RPGPundit is beneath contempt. He wrote a good article on Tantric Buddhism, and got zero comments. Wrote a few more mediocre posts and got the same results. He then proceeded to ridicule and trash a rape victim and got a lot of comments. He then did a subsequent post and did more of a the same. Before I offer a glimpse of what RPGPundit actually is, I will address the original comments, which he ridiculed.
While I don't agree with author's point of view, and I am well aware that there may be some political context behind this, I do not doubt the veracity of what she is describing, because I have seen much of the same over my years in gaming.
She confuses terrorism with mundane daily bullying and intimidation, which under U.S. law amounts to hostile work environment and makes employers liable for not providing people like her with a safe work environment. Secondly, this type of bullying harassment, in which RPGPundit freely engages, serves to drive the outsiders, the non-whites from their hobby community. The kind of crassness, which she describes is not accidental, but deliberate, and that type of rude boy harassment on the internet serves to deny access to outsiders to discussion forums. Again, if the internet space is employment base, the administration of the site may be liable for such harassment.
I will second the game store incident with one of my own. I was once talking to a similar kind of a clerk about the communication and cultural exchanges in antiquity, and that particular person started glorifying the rape and pillaging of yore. I was taken aback by the glee, and later understood, that this was a sexually frustrated individual, who was stuck in the same dead end low salaried position twenty years later, product of a white middle class household, where he could not afford the lifestyle of his parents in our modern shrinking economy. She is right on the money on that one. The ugly underbelly of suburban middle class geeks doomed to economic destitude if not for their parents.
I am not sure what to make of her Keycon rape incident. It sounds like she is describing the effect of Rohypnol on her body in accurate detail. This was Canada. had this happened in the US, presence of Rohypnol confirmed with a blood test and with the proper measures taken by convention staff and the police to identify the alleged rapist, would have gotten a mandatory minimal 8 year sentence if this was prosecuted in the U.S. Sounds like something had happened to her at that convention and she did not get justice.
Racism is real. I was talking to some otherwise sane Australian cops once, when the subject of the Australian Aboriginals came up. It was as if a dam burst - the stream of disgust and derision that poured out, driving the point that aboriginals are something less than human. Most angry boy D&D gamers are too insulated inside their geekiness and their parents' suburban homes to actually be aware of what racism is and how it is played out. Case in point: I am with some of my friends at an archery range. They are decked out in camouflage hunters tactical gear head to foot. All of a sudden a dozen or so LRP archer march on the range, all dressed as elves. They got simple wooden bows you can get for 20 bucks. There is a black guy with his white girlfriend, who is dressed as an Elf. The black guy is handsome, obviously former military who spent a few years in Germany. He is uneasy and is giving us nervous looks, thinking that we might be trouble. The entire LRP contingent is oblivious. They had no clue.
Regarding the RPGPundit, he is a shameless opportunist who will do anything to market his materials. Notice how he will never criticize any publisher, who could potentially help him. This is a man, who never threw a punch in anger, dug a ditch, or put in a full day of real physical labor. Despite his obsession with supernatural, spirituality eludes him, the way empathy eludes a psychopath. He is a short fat man with a scraggly beard, reminding one of an Ettercap, a Forgotten Realms mythical humanoid spider creature, hiding behind a mask on a photograph, and hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet. Make no mistake, he is a right-wing racist. Just look at his description of his wild west game - he thinks in terms of racial and ethnic stereotypes. If his writing offends you, do not buy his products. Boycott him, until he apologizes to your satisfaction. I understand that everyone has a right to make a living, especially, when you can't make a decent living doing what you love best, but the vileness of his recent posts does not allow me to ignore him.
I deleted his blog from my blogroll and haven't been to his site since. He offers nothing constructive and I have no idea why he is a talking head. I did read the article that you bring up, but I was introduced to it by ChicagoWiz on his blog (A blogger who is much worthier of the title of Talking Head), and it really upset me. Comments are one thing, many table top players learn communication skills from D&D and games like it, we nerds are notorious for saying dumb things; but what really pisses me off is when people can't keep their hands to themselves. Administrators also have to take complaints seriously, especially when a crime has been committed.
ReplyDeleteWhat really shocked me is to know that the police consider our community to be a known threat, and dangerous to women. This says a lot. For every crime that has been reported, there is a large percentage that never is. People can claim that it is all lies and manipulation, but the negative responses only serve to further add credence to the stories, and such vehemence on the subject tells us more about the poster of such hate, than anything else.
Me personally, I am no longer going to let those kind of comments slide. I think that we owe it to the community to stand up and do what we can to do the right thing.
I absolutely agree with you.
