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Author Topic: Pundit  (Read 8805 times)

Eirikrautha

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #15 on: October 05, 2022, 09:15:11 PM »
Tabletop RPGs were, if you ask me, a canary in the coalmine. The woke were taking over this scene (or trying to) before I saw a similar takeover elsewhere. I remember thinking that something was going seriously awry on the political left around 2010-2011, and that was based on what I saw in RPG discussions.

One reason might be because RPGs let you play characters other than yourself, so it may always have been a bit attractive to people with gender dysphoria. I saw discussions of trans issues, and militant gender studies opinions, relatively early on RPG.net. It is also possible that, sadly, geek culture in general is a bit attractive to "idealistic" narcissists, who thinks that the world owes them all sorts of things, because they were bullied in school or because of mommy and daddy issues (or both). Thankfully far from all geeks are like that, but I remember being struck by all the weirdness first time I went to a gaming convention.
RPGs almost inherently have some degree of wish-fulfillment. The desire for ideological conformance seems to be relatively new, as in it may have started around 2010, but I don’t see a similar drive in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. The march of Wokism may be a conjunction of several factors such as social media, the spread of Critical Theory reaching a critical mass, etc.

I think social media is by far the dominant effect - and the Internet in general. In the wider culture, political polarization has been increasing since the early 1990s, but it accelerated hugely with social media. People on opposing political sides have less and less overlap in what content they read and watch. They tend to only watch material that matches their political inclinations.

To Trond's point: there have been a bunch of psychological studies on RPG players starting in the 1980s. None of the ones I have seen suggest that RPGers are significantly higher in narcissism. I suspect the canary in the coalmine isn't RPG players in general, but rather the people most heavily online. Those who play RPGs without being online probably continued mostly similar to how they were in the 1990s and 2000s.

cf. https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/whatis/psychology.html

Links to those studies, please.  Anecdotally, almost all of the people i knew who played RPGs in the 80s and early 90s were people who were far more comfortable living in a fantastic world than in their own lives.   They may not have been narcissists, but they also weren't the star quarterbacks  or homecoming queens.

Besides, the whole "everyone has gotten soooo polarized" canard ignores the reason for the polarization. The "Contract for America" from 1992 isn't far from the same platform of the modern Republican party.  Whereas I'm pretty sure Daniel Patrick Moynihan would get escorted out of his own party today for warning about "defining deviancy down".  There wasn't a single national Democrat who supported gay marriage,  much less the idea that a dude could magically become a chick.  It's ironic that,  when the right causes social upheaval, it's their fault alone,  but the wild leftward push of the media and Twitteratti is somehow "everyone's" fault.  Nope.  The fact that there are lots of memes about how the left went way far and people who formerly considered themselves leftists suddenly were accused of being Nazis provides pretty strong evidence as to who was at fault.   Outside of a handful of neocons, there's no large complaints the other way.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2022, 11:52:12 AM by Eirikrautha »

Trond

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #16 on: October 06, 2022, 12:16:25 AM »
Tabletop RPGs were, if you ask me, a canary in the coalmine. The woke were taking over this scene (or trying to) before I saw a similar takeover elsewhere. I remember thinking that something was going seriously awry on the political left around 2010-2011, and that was based on what I saw in RPG discussions.

One reason might be because RPGs let you play characters other than yourself, so it may always have been a bit attractive to people with gender dysphoria. I saw discussions of trans issues, and militant gender studies opinions, relatively early on RPG.net. It is also possible that, sadly, geek culture in general is a bit attractive to "idealistic" narcissists, who thinks that the world owes them all sorts of things, because they were bullied in school or because of mommy and daddy issues (or both). Thankfully far from all geeks are like that, but I remember being struck by all the weirdness first time I went to a gaming convention.
RPGs almost inherently have some degree of wish-fulfillment. The desire for ideological conformance seems to be relatively new, as in it may have started around 2010, but I don’t see a similar drive in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. The march of Wokism may be a conjunction of several factors such as social media, the spread of Critical Theory reaching a critical mass, etc.

I think social media is by far the dominant effect - and the Internet in general. In the wider culture, political polarization has been increasing since the early 1990s, but it accelerated hugely with social media. People on opposing political sides have less and less overlap in what content they read and watch. They tend to only watch material that matches their political inclinations.

To Trond's point: there have been a bunch of psychological studies on RPG players starting in the 1980s. None of the ones I have seen suggest that RPGers are significantly higher in narcissism. I suspect the canary in the coalmine isn't RPG players in general, but rather the people most heavily online. Those who play RPGs without being online probably continued mostly similar to how they were in the 1990s and 2000s.

cf. https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/whatis/psychology.html

My “idealist narcissist” speculation aside (yeah this is all speculation based on personal experiences) what about the gender dysphoria?

oggsmash

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #17 on: October 06, 2022, 05:31:46 AM »
  It is odd you quoted him and completely missed the point.  The Lefties wokes are the narcissists, not RPGers.

This is the specific statement from Trond that I was responding to:

It is also possible that, sadly, geek culture in general is a bit attractive to "idealistic" narcissists, who thinks that the world owes them all sorts of things, because they were bullied in school or because of mommy and daddy issues (or both). Thankfully far from all geeks are like that, but I remember being struck by all the weirdness first time I went to a gaming convention.

This is suggesting that geeks could have an overabundance of narcissists relative to the general population. If so, then that raised fraction would show up in psychological studies.

   I think his suggestion there is off, only the loud and pushy RPGers are the leftists woke folks, and the real issue is the leftist woke are heavily represented by narcissists.

jhkim

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #18 on: October 06, 2022, 02:54:45 PM »
My “idealist narcissist” speculation aside (yeah this is all speculation based on personal experiences) what about the gender dysphoria?

I don't have any evidence either way. I suspect that people with gender dysphoria gravitated more to online games (which are mostly video games) rather than face-to-face tabletop games. I've played with several transgender people in my tabletop games, but that probably is more about my part of the country and my social circles than about RPGs.


cf. https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/whatis/psychology.html

Links to those studies, please.  Anecdotally, almost all of the people i knew who played RPGs in the 80s and early 90s were people who were far more comfortable living in a fantastic world than in their own lives. They may not have been narcissists, but they also weren't the star quarterbacks  or homecoming queens.

I'll see about adding links to my page. They are listed with complete bibliographic references, but I haven't linked them. There are some links at the RPG Studies site. You can search on the text "Read Online".

http://www.rpgstudies.net/


The fact that there are lots of memes about how the left went way far and people who formerly considered themselves leftists suddenly were accused of being Nazis provides pretty strong evidence as to who was at fault.   Outside of a handful of neocons, there's no large complaints the other way.

It sounds like you're citing how many memes are in your feed as evidence. That strikes me as exactly the social media driven partisanship that I'm talking about. I don't think that number of memes is a good measure of reality. They're a measure of what social media companies think will drive more clicks and profit.

Broadly, I do think liberals have changed since the Bill Clinton era, especially in the mainstream taking up LGBT causes and to some degree Native American causes.

Conservatives have also changed since the Bush Sr and Bush Jr era. Mainstream Bush conservatives were pro-immigration, passing the Immigration Act of 1990 that greatly increased immigration and added family-based immigration. They also supported foreign action and U.S. involvement in world affairs. They were in principle anti-abortion, but abortion was largely accepted compared to now. Both Bush presidents added to federal funding for schools, and federal regulation (No Child Left Behind).

I would say that the difference between either Bush and Trump is bigger than the difference between Bill Clinton and Biden.

Ratman_tf

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #19 on: October 06, 2022, 06:08:20 PM »
Broadly, I do think liberals have changed since the Bill Clinton era, especially in the mainstream taking up LGBT causes and to some degree Native American causes.

I think the Democrats have become a bunch of racist assholes. Maybe they always were, but it's become much more blatant now, and it's starting to drive minorites over to the Right.

"Liberals" are a mixed bag. Many disposessed who were cancelled have gone on to identify as libertarian or even right wing.

Quote
Conservatives have also changed since the Bush Sr and Bush Jr era. Mainstream Bush conservatives were pro-immigration, passing the Immigration Act of 1990 that greatly increased immigration and added family-based immigration. They also supported foreign action and U.S. involvement in world affairs. They were in principle anti-abortion, but abortion was largely accepted compared to now. Both Bush presidents added to federal funding for schools, and federal regulation (No Child Left Behind).

Has the Republican party become anti-legal-immigration? The big beef, personified by the idea of "Building a Wall" is that they're anti-illegal-immigration.

Quote
I would say that the difference between either Bush and Trump is bigger than the difference between Bill Clinton and Biden.

Trump was a non-political outsider who threw his hat into the ring in 2016. I'd say a more accurate grouping would be Bush, Clinton, Biden and Obama on one side and Trump on the other.
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Trond

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #20 on: October 06, 2022, 08:56:50 PM »
Either way, I think the political changes are noticeable, and sadly I think Johnny Rotten phrased it pretty well

“I never thought I’d live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone,”

jhkim

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #21 on: October 07, 2022, 12:03:50 PM »
Conservatives have also changed since the Bush Sr and Bush Jr era. Mainstream Bush conservatives were pro-immigration, passing the Immigration Act of 1990 that greatly increased immigration and added family-based immigration. They also supported foreign action and U.S. involvement in world affairs. They were in principle anti-abortion, but abortion was largely accepted compared to now. Both Bush presidents added to federal funding for schools, and federal regulation (No Child Left Behind).

Has the Republican party become anti-legal-immigration? The big beef, personified by the idea of "Building a Wall" is that they're anti-illegal-immigration.

Trump specifically called for reduced legal immigration in his campaign platform. From his campaign platform:

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Immigration moderation. Before any new green cards are issued to foreign workers abroad, there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers. This will help reverse women's plummeting workplace participation rate, grow wages, and allow record immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20160330080635/https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

Once in office, Trump supported the RAISE Act, which would dramatically reduce legal immigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAISE_Act

Trump also gave many executive orders to restrict immigration, such as more than halving the number of refugees accepted. He was opposed by some Bush-era Republicans, though, so I'm not sure how I would characterize Republicans as a whole.

Both Bush's pushed to raise immigration levels, while Trump pushed to reduce and restrict immigration.

oggsmash

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #22 on: October 07, 2022, 12:08:22 PM »
   Everyone knows the USA will be a better place to live with fewer white people.  So of course anyone who opposes more immigration (of course massively made up of people who are not white) of any kind, legal or otherwise is simply a racist asshole attempting to promote white supremacy.

jhkim

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #23 on: October 07, 2022, 04:01:42 PM »
Trying to keep vaguely on topic... The original post (OP) was asking about the history of how we got to the current political in gaming. That is tied into how we got to the current political divide in general in the U.S.  I'd hope we could discuss the history without getting bogged down in whether any given policy is right or wrong.

The point about immigration is a sidetrack from this from Eirikrautha.

Besides, the whole "everyone has gotten soooo polarized" canard ignores the reason for the polarization. The "Contract for America" from 1992 isn't far from the same platform of the modern Republican party.  Whereas I'm pretty sure Daniel Patrick Moynihan would get escorted out of his own party today for warning about "defining deviancy down".  There wasn't a single national Democrat who supported gay marriage,  much less the idea that a dude could magically become a chick.

Eirikrautha is asserting that there is little change from the Republicans under Bush Sr in 1992 and modern Republicans under Trump. I think that Trump has many significant differences from Bush Sr. That's not an attack on Trump, and indeed, I'd think many Trump supporters would agree with it.

---

Coincidentally, 1992 is also around when I first started getting involved in online RPG discussion. For me it started with rec.games.frp.advocacy on Usenet. At that time, the biggest flamewars in frp were about GURPS vs Hero System - which I don't think were politically involved. At the same time, there was the movement of White Wolf fans - who weren't overtly political, but they were overly counter-cultural as goths, and they didn't identify much with D&D players.

Circa 2000 when The Forge was starting up, the posters there didn't identify with either the goth White Wolf fans or the traditional D&D fans. They also weren't overtly political, in my experience. They were a little counter-cultural, and they were anti-corporate - and supporting small indie publishers was important.

I joined theRPGsite a little while later in 2006, and it was far less political than today - though a little more political than The Forge.

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #24 on: October 07, 2022, 05:48:19 PM »
Either way, I think the political changes are noticeable, and sadly I think Johnny Rotten phrased it pretty well

“I never thought I’d live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone,”

John Lydon is and always has been a huge phony and the Sex Pistols were basically The Monkees of punk

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #25 on: October 08, 2022, 11:50:51 AM »
Trying to keep vaguely on topic... The original post (OP) was asking about the history of how we got to the current political in gaming. That is tied into how we got to the current political divide in general in the U.S.  I'd hope we could discuss the history without getting bogged down in whether any given policy is right or wrong.

The point about immigration is a sidetrack from this from Eirikrautha.

Besides, the whole "everyone has gotten soooo polarized" canard ignores the reason for the polarization. The "Contract for America" from 1992 isn't far from the same platform of the modern Republican party.  Whereas I'm pretty sure Daniel Patrick Moynihan would get escorted out of his own party today for warning about "defining deviancy down".  There wasn't a single national Democrat who supported gay marriage,  much less the idea that a dude could magically become a chick.

