I've been thinking of late about the world I grew up in — but before I get into that, let me stress, as I have many times on this blog, that I am not a nostalgic person. I do not think the game that I ran in 1984 is better than the game I'm running now. I do not think that the world was a better place in 1976; I do not think that there were more opportunities for individuals to express themselves in the 1970s and 80s. I do not think the culture was "better"... though I will admit that it was more focused and less owned by a corporate elite. I am not interested in writing a post about the "good old days," because in fact I don't think those days were actually very "good." I believe that people say that because they don't adapt well, because they don't know how to make use of new things, because they taught themselves to be confused more easily than younger folks and because, let's face it, things were simpler. I just refuse to consider "simpler" to mean the same thing as "better."
Importantly, what matters here is that that other world was smaller. The number of those who might know of our existence was minimal, limited for the most part to first hand or second-hand sources. Others at school or in my work place might know me, or they might have heard of me, directly, as told by others... but that was all. Very, very few had any experience with actual "fame," either small or large. Politicians did not need to perform in a mass-media fashion because it was sufficient to go to one's riding or district, meet people on a street, shake their hands, talk with them, and feel personally connected. Some one might develop a "reputation," but this was largely only with people already known. When I played D&D, what happened at my table might to told directly to others by my players, or myself, but that was as far as it could conceivably go. Even attending a game con, the larger audience was fleeting, hardly impressive and no means existed by which a person could go to a third source to look me up, to see what others thought of me.
This is all obvious. I only feel the need to say it because no one ever does now.
Another writer might now decide this is the opportunity to talk about how this unlimited visibility is bad for us and soul-crushing, and the reason why everything sucks now, while decrying the loss of the personal or some other such rot. I'm not going to do that.
What's materially relevant is that the world I grew up in had two or three centuries to develop a structure that included a school, a shared workplace, a university-directed path towards careerism, meeting spaces, expectations about politicians, celebrities and the media... all of which, while reaching fruition at different times and with different impulses, did create a sort of structured, predictable world that enabled people to tell us, "you will get an education at school" or "if you improve yourself, you will get a good job." These were myths to some degree, but the result came up often enough that there remained a sentiment that it could be trusted.
This is all obvious. I only feel the need to say it because no one ever does now.
Another writer might now decide this is the opportunity to talk about how this unlimited visibility is bad for us and soul-crushing, and the reason why everything sucks now, while decrying the loss of the personal or some other such rot. I'm not going to do that.
What's materially relevant is that the world I grew up in had two or three centuries to develop a structure that included a school, a shared workplace, a university-directed path towards careerism, meeting spaces, expectations about politicians, celebrities and the media... all of which, while reaching fruition at different times and with different impulses, did create a sort of structured, predictable world that enabled people to tell us, "you will get an education at school" or "if you improve yourself, you will get a good job." These were myths to some degree, but the result came up often enough that there remained a sentiment that it could be trusted.
Thus the individual growing up in that world could perceive the world, correct or not, as a navigable space; as a finite space. If I did not enjoy my time at one restaurant, I could leave the job and cross the street to be hired there, without someone having the power to look my name up on an internet and learn what my life had been before entering that new space. That limitation matters, not because it was better, but because it was, for the average human, comprehensible.
A finite world can be harsh, stupid, toxic, have its head up its ass... but it exists in a "bubble." The concept of a bubble became the rage in the 2000s not because it accurately described the average person's behaviour toward the internet — picking and choosing what they desired to believe or hear — but because it connected to the world that the pundits of that time understood best. We have ALWAYS lived in a bubble... but once upon a time, the bubble was something one had to earn. If you worked for the New York Times as a writer, you had to prove yourself to be there... and you had to prove yourself able to stay there. Now a promising youtuber can outproduce the best writer of the New York Times easily, not only in views, attention and popularity, but in volume and legitimacy. That is terrifying for those people who remember when there were kept gates. It is normal for those who do not care about such things.
But... there is a price to be paid to the "popularity" model... and it is the price that vast numbers of persons are paying now. In my younrger life, there was a thing called a "plugger." This was a person who did not have any special skills, any special value to a company, was not inventive or innovative... but they showed up for work day in and day out, they got along with everyone, they had nothing else particularly special in their lives but they did have the resolve to just keep plugging at a job. This often produced its own form of respect. Jimmy has been with this company for 42 years; no, he's not invented anything new, he's not all that clever, we could replace him with someone cheaper... but really, he's still here. Wow. That counts for something.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Jimmy was replaced with someone cheaper. And Jimmy doesn't have the capacity to do all that well in the present climate, where "plugging" will not get you attention on the internet, it will not increase your youtube views, it will not guarantee you a space with the company and, really, we don't care if you plug. What can you do? Hm? Anything?