ReplyDeleteYou touched on some fundamental social dynamics though, which are so complex as to be almost beyond words, because they run so deep in human society. Don't worry too much about police considering D&D gamers to be a known threat. This is another country (Canada), and is most likely taken out of context. The police may have been trying to console and advise her, where they couldn't proceedd with an arrest or a criminal case. Consider the statistic that any inmate joining a prison gang triples his or her chances of being physically assaulted in prison, and that includes sexual assault. What are prison authorities to do? Advise the newcomers not to join a prison gang and to stay away from those people. Consder a woman who works at a biker bar, who gets physically assaulted (slapped). The police will advise her to find another job, because her current job is not safe. What are police to say to this person, if she recounts to them a long litany of years worth of sexual harassment and innuendo in her gaming group?
I think that you mean intellectual, when you refer to yourself as a nerd. Nerdness is a value judgement assigned by the charismatic elite of the group. In any organization or subculture there are two paths to group leadership - Charismatic or Competency based. Most outsiders to the group, including women, foreigners, and minorities, assume that if you are really good at your job, you will make it to the top. That is a fallacy. Technical knolwdge will get you so far. It will not make you a Chief or a CEO, and becoming an exec will be hard. Charismatic leadership emulates being an old boy or part of the in crowd. It is the ability to get people to laugh and to like you, and ability to walk in to the boss's office and freely chat like you are one same level as he or she is. Of course you will get the same effect if you are a CEO's relative getting through nepotism, or if your dad is one of the old boys. There are also people who learn or emulate Charismatic Leadership, and most of the time they look like sleazeball salesmen when they try too hard, and sometimes it works. I prefer my own costume as an Ogre smashing heads. Nerdiness enters this equation, because in order to move up in a group, you have to find someone in the group to put down, bully, or make fun of. The way to the top is to find the one, whom the in-crowd hates and join in the harassment. So, nerdiness is the in-crowd definition of "not cool" and what makes a nerd varies from group to group, from culture to culture. In traditional Russian society, where there was a cult of reading and intellectualism, nerdiness was defined by physical weakness - if you weren't athletic (hard to be fat in society on the brink of starvation), if you couldn't chin up, or drink or smoke in the boys' room, you were uncool. Social environment send people off on some twisted trajectories. Natural instinct is to be oneself and to pursue one's own interests and artistic expression. Some awaken earlier, and start pursuing sexual partners before most others. They may have nothing to offer as a warrior or a interesting being, but they become the masters of the ass and have the most success getting lovers than all others. Most normal people follow the instinct to be themselves and escape into their own little worlds, but a few will worry about such things as not being intimidating so as to be accepted by others, playing at what the others are playing so as to fit in, acting cool, so as to be accepted etc, and these become the proverbial in-crowd, who later, define who is cool and who isn't. The problem with all this is that social oppressing rolls downhill, like raw sewage, and the oppressed and the bullied will look for someone weaker then they to oppress in return. In days of yore, the beggars and the outlaws would oppress the women and child runaways, as we have case in point with this woman among a group of marginalized gamers.
No . . . I am a nerd. I have found a few ways to deal with social situations, but large groups still freak me out. I am about as emotionally stable as a hamster on PCP. I have a hard time talking to people, and even then most of the things that I say tends to scare them. I am both aloof and an over-opinionated asshat, and worse, I am aware of it! I always feel like an outsider, and this is probably self-imposed. I work in the mental health field, so I know exactly how unhealthy my thought patterns are, but as long as I'm still a functional nerd (by my standards, not societies), I prefer to do absolutely nothing about it. My life-skills backup plan, in case everything falls apart is to move out west and be a cowboy, unless I can somehow keep my wife, then we'll go be pioneers! Yeah, I spend too much time dreaming about history and not enough time living in the world that I am actually living in. Did I mention that I was paranoid and an isolationist? I could go on for days LOL
ReplyDeleteHamster on PCP! I love it! Right up there with Tweetie Bird on Crack Cocaine! An old buddy of mine. And another pal, who looks like Opus the penguin from Doonesbury. Walking/Jogging after walk and backpacking on your days off will stabilize your emotional state, nature's own Prozac! You already got the company of friends and a wife, so you got all your stress management bases covered. There is that adequate sleep bit, but I am sure you get that, if not, make like bears and learn to hibernate! Have you read the book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers? If not, check it out and get THAT base covered as well.
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong about living inside your head. Look at the wonders it did for Moses and Mohammed! Actually Nerdness has an adaptive value. Consider it the price of freedom from social mores and peer pressure, to which thebeautiful people, the popular set, and the in crowd are absolute slaves.
I am starting to witness an interesting trend. The old adage goes that as soon as adults think something is cool, it automatically makes it not cool for the youth. So it seems is starting with social media. This is inevitable and certainly not necessarily a negative trend.
ReplyDeletedcitltd
Point being, as it relates to this post?
ReplyDeleteRose is a spam bot not a real comment.
DeleteDavid
Thanks for letting me know. So far I been only getting only one or two, that and a live Nigerian scammer, who confused online gaming with reality and tried to cash in on it.
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