I mentioned this in my last post, but wanted to look at an aspect of gamers which I find perplexing in more detail. Specifically, the enormous emotional investments some make in what should be a hobby. Yes, it is a hobby that requires a tremendous outlay of time and money, as well as developing social connections. But it is just a hobby - and really, if this is your only hobby, you need to expand your horizons a bit. I say that with love. Because if you are pouring all of your available discretionary energy into just one thing, you are bound to get your heart broken sooner or later. And it will make you a more interesting person, rather than a one note tune, if your list of interests doesn't end after 1. - Wargaming.
In browsing various forums over the years, I've seen repeated incarnations of a few flavors of the angry gamer nerd stereotype. Going to look at a few in depth - hope nobody takes this personally.
"I'm right, and you're just an idiot Fanboy"
I was going to do a whole separate blog post on my issues with the "fanboy" epithet, but then it kind of blew over and I moved on without having written on the subject. So, to sum up my main thoughts: I don't care if you call yourself a fanboy, but I really get annoyed when calling someone a name becomes an argumentative tactic. Anyone who does this, you need to grow up. Calling people names to make your point is what you do in grade school. Assuming you are old enough to drive a car legally, you should have developed a much more sophisticated rhetorical repertoire. If you haven't, then I have no time for you. And if you ever happen to actually meet me and try and engage me in some sort of name-calling hissy fit, it will end with you sobbing in a corner, I promise.
What I find so incredibly weird about people who engage in this sort of dialogue, though, is that they will spend months and even years on forums dedicated to some game/company towards which they feel such obvious disdain. The world is so full of choices, and yet, they can find nothing better to do but hang around someplace and spout their disgust at this and that. If it is so awful, move on. No need to stay and attack everyone who disagrees with you. You're the idiot who can't seem to find something more enjoyable to do with your time.
I get that there are valid criticisms to be made, and there is an appropriate way to engage in debate. I have no issue with this. But if finding fault becomes your singular occupation with the hobby, then something has gone wrong for you, and for your own sake, you should figure it out and fix it. My main problem with these sorts of criticism is that I just don't care about a lot of the issues. Few things are so annoying as to get me pissed off, and if something does get me angry to that point, I have options on other ways to invest my time and money. Case in point, when I finally got fed up with GW a few years back, I didn't waste time ranting on the internet. I just quit giving them my money and gave it to Wyrd instead. Corporations don't care how mad you are - they care about profit, and I denied them any from me for several years.
Also, the way criticism is framed matters. There is never a reason for allowing your opinions about some game/company to devolve into personal attacks against some other gamer. There may be many worse things to call a person than "fanboy", but this is specifically used to say "You can't see the truth because you are blinded by your devotion. Therefore, I must be right and you must be wrong." Which is stupid. First, there are differences of fact, which are decided by presenting the best well-supported by evidence argument. Then, there are differences of taste, opinion, aesthetics. There can be no right or wrong here. I like chocolate, but that doesn't mean you are wrong for preferring vanilla. It's just dumb; anyone who cannot admit that views different from their own are valid, is just petty and sad.
One more thing here - if you are in your early twenties, you are probably not absolutely right about most things. Sorry, but the one thing you will certainly learn as you get older is that you know a lot less than you thought you did when you were younger. So if you're young and angry, take a breather. Patience is not a virtue, it is a learned survival skill. Save the anger for things that matter, like people starving or dying in the streets and the fact that the education you've invested tens of thousands of dollars in will likely only get you a slightly better than minimum wage job once you're done with school.
"I quit" (throws minis into a flaming bin in epic youtube video)
A confession, the terms Nerdrage and Ragequit are fairly recent additions to my lexical understanding - I tended to ignore slang, even when I was a teenager, and the profusion of words not properly defined in a standard dictionary are just one thing I do not care to expend time in learning. However, having watched a few of these episodes play out recently, I wanted to probe the phenomena.
Having studied media for a time, I get the motivations behind creating a spectacle. We are all, in the end, just minute specks in a chaotic world. It is nice to feel that we can somehow defy our destiny and make a grand statement for which we will be remembered. Staging a ragequit on a gaming forum does not qualify. I mean, really, you're competing against people who set themselves on fire and stand down heavily armoured enforcers to make a statement about something important. Throwing a fit worthy of a teenage girl who has just been stood up for the prom in a relatively less populated corner of the internet is just not on par with such noble defiance.
I get that people are pissed off when things don't go their way. I get wanting to quit something and feeling bitter because you feel jilted by some company/game/group and wanting to express your outrage. But I would urge anyone contemplating this sort of feat to consider the aftermath - because there won't be one. For a few days or weeks, people will talk about you. Some will miss you for about five minutes, more will mock your pathetic display of indignance. And then you are forgotten, and nobody cares why you left, or that you were ever there. If you still feel the need to stage some righteous final stand, by all means go ahead. Just give me a heads up, please, so I can get my popcorn.
"I love this game. But I don't like this about it. Or this. Or that. Or these. Or that. And don't forget ..."
Yes, you get these people everywhere. And in general, I don't care. If you are so dedicatedly dismayed by the various aspects of a world around you that does not meet your expectations, I pity you. What annoys me is when this sort of disgruntled faux constructive critique pervades my leisure time reading venues. Because it is boring and predictable, and I am quite certain I am not alone in this observation. At least the Ragers provide some mildly amusing entertainment. But the grousers, Yawn.
In some educational text I read at some point, there was a discussion of the ratio of good/bad feedback teachers should strive to maintain. the reason is obvious - children who hear nothing but negative feedback will just stop trying, while obviously, some criticism is needed to help them grow and not keep doing things incorrectly. The minimum ratio was 3:1, 5:1 is better, optimal you should be trying for 9:1 or better. The point I am making with this, forums aren't really any different. You should be aiming for at least 5 positive things to every one negative. If you fall short of that, you are probably contributing to an unhealthy environment. At best, people just ignore you. Worse, they think you are a whiny loser.
My reason for posting this: please be aware that you are a member of the gaming community. Like any citizen, we each have a responsibility to make this hobby a better place. I have met far more nice and helpful gamers than the types listed here. I remember forum members and game store denizens whom I have not seen or heard from in years, but I recall them by name because of their excellent contributions to creating an awesome environment. The boring, insulting, rude, obnoxious ones - after a few weeks, forgotten.
So in closing, remember what somebody's grandma said: "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."
Anyway, that's it for now. I have a week or so before classes start again, so will try to post a bit more before things get hectic again.
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