Once a Nerd, Always a Nerd

I originally had this post wrapped up with the CraigCon 6 post, but I decided to break it out in its own separate space. I didn't want it to get mixed up with the great fun that was had there.

While hanging around outside discussing a game with some of the folks at CraigCon this year, some people drove by and actually screamed "NERDS!!!" out their window at us.

Now, being almost 29 at this point, I figured it wouldn't bother me.

But I saw some of the folks, old and young alike, clearly wince a bit. Obviously they laughed it off with some remarks, but you could kind of tell that it still stung to hear the word, to be called a name for no reason by somebody you didn't know.

It would actually happen a few more times during the weekend, including one tirade that was checkered with plenty of profanity.

I continued to maintain it didn't bother me until I started writing this.

One of the things that makes tabletop gaming fun for me is the idea of crafting stories, keeping your imagination in shape. When you're a kid it's very easy and natural to use your imagination, but as you grow older it really takes some work. I like tabletop games because the rules exist to help put you in that space mentally, the same sort of space you need to be in for any creative endeavor.

However using your imagination to "play" starts to go out of style at a certain age. Playing real sports starts to take the place of playing Cops and Robbers. Hanging out at the mall (or whatever it is kids do) takes the place of getting together and pretending to slay dragons.

The moment you step onto a basketball court and don't say "I'm [insert favorite player]" is the moment you have irrevocably grown up, gone to a different headspace. And once that happens it can be hard to get back, to go from serious to play, from malls to spaceships, from offices to castles.

Somewhere along the line the pursuit of dragons changes you from just another kid to a "nerd". And when you're a kid it can really hurt to get made fun of for something you enjoy, because it's difficult to understand why it's happening.

Now of course we're older and wiser. Those old barbs don't hurt like they used to, don't open up fresh wounds.

But sometimes they can remind us of the old ones.

So let me conclude by saying this: I'm Michael Jordan.

Update: Almost uncanny in its timing, but Penny Arcade has a story today about entering a Pokemon tournament after intense preparation... and finding a bunch of little kids who just like to play. It's the post called Pokemon, second one down, and I encourage you to read it.

This May Require Burning Edge

I hate to link and run, but with the chatting I've been doing about Shadowrun lately, you might get a kick out of this story spotted on the Burning Empires forums.

Elf defence for 'lingerie thief'

Pansies Paralyzed by Snow Army

I greatly fear the day when invading forces allied against the United States land on the shores of the northeast.

If they're smart, they will replace all guns, missiles, cannons, and trebuchets with giant snow machines.

It would start with word that the Snow Army was approaching. Instead of preparing their defenses, people would all drive simultaneously to the grocery store for bottled water and canned goods. Thousands would die fighting for the last can of Spam. Thousands more would be killed in the subsequent car crashes and traffic jams.

Those traffic jams would be so bad that some people would actually still be in them when the Snow Army landed. Having squandered the chance to muster a response, people would begin calling out of work and attempt to wait it out in their homes. The call to arms would go out, but everyone would have excuses to avoid reporting for duty.

"They don't plow my street in the neighborhood I live in."
"My house is near a hill."
"By the time I get there, I'd have to turn around and come back home."
"I'm not driving out there with those morons."
"I'm a huge pansy."

You get the picture. Left with no defense, the Snow Army would roll over everything in its path. The angry inch of powdered death would leave nothing untouched. Governments would fail to respond at every level, elected officials having already chosen an excuse from the list above.

It didn't used to be this way. George Washington and his army spent a brutal winter at Valley Forge, and they didn't call in sick. They used the time to get their asses out there and retrain.

Damned if I was going to dishonor their memory.

This morning I walked out at quarter to 7 in the morning. My car was covered with an inch of pure ice. I couldn't get the door open.

Instead of picking one of the excuses above, I gave the car a few swift kicks. That knocked enough of the ice off to get the door open. I started the car, got out the scraper, and got to work.

Turned out I was better off wielding the scraper at first like a baseball bat to crack the ice. I used this tactic for awhile before using old fashioned scraping techniques. In the process I sliced open my finger.

No time to deal with the blood. The freezing rain and snow were still falling and covering the work I had done so far. I kept at it, and eventually enough space had been cleared on the windshield to see out.

Tossing the scraper back in the car, I went upstairs to my apartment to get a bandage for my finger when I noticed I had gotten blood all over my shirt.

That's when the power went out. Undaunted, I went back to the car. Unfortunately, the 2 minutes I had spent not scraping ice had resulted in the car door freezing shut again. I gave it a tug... and pulled off the handle.

Now my keys were trapped in the car, but I used a credit card to pry open the tiniest bit of plastic left on what used to be my door handle. This time I left the door open as I retrieved the scraper and got the freshest coat of ice off.

I eventually made it in to work to a half empty office and emails from friends and coworkers who were staying home.

When it snows, you can choose to be a huge pansy. That's your right as an American. That's a choice that you live with.

But just remember that you are dishonoring the proud history of this country.

And that you suck.

The New Mob Rule

One of the impressive things about the current age of technology we're in is how quickly information can get around.

One of the even more impressive things is how quickly misinformation can get around.

Let's look at examples of both.

First, let's take a look at an article on Digg today. For those of you who don't know, digg is an extremely popular "social bookmarking" site. People can submit stories and also vote for (or "digg") other stories that they find interesting. An algorithm on the site determines which are the most popular (I assume via some function of how quickly an article receives diggs and the number of those diggs, but I don't know the details) and puts them on the "front page". When an article makes the front page, the site in question gets absolutely hammered with visitors, because a lot of casual users like myself only browse the front page to visit interesting things.

