoming Prufrock, as you too measure out your life in coffee spoons.