Ahh, I am in a rather foul mood today. Not that you, dear reader, care one bit what my lethargic ass is feeling in my world while you suck down a nice Frappucino and nibble biscotti at Starbucks. (I’m dreaming… with most gaming geeks I’m lucky if I got you sucking down a big mac, a large fries and an apple pie at McDonalds and not sitting in your underwear in grandma’s basement, but I digress…)
So. Friends and Enemies. Let me first offer up this advice: NEVER believe what people tell you on the internet, and as much so in online games if not more so. For instance: in one recent escapade that made me laugh until my considerable girth quaked and my sides ached, a player in an online venue was panhandling – he was trying to get money, as in, REAL MONEY, out of players by feeding them some sad-sack story about being homeless and living in his car.
Folks, use some common fucking sense! If I was homeless and had nothing but a car and a laptop, I would NOT spend my time panhandling in an online role playing game, I would be looking for fucking work! Where the fuck would he GET internet access anyway? What, he parked in a McDonald’s parking lot while some schlub reads THIS post and hacked old Ronald’s wireless? He used his last five bucks for a Latte so he could use the Starbuck’s wifi? If you believe this story, then I have this check for 54 million bucks that’s stuck in Nigeria and I just need your bank account numbers and pin to deposit it and we’ll split the money, okay?
Friends come easy. Everyone online wants to gather the new blood and enamor the rookies unto themselves and form up packs and cliques and coteries. I do too; I just want to get people to realize that 1. It’s JUST a fucking game and 2. If they will just be cool to each other, then everything else will fall into place. There’s some genuinely good folks online, and then there’s the Rick Walker’s of the world. I don’t know if Rick Walker is a real person, but he was one of the most impressive cock-bites on the old White Wolf Hunter-net mailing list. I don’t think I have ever seen a more destructive personality in online venues. We dubbed him the nameless one, because we didn’t even want to use his name. Even BEING on a list with him was like masturbating with a fist full of steel wool and lye soap, the amusement factor went away almost immediately and it got painful in a right hurry.
When you get to that inevitable point I hope that you treat the new folks with care and compassion. If a kid wanders in without a book or a clue what the game is about, don’t flame him into cinders and send him crying home to momma, he won’t come back. Get him in a private chat, tell him what he needs, offer suggestions, support, and advice, but be fucking NICE, because if not then pretty soon the only people you are playing with is a close knit group of back-stabbing, shit-talking, stone-cold ass holes and you find yourself without a storyteller or a venue or a site to play on and surrounded by a bunch of highly critical people who have no targets left and they are just waiting to find out that you only have one testicle or you drive a Miata.
Or conversely, the staff of a good site just gets tired of you abusing the new blood and stable players and sends you packing. Frankly, if you are the kind of person to starts flame wars and trolls the foyers of the online gaming world, I am GLAD if they run your ass off. If I am in charge, I’m the kind of guy to do so myself. But then, I’m usually not in charge because I don’t want to be the ring leader.
Now, I know, by now most of you want *NOTHING* to do with me based on what I write and how corrosive I can be in this blog: but let me say this in my defense. I am one of the mellowest people you will meet online. I don’t get irritated and irate and scream and rant, but I also don’t do passive aggressive. I walk away or I tell someone to get bent if they are way out of line and mostly I just relax and keep myself to myself unless someone INSISTS on being an ass hat. Has that made me enemies? SURE! People hate it when someone doesn’t have to beg mercy or put up with them or assuage their guilt or sooth their wounded ego. For some reason online role play tends to gather up more than its fair share of people who have emotional issues and can’t relate well with others. Well, to them I say that this is NOT the place to seek therapy or learn how to deal with the public, if you can’t role play in the real world out there face to face with living breathing people, then you shouldn’t be trying it here. They might need some therapy or perhaps a support group, but that’s not what a game is for.
I encourage everyone who stumbles across and reads this blog to go join an online game once or twice a week, I really do. But if you are 43, never had a date or a girlfriend, and your idea of a hot Friday night is turning off the AC and getting naked to type one handed in a yahoo chat room then do us all a favor and get a grip, life is going to leave you behind. If you are 35 and every man you have ever dated left by sneaking out in the middle of the night without saying good bye because you smothered them to death - don’t look at on line games as a new source of cyber. If you are 18 and have never had a job that didn’t involve fries and milkshakes and you smoke pot nightly, you need to grow some before you give online role playing a shot. And for God’s sake, if you think no one can be as cool or has as firm a grasp of intelligence as you do, build a bridge and get over yourself – or don’t, I don’t care – but stay the hell out of the online gaming community!
Now, on the flip side of that; if you are the kind of person who just wants to escape a mundane existence for a few hours a week, if you don’t get upset and pissed off at words on a computer screen because you understand that they do not impact your existence, if you have a stable relationship and take care of your bills and your own life but just need some place to be more creative… well, then, come on out and play. Jump in, the water is fine.
We NEED that kind of person. Not the whiney, the troubled, the elitist, the harried, the arrogant. Everyone has their faults and flaws, and you’ll find that’s true online, just don’t be and don’t tolerate ass holes - let them play with themselves.
So what about making friends online?
First, let me point out that while I make fun of the notion of a half bald, overweight, pasty skinned middle aged water-head gamer typing one handed in his parents basement, I do so because I have met people like that in the real world. First time I went to meet someone I met online was waaaay back in the days of the dial up BBS, in 1994. Girl claimed to look hot, she looked like someone had set her face on fire and tried to put her out with an ice-pick then let Tammy Faye Baker do her makeup is what she looked like.
Do I care? NO. She was a nice enough person and I didn’t go to meet her for a date, it was a GAME site! In fact, I took my wife because my wife was the one who WANTED to meet her! (Not THAT way you perverts, get your minds out of the gutter!) Anyway, the point is, don’t get your hopes up that the people you are gaming with are sexy beasts that look like their character’s image. Most people for some reason seem to think they are talking with a lonely Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie look alike on the other end of the chat… but it just ain’t so. They got warts and moles and wrinkles just like the rest of us, so don’t get all weird on us and turn stalker. Online meeting people for romance happens, and sometimes it works, just don’t get your hopes up and DAMN sure don’t go online to play with that as your ultimate INTENTION. As far as meeting people goes after talking to them online… one thing is for sure, be careful. There are some really freaky folks out there.
As far as making friends online, I encourage it. The world is best when experienced, and when you get along with folks, it just makes the games all the better.
Game on.
-The Fireman.
No comments:
Post a Comment