Eirikrautha is asserting that there is little change from the Republicans under Bush Sr in 1992 and modern Republicans under Trump. I think that Trump has many significant differences from Bush Sr. That's not an attack on Trump, and indeed, I'd think many Trump supporters would agree with it.

I would. Trumpist Republicans are now the party of free speech, the party of civil liberties, the anti-segregation party, the anti-corporate party, the anti-globalist party, the anti-war party.

The democrats are now the pro-censorship party, the party of curtailing civil liberties, the pro-FBI party, the pro-segregation party, the pro-corporate party, the party of globalism, and the pro-war party.

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oggsmash

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #26 on: October 08, 2022, 12:36:25 PM »
  Reagan had many significant differences from bush sr.  Pretending the new world order guy was where most people who were conservative/republican then stood is retard level comprehension or just intentional obfuscation, as per the usual.   Acting as if Trump were a radical departure from republican thought in the 80's and 90's is stupid, point blank.  Different from globalists like Bush Sr and Jr?  Sure.  But republican is a long way from some blanket that means half the country is all on board with Bushes, you get the candidate you can get, not the one you want.  Leftists and their candidates are RADICALLY different from where the nation was in the 80's and 90's, they have no issues pushing mutilating kids and allowing all sorts of degeneracy and flat out open borders.  None of them were close to that 30 years ago.   I keep hearing how the right has gotten so "radical".  Apparently radical means not moving left fast enough, or deciding to try something different after decades of evidence the bullshit we were doing is going terribly wrong. 

  Oh well, again, once the nation is a lot less white all these problems will be cleared up and there will be no polarized politics in gaming, life, media, or any where else. Resisting this move towards peace and pluralism is obviously jut support of white supremacism.  Be glad when we get to that utopia.

Ratman_tf

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #27 on: October 09, 2022, 12:48:57 AM »
Trying to keep vaguely on topic... The original post (OP) was asking about the history of how we got to the current political in gaming. That is tied into how we got to the current political divide in general in the U.S.  I'd hope we could discuss the history without getting bogged down in whether any given policy is right or wrong.

For myself, the "culture war" came on my radar around the time of Atheism Plus. (Atheism plus Social Justice) One of many examples of a specific strain of ideology and ideologues infiltrating and destroying a community from within.

It sounds like a good idea. Who doesn't like justice? Only mean, bad people. But the end result is the exertion of social power over others. Leading to "witch hunts", and ideological purity tests.
We have an entire thread devoted to showcasing the madness that ensues within a community in the throes of social justice ideology.

Since then, many words have been typed and said on the topic. James Lindsay of New Discourses has done an insane amount of research into the philisophical origins of Social Justice. That's a good place to start if you want to spend hours of your life hearing about postmodern thought and political activism and how it seeped into modern culture.
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Eirikrautha

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #28 on: October 09, 2022, 11:46:52 AM »
Trying to keep vaguely on topic... The original post (OP) was asking about the history of how we got to the current political in gaming. That is tied into how we got to the current political divide in general in the U.S.  I'd hope we could discuss the history without getting bogged down in whether any given policy is right or wrong.

For myself, the "culture war" came on my radar around the time of Atheism Plus. (Atheism plus Social Justice) One of many examples of a specific strain of ideology and ideologues infiltrating and destroying a community from within.

It sounds like a good idea. Who doesn't like justice? Only mean, bad people. But the end result is the exertion of social power over others. Leading to "witch hunts", and ideological purity tests.
We have an entire thread devoted to showcasing the madness that ensues within a community in the throes of social justice ideology.

Since then, many words have been typed and said on the topic. James Lindsay of New Discourses has done an insane amount of research into the philisophical origins of Social Justice. That's a good place to start if you want to spend hours of your life hearing about postmodern thought and political activism and how it seeped into modern culture.
Absolutely.  But jhkim doesn't want to know the actual history of the woke movement.  He wants the woke movement not to be completely the fault of his "side."  And those are mutually exclusive...

oggsmash

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Re: Pundit
« Reply #29 on: October 09, 2022, 04:33:43 PM »
  Fault implies a mistake.  The march through the institutions and attempts to manage everyone on how and what to think is 100 percent on purpose.  I give kudos for the time and effort it took to get to the point is at.  I also give warning that pushing too hard will give a snap back, and given how far the middle has been stretched WAY to the left, the snap might cause some pain.