Today featured an article about a small town Snohomish. The citizens of Snohomish love their high school football team. Even more, they love the tradition of firing off their cannon before football games and after touchdowns.

Well, unfortunately a student got badly hurt by the cannon some time ago. A member of the high school ROTC, the student was part of the team that fired off the cannon, and it exploded, almost taking off his leg. At one point it looked like they were going to have to amputate his leg entirely.

Based on the article, it looks like the kid didn't get a lot of sympathy from the town. In fact, he actually got threats.

It would appear that, afraid they might lose the tradition of firing off the cannon due to safety concerns, the town went a little nuts. Some folks threatened to "blow off his other leg", and a collection to help pay the steep medical bills (including putting a titanium rod in his injured leg) yielded a sum of $200, nearly all of that coming from other schools.

Enter digg. Once the article got on the front page, the enterprising commentors discovered the school's football website. An innocent poll there asks visitors how many games they plan to attend.

So far over 100,000 (and rising fast) have replied "none".

Will any of this do any good? Who knows. Is the article biased? Probably. I would've liked to have seen more reaction from kids in his class.

But is it funny to see that many people (along with, I'm sure, more than a couple of scripts doing the voting) visit a little homegrown school website and express their displeasure through a pointless poll? Yes.

Second, let's talk about internet hoaxes. If you have an email account (that should include one or two of you), you know that people love to circulate chain letters containing erroneous information. These may include a gent from Nigeria claiming he wants to send you money. These may include people encouraging you to buy a junk stock.

They also may include completely falsified rewritings of history for the purpose of a political agenda. An example of this would be the Oliver North "testimony" which claims that Ollie identified Osama Bin Laden as "the most evil person alive".

Osama Bin Laden is evil. I'm not disputing that. But what is easily disputable is the testimony. The blasted thing was circulated so much that the US Senate even thought to include a refutation of the entire thing on their website.

But that's the internet for you. Perhaps for better or worse, the internet allows us to see "news" now already filtered through the lenses we prefer. There are plenty of bloggers and "news" websites out there that will tailor to your political views, whatever they may be. That's nice because it is often pleasant to read things that we already agree with.

But it's a heck of a lot more challenging... and more important... to read points of view we don't agree with. And as more and more people turn to these alternative news sources (and for the love of all that is holy, chain emails should never be considered "news"), the responsibility falls on us to do our fact checking.

Frankly, that's not something at which people have proven particularly proficient.

Update: It appears the poll has been taken down. Too bad, I would've liked to see just how high the count got.

Update 2: It should be noted that Fark.com was on this story first. Credit where credit is due.

A Week After the Madness

Wow.

No pun intended.

It was a pretty wild week for Soul Kerfuffle. Andy's little guest article sparked an internet firestorm that led to over 1000 diggs and not one, but two slashdottings.

It was obviously way beyond any kind of response we were anticipating. This blog was started by me a couple of years ago for the same reasons most people start a blog: just a way for friends and family to keep up with what's going on, and a place to track meandering thoughts.

I learned some pretty valuable lessons from the experience of all those comments and emails though. For one thing, it has made me a lot more sympathetic to public figures whose every word could land them in hot water with the press. It is so easy for anything that you say to be taken out of context and twisted when every word is dissected and discussed by a great number of people. Since I'm good friends with Andy, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what he meant by his words from previous discussions: it really wasn't much more than a classic case of someone realizing they had let their behavior get out of hand, and then taking steps to fix it.

What was shocking was the amount of backlash received. One of the commentors linked a message board for a WoW guild called Fires of Heaven, and in an effort to understand the backlash I ventured onto their message board to get their point of view.

Although some there were understandably a little put off at first, there were several good points made.

One point reiterated strongly on the board and in the comments was the issue of comparing World of Warcraft to a drug of some kind. Some people went so far as to say it was insulting.

I believe the issue is, quite frankly, unimportant to the purpose of the original post. Whether or not something is intrinsically addictive or not is for the realm of science to figure out. But I'm pretty sure that it's possible to exhibit addictive behavior towards just about anything. So whether or not Warcraft is addictive like a drug really doesn't matter to me... the fact that some people exhibit addictive behavior DOES matter to me. And it matters to me because the people are important, not the game or the way it's designed or any of those things.

Another interesting point made on the Fires of Heaven message board that I never considered was one of guild burnout. Some of the folks over there clearly care about raiding, and do a lot of work to schedule raids and put in a lot of time to earn the gear. They view it as a personal affront when someone who has spent some time raiding with them, earning gear alongside them, leaves the game because of burnout because it penalizes others who feel they are able to balance the game and real life. Now those people must find someone else to replace the burned out player who let things get out of hand.

Finally, a long long time ago I posted something about game design shortly after I quit playing the game myself. The gist of the thing is that when you look at World of Warcraft and compare it to Pac Man, you see that game design actually may not have come as far as we thought. There is still a kill-loot-reward mechanism in place that probably should have gone the way of the dodo years ago. I bring this up again because this week's issue of the fine online gaming magazine, The Escapist, has a terrific article about how tantalizingly close MMOs are to being revolutionary, but how they are falling short in the author's eyes.

Finally, on the issue of the game or the person being to blame, I'm always going to vote in favor of the person, with the following caveat: a person can be influenced by their environment. That doesn't mean to me that the environment is at fault, but it can be an obstacle to overcome. It is a particularly timely issue, because in other news this week a fellow who happens to play Dungeons and Dragons killed a coworker with a homemade samurai sword.

That the fellow may be schizophrenic doesn't make the headline.