all these games you guys play are about talking. yet the cliché is that in the 80s/90s, gamers were dorky losers. in fact, on /tg/ people get upset that the new 'theatre kids' and 'storygamers' skew more artsy and extroverted. people like Zak S who even have sex.so as a baseline: did gamers just have better social skills back in the days? were there less (genuine) autists and players who flipped tables?
>>97973051it's less of a better/worse situation and more just that people are socially maladjusted in different ways now.But tableflipping is still around too.
>>97973051When you're actually invested in the rules and whatnot, you have points of contention or otherwise interest to allow engagement. I reckon people used to, relative to the hobby's size, care more.
>>97973071Yeah there's a huge shyness epidemic to the point where a lot of people won't make a phone call (although dispassionate robots on the other end probably aren't helping things) and I estimate around 80% of people are clinically neurotic.
>>97973139The "Mental Health" crisis is in a manner of speaking real, but is less a manner of disease, and more a manner of our unnatural diets, schedules and lifestyles taking their generational toll.
>>97973268I'd argue it's 90% the internet melting people's minds. When you can talk to anyone anywhere at any time actually showing up for things in person becomes less important for individuals.
>>97973525I blame isolation.Community institutions are replaced by curated digital spaces, all interactions become -moderated-It is in that way, related to the internet, but the internet is sort of the surrogate for the -real- social fabric, which is decaying.
>>97973051Yes, absolutely.Everyone had better social skills. I'm and autistic retarded millennial and now I run emotional-intelligence circles around 23 year old stacies at my work.I train new starters every now and again and these kids look like they'd be the most popular people at their schools and unis (physically attractive, well-groomed, very well dressed in expensive clothes). But they're fucking autists.Seeing some really pretty "put together" zoomette get flustered and have some sort of emotional over-stimulation-panic-attack because you expect them to just go over and talk to someone from another department is very disturbing: these would be the more sociable examples of the young generation.Obviously it's from the internet and social media, but also probably absentee parenting and decline of "third spaces" like malls, cinemas, arcades etc
>>97973051Because the internet wasn't so widespread, you had a smaller pool of people to work with when it comes to playing /tg/ related games not counting normalfag shit like chess, monopoly, risk, poker, etc. even though all would count as a traditional game. So we understood that the half-dozen or so people in your town that played Warhammer Fantasy or D&D were the only game in town so-to-speak, and it wasn't in your best interest to sperg out although plenty did. It was also much harder to sperg out to begin with as people had less resources to begin with. For example, you had less fags that sperged out about how you're an idiot for using a glaive for your character instead of a fauchard, because Glaives are in the core rulebook that every store had, while fauchard was in some splatbook. If your LGS didn't have the book or additional rules/erratta, that shit might as well not have existed. Your group would run into a problem and establish a house-rule.Nowadays, fags will look shit up on some wiki and get mad that their group doesn't know about it, even though with context that shit can only be found 132 pages deep on some forum that nobody uses. You can also afford to ruin your reputation, because creating a new e-mail and discord account is free and easy. You can pop back in a new game the same damn day without learning proper social skills. There's also more people out there in general so it's easier to find your own circle of losers that will accept your shit behavior.
>>97973051Z*k is hated because he's been an sockpuppeting asshole to a lot of people for years. This was tolerated because his modules drew money and awards. However, people in the industry were looking for an excuse to make him persona non grata because he's just that personally unpleasant, especially over text.Of course, there's a nontrivial chance I'm talking to the man himself.
>>97973051I've noticed that in just about every picture of nerds in the 70s and 80s they're far better groomed, so I'm inclined to say yes.
>>97973525>>97974004as an internet addict, i agree.it's like a traditional addiction where your daily baseline because something horrid and strange. you withdraw and you feel terrible. but then a day or two of normality and life becomes sane and straightforward again. your mind 'resets'.in /tg/ terms, about 8 years ago more and more of my friends stopped showing up for games. sometimes at the last minute. without even explaining. that just became socially acceptable in the digital age.in everyday terms, i miss 'forced' socialization. i have gone months without talking face-to-face to another human being. i'm scared i'll lose the ability to speak or immediately punch someone, or some shit. but then one normal conversation with one person for an hour, and it's all good and normal and fine.i guess for a hobby like ours, >>97974004 is particularly true. the discussions and game you have online were just in real life, even if they were with freaks, because the technology wasn't there yet. BBSes didn't follow you around in your pocket.
>>97974305>he's been an sockpuppeting asshole Wikipedia has a problem with 'e-celebrities' in general (streamers, VTubers, etc). but ZS very clearly wrote his own Wikipedia article to make himself sound important.read through the oldest edit history and the archived discussions, plenty of editors raised this exact point. dude was just writing about himself and his art awards in the third person lol.
I don't quite think we all realise how addicted we are to screen time it's crazy. It's basically from wake up to bed time.I spend way too much time looking at other people's blogs instead of painting my own stuff.I went to an event in-person this month though and had a really cracking time and a few beers and made some new actual friends from people who were acquaintances before.
I started playing tabletop RPGS and hanging out in game stores back in the late 80s. I worked at a game store in Queens, NY for several years, starting around the time I was 17. Over the course of my time there I encountered a LOT of players, got to enjoy all kinds of games (both as a player and a GM) I really didn’t realize how good I had it, it seems nowadays people are a lot more restrictive in what games and systems they play, back than it all over the place, there might be five campaigns of completely different games running at once, and I think the ratio between GMs and players was healthier in the 80s and 90s. Like just by nature of how the hobby was, the was no critical role or any shows where you’d watch people play. Almost everyone (atleast almost everyone I knew) was literate, most people would actually read fairly regularly. Anyway, social skills. I’ll put it to you like this, I’m autistic as fuck, but I wasn’t officially diagnosed until I was 32. I’m actually still “in contact” (Facebook friends or in whatsup groups) with more than a dozen guys from the game store days, and a decent number of childhood and high school friends who also were involved in the hobby, and yeah a lot of those guys were also Aspies, we just had no idea or concept of knowing. Autism wasn’t really a part of the culturally lexicon, pretty sure I thought it was like chair throwing retards. Geeks of all stripes (be they autistic or NT, RPG players or comic book fans) absolutely had better social skills, communication skills, social awareness and people skills back than. Was there bullying? Yes, were weird kids completely ostracized? Not in my experience. Perhaps living in NYC was different than growing up in that same era as a nerdy outcast in small town Kentucky, I really can’t say, but the geeks I knew back then all had way better social skills, way bigger friends groups.
>>97974996>Autism wasn’t really a part of the culturally lexicon, pretty sure I thought it was like chair throwing retards. i suppose that was the autism/Asperger's split we had back then. but Rain Man came out in 1988, i think that was a lot of people's ideas.hell before they decided it was a 'spectrum', i remember the first SA posts about Chris-chan saying he was just lying/pretending to have autism, because he's walking around and talking and shit. dude's very clearly what anyone would describe as autistic.pathologising everything can be bad. some people might just be, say, 'shy' or 'quick to anger'. but people in this hobby 100% swing a certain way. 80s-anon, did gamers always compete to be poltically-incorrect? that DEFINITELY comes from the internet, hearing /b/tard shit IRL in public stores is just...awkward, for everyone.
Depends on the medium.Card games don't necessarily involve that much of a human interaction, I've seen some vile people thrive in them, it was unpleasant to share a room with them. Wargames are already a step up, but there's people at both ends of the spectrum and in between, so you can have chill guys that just want to have a good time and tryhards that just netlist and want to throw dice on the table while being obnoxiously competitive. Not that dissimilar to video game players.RPGs are the ones that require more human interaction because you are at the same table for a longer period of time, so the ones that are really maladjusted tend to be filtered or quickly fall off, so the bar is slightly higher.We still have it better than video gamers because there's a bare minimum of social components involved.
>>97973051They had "better" social skills in the sense that everyone around them was also a socially inept nerd so they had a mutual understanding of each other and were all on the same page.Nowadays normals have completely taken over nerd spaces and we're not allowed to just be different and do our own thing anymore.
>>97974996I think it was also due to the basic assumption that, like the internet in the early days, everyone involved in the hobby had a shared interest, and everyone implicitly acknowledged that. It was a sort of safety net. Now anyone can show up just to see how it is, and some do it just because they see people having a good time and want their foot in the door to start forced drama.
>>97973051It's more that now, all the social failures aren't awkward losers, they're misanthropic terminally online assholes.
>>97973051No generally speaking most people playing TTRPGs are still very smart and open-minded people. However the internet has been a vile contagion upon these outcast people, causing them to fall into cult-like conditions and eventually turn into vile weirdos. You have trannies, neo-nazis, misanthropes, extremists, etc.These have always existed among outcasts of course, but their voice and population has risen sharply due the internet. It might have been 5% of all nerdy outcasts, now they make up at least 20%
>>97976473Smart and Open Minded are neighbors, but they bicker.Everything became political; you can't just be "open minded" in an environment where everybody is an agent.
>>97976510Maybe, but if you are dealing with somewhat decent people you can just agree to leave that shit out of the table. I've been playing with someone for months, we meet together and sometimes argue about politics, but not a word of that shit while we play.
>>97973051I would say they were much worse. Normies are boring, and it sucks when your hobby is diluted for the lowest common denominator, but at least normies aren't mentally ill, socially infantile, or just gross.It's been a while since I met anyone worthy of a greentext.
>>97976510When i say open-minded, i dont mean allowing anyone to begin to dog whistle their nazi ideology nor allowing trannies to do their grooming gender shit.I mean being willing to play and interact with people holding such views as long as they dont force their shit. I personally am a TKD proponent, but i wont put that in a game i am running or playing, i have played with lefties as well, one of my good friends is a classic socialist (not a prog, he farms with a couple other families in a shared-ownership thingie)
>>97976580Thing is man, I need to you to qualify what you mean by "Nazi".Because that word isn't an automatic pass like it used to be.You don't get to just refer to "Nazis" without clarifying exactly who you mean by "Nazis".
My group has 1 married guy and a bunch of sexless spergs. I brought one girlfriend to that group and it did significant damage to our relationship (though it would have ended anyway). Since then I do not bring girlfriends to the group anymore.
>>97976646Honestly, not mixing hobbies/friends with girlfriends is usually the best choice. If anything because you need to have some space to yourself.
>>97976634Ok, when i personally say nazis i mean racial-superiority nationalist guys. Not actual national socialists from germany. And by dog-whistling, i mean for example you are playing a game set in victorian london and he says something about paki grooming gangs.
>>97976663Amen, if I like you and want to be your friend, I'll usually give you a heads up not to introduce me to your girlfriend.It can go wrong in all sorts of ways, and I've been around long enough to have seen or caused most of 'em.
i did find it amusing how mad it made people that Zak and his cronies fucked. Like do you really want to fuck busted porn stars?
>>97976669Wew lad.I mean, I'm English.That stuff has affected my nation pretty deeply.And I care about that stuff, and stink about it fairly frequently.And I do believe something has to be done to stop it, and that might mean changing some of our "universalist" rules for more particular ones.Am I a "Nazi"?
>>97974305The whole "sign legal documemts you agree to go to jail for life and give me all your wealth if you're proven wrong in this very important argument or you concede the argument and I win" phase was amusing(as an outsider)
>>97976710No i gave an example, I am not for immigration at all and the way the british gov is dealing with this is clearly horrible. I dont mean a british person saying this, I was interacting with an american at the time. Also the game i was running was victorian england call of cthulhu, your character should only refer to indians in colonial terms
>>97976729An example that i think you would get would be you playing a wildwest game and the character repeatedly talking about trump or making hint hint wag wag shit about how bad trump is.I dont like trump the jew either but i dont want that shit-stirring in my game
>>97973051Yes. I blame the nature of the hobby itself, it's changed and the people have with it. When I was a teen I got into wargaming and modelmaking through a club that used to meet every fortnight in a local pub backroom. It was mostly old grogs, most of which were ex military so they had real experience and looked at wargaming as a simulation and used it to gain a greater understanding about past military conflicts and tactics. Most of the talking was to that end, people bringing reference books and ducuments to back up their arguments, trying to learn from each other.. The club used to have experts giving talks on historical subjects, they had model making competitions, organised group trips to museums and had discussions on how to paint and give modelling tips, etc.Nothing like it nowadays, just seems to be based solely around LGS's running tournaments and game nights in which they try to push their latest product. People seem to meet up at game groups for an hour or two and are only interested in talking about games if it relates to the latest video clip or film that is popular at the moment. There seems to be little interest about the setting or background knowledge that a wargame is based on (most are just made up hollywood style, fantasy or scifi anyway), just repeating answers they got off their phones or AI, never anyone really looking into anything, and getting angry or withdrawing of someone contradicts them.. It all seems so low effort, shallow and transitory nowadays.
>>97973051There's a major - in relative terms - hobby site that has an "agony aunt" column for hobby stuff. I was really struck by a recent one which went along the lines of:>player: the DM in my LGS group is using AI more than I like, what should I do>agony aunt: you should confront him about this because AI is immoral>player follow-up: my group imploded and now none of us are playing, was I still right?Yes the "agony aunt" is an anime-loving tranny. I think it was just really revealing that something which in normal life 1) you would never do like this 2) would actually be easily resolvable among actual friends spiralled into a group breaking up on supposed expert advice. It just makes you realise how a lot of the people you're interacting with in nerd groups at the LGS and especially online have essentially zero real world social experience.
>>97976729Thing is man.The Nazis are gone.And it's fairly unusual to encounter an actual unironic Hitlerite anywhere except the Middle East in real life.I spent a looooong time on /pol/ so I know the difference between an actual Hitlerite, and the people who are usually called Nazis - nowadays, that being anybody to the right of Mao.There is no looming threat from White Racial Supremacists, and they have precious little cultural capital, and have has no real cultural influence for the past three quarters of a century.Hell, half the hubbub about "Nazis" is just people calling Donald Trump and the republican party "Nazis".And Nazis they are not.I know a Nazi when I see one.Then there's the entirely separate matter that people ironically adopt the "Nazi" label to spite the sensibilities of the "moral guardians", as it is pointedly, the most anti-status quo symbol there is.
>>97973051>so as a baseline: did gamers just have better social skills back in the days?Everyone did. I unironically blame social media for that. People are now massively worse at handling disagreements with each other now because they all retreat to convenient online hugboxes in their alone time. In a real life situation with real people, you WILL constantly run into people who see something differently from you and you need to still be able to get along with them regardless of that, and that is a skill people have lost.
>>97979094Nazism is German ethno-nationalism. There are other ethno-nationalist ideologies, such as Zionism which is exactly the same thing as Nazism once you replace the German with the Jew. They used to call American ethno-nationalism Nativism and some other things but today it’s really Christian Nationalism. In the UK there’s British Nationalism, also goes by other names. It’s very telling how you’re trying to conflate all forms of ethno-nationalism with Nazism and then just wave it off as if it just disappeared despite 2 million Nazis not being executed after WW2, and as if being on /pol/ at all ever makes anyone better informed about anything you absolute fucking clown
>>97979094You’re actually a good example of what OP is talking about, do you sperg out about the n word often irl or is it an online only thing for you?
>>97976669what a bizarre example. do you mean because of the anachronism, or just because that's 'on his mind', or what? in D&D games all the time, i'll say, 'the wizard's tower resembles what you and i would call an observatory', sort of Tolkien/narrator style.if someone says 'the Forgotten Realms' Eldreth Veluuthra are basically Elf Nazis' does that upset you? most British Pakistanis really, really do not like the grooming gangs either.
>>97979205I'm far more likely to use it, frankly.It's not that I "lack social skills", it's more that I am opposed to extrinsic social conditioning, and recognize when it is being applied.To be inoffensive always, is not always the goal.To provoke is to force a reaction.And to be always reacting, is to be led.
>>97979889"British Pakistani" is a contradiction in terms.There are Pakistanis in Britain, who strategically couch themselves as "British" usually to further their own ende, but if you asked them aboutbthei4 identity, they would tell you thry are Pakistani.- t. West Midlands amon who is literally surrounded by Pakistanis."The West is a woman to be mounted" - Arabic Proverb.And I am sad to say that the men who alteady served their putuably short stretches have been welcomed back by their communities, because by their religious law, they have done no wrong, see; Quranic verses regarding "What thy right hand possesses".
>>97973051majority of autists are not autistic at all and just the by product of bad parenting. they now infest most nerd hobbies like a plague
>>97976528"No Religion. No Politics. No Football."
>>97979889I am the Anon you are replying to, and i dont understand whats so difficult to get, just dont bring up modern politics in the middle of my fucking game
>>97980616Not even a fan of pakistanis, but you are mixing a lot of shit up.Owning war slaves for sex (what your right hand has) is not the same as rape or grooming. You need a serious jump in logic for that, although both are rather vileAlso pakistanis dont speak arabic, and when i googled that arabic proverb it turned out a lebanese jew said it (gad saad).It is important to know the actual things going on to not be confused
>>97980616I feel like I should explain to you how the English came to be in Britain, and also that British can mean either of the empire or more usually nowadays from geographical Britain. Migrants don’t really become English because it’s a culture and bloodline, but they can readily become British simply by existing on and being of that island. This, British Pakistani is a thing and as you said if you ask them they’ll call themselves Pakistani but this is no different from an Englishman calling himself an Englishman. The problem with this kind of discussion during gaming is that inevitably someone will have to be lectured to in order for him to understand why his conclusions are based on misunderstandings, misinformation, prejudices, and false premises. This can cause angst and distress and feelings get hurt when you realise that your contemporaries consider you intellectually inferior because you actually are
>>97973051Meh, the cliche of gamers were dorky losers was a Hollywood thing that kind of stuck around. Now they were groups of gamers that fit the 'dork with the tism' to a T. However you had just as many people who were rockers into D&D, jocks into comics, etc. However people saw the shows and movies push teens in high school into one stereotype in high school and now people acted like that was real thing.
>>97976690So not Nazis. Idiot. “I can’t believe this player is anti grooming gang and doesn’t speak like corporate HR, everyone must feel uncomfortable now”
>>97973051I started with the 2nd edition era. When I was a kid there were more nerds and less geeks. Smart people who obsess over fantasy world details, capable of talking and reading social quests but just not having the interests others do. Everything is geeks and outcasts now, from far ass crack magic players to rejected theater kids, it’s weird people trying to have a better fantasy life and being way too emotionally attached. There were always some odd balls, people who physically where easy to pick on (though they were slender and glasses not obese and ungroomed) maybe a kid with a starter but he was still smart. Everyone was always smart. A reason for the removal of character death that isn’t discussed, is the unhealthy emotional attachment freaks have to using their fantasy world as a wish fulfillment crutch. I won’t play in a store anymore bc I’m not looking to share a therapy session with mentally unwell people who do nothing in the real world.
>>97980596>I use It to be a cunt>and get angry when they call me a cunt
>>97973051It's always been a mix. The "theater kids" have always, ALWAYS been part of our hobby. Hell, we played in the back of the performing arts center, at my highschool in the early 90s. WoD was ABOUT the theater kids. There were still the fat, disgusting slobs. There were still the genuine autists whose parents thought the FLGS you dorks hung out at was a safe place to drop off their mildly handicapped children. There were dorky losers. And there were perfectly normal people, too.But the truth is: all teenagers are insecure, neurotic, stinky and gross. Every teenager felt like an embarrassed outcast. That's how the hormones that rule them make them feel. No teenager feels like he or she "fits in." And they all dress weird and don't use deoderant often enough.People don't really change, that much. Social norms do. Now the kids say "six seven" or whatever. Now rap and metal are mainstream and your mom doesn't threaten to call the priest if you listen to it. You can get porn and information on your phone instead of it being secondhand and only the hardcore book nerds knowing anything the fuck at all. Lots of things change. But people? Nah.
>>97982082Us hardcore book nerds are making a comeback now thanks to the dead internet and general obfuscation of knowledge and complete lack of ordinary people being capable of not only interpreting data but comprehending bullshit
>>97982067Lmao, what a reach.No, I don't have to be angry to call you a nigger, and I am overall, quite a happy chap.Your sacred cows are not sacred to me.
>>97981104Gad Saad indeed quoted it recently; it was something he was told by an Egyptian, and it is indeed an Arabic proverb.And frankly, they consider any kuffar woman who falls into their grasp to be under that criteria.Non Muslim = No Moral standingEither way, the fundaments of what they pass off as "moral principles", are just incompatible with ours.For one, because their book does not teach them to reciprocate with non-Muslims, but to mistreat them as a matter of course.
>>97982588Addendm; also, the Liturgical language of Islam is Arabic, and so, Arabic is relevant throughout the Islamic world.
>>97981661You're making a whole lot of assumptions, and I feel absolutely zero desire to humour you.Frankly, if it was the fourth century, and I was a Romano-Briton, you'd bet your skinny ass I'd be telling Hengist and Horsa to get back in their gay little boat too.Because the Anglo-Saxon invasion was a fucking travesty for the people already living there.Ask The Gododdin.Pleb.There is no such thing as a "British Pakistani"Especially considering that if Britain sank into the sea, they would still have Pakistan, and we would have nowhere.