Pluggers can exist in a finite world. But that world is gone. And unfortunately, there have always been more pluggers than stars. Thus we have the people who have followed the strategy recommended by the internet: post regularly, post often, just keep posting, just keep at it, just count on the future, just plug. But it isn't enough to plug. The 147th boring post is still just boring, it is still just getting 11 views. There isn't a future. The world is too big a place and Jimmy isn't competing with Hal and Mary and Tom for employee of the month. Jimmy is competing with every living soul with access to the internet.
The larger picture here is a conscious understanding that nearly everyone has now that we're very, very small in an amazingly vast and incomprehensibly sized universe. A very large slice of people cope with that by just not getting on the internet at all. Or limiting their contact with the internet to an anti-boredom machine. They don't have delusions of mattering. They don't imagine that something special is going to happen to them one day. They'd like to not be alone. They'd like to be among friends that make them feel important. Friends who want to give them something around a D&D table that it would be impossible to have online. Friends who will let them be a "star" for a few hours on a Saturday night, because the company tells them, "Forget the internet: your place to shine is which you cool new zumbla-raced character with its bahzit character class! You'll be special, you'll be unique, you'll have what the internet and the world cannot give you: relevance."
The corporation, even the pundits on youtube, are selling a very distinct image: that the D&D table can be a finite room where the players can matter because everyone present agrees that they do. All that's needed is to remove every obstacle to this goal: thus, rules can't exist, because that's a hump the players would have to climb over; limitations on action can't exist, because we're here to have fun, not prove anything; every imaginable form of character and self-definition has to be possible because THIS is the goal: to self-define to make oneself important. This is what D&D is selling, in the most analog way possible, because "collaborative" game table is becoming one of the last places where live human beings of the "loser" variety can gather together physically, in the flesh, to "become" more than they are.
It's all kind of... well, I'm sorry to say it, because it's mean and cruel, but it's kind of pathetic.
If, to feel self-important, to feel part of activity you're willing to partake in, you're prepared to give up everything except self-gratification, then you're... well... a child. You're a child who has felt so overwhelmed by the world you've been thrust into that your sole means of ego is to return to the sort of play-pretend games that children play, because they don't actually understand what they're pretending to be. They're thinking that being a doctor means dressing like one and having a stethescope. They're thinking that being a firefighter means having the right hat. They're doing the equivalent of pinning their brand new police officer's badge to their t-shirt and then wearing it proudly in front of their friends, as though this means anything except a piece of tin.
They're not actually perceiving themselves as real life adventurers, who have to overcome impossible odds to achieve unimaginable things, through courage, difficulty, dangers, possible loss of life... they don't want to experience anything even remotely close to those things. They can't even gather the courage to face those things imaginatively. No. What they want is the free badge, pinned to a shirt, so they can strut and pretend they've earned it.
While the company recognises that this impulse is an easier way to make money than to make a difficult-to-understand, but engaging product. The role-player in the present day doesn't want to be "engaged." They want to be empowered, and they want that empowerment to take a shape that the world cannot offer them: with an iron-clad guarantee that they matter.
The world has just become too big a place now for them to be adults inside it.
A finite world can be harsh, stupid, toxic, have its head up its ass... but it exists in a "bubble." The concept of a bubble became the rage in the 2000s not because it accurately described the average person's behaviour toward the internet — picking and choosing what they desired to believe or hear — but because it connected to the world that the pundits of that time understood best. We have ALWAYS lived in a bubble... but once upon a time, the bubble was something one had to earn. If you worked for the New York Times as a writer, you had to prove yourself to be there... and you had to prove yourself able to stay there. Now a promising youtuber can outproduce the best writer of the New York Times easily, not only in views, attention and popularity, but in volume and legitimacy. That is terrifying for those people who remember when there were kept gates. It is normal for those who do not care about such things.
But... there is a price to be paid to the "popularity" model... and it is the price that vast numbers of persons are paying now. In my younrger life, there was a thing called a "plugger." This was a person who did not have any special skills, any special value to a company, was not inventive or innovative... but they showed up for work day in and day out, they got along with everyone, they had nothing else particularly special in their lives but they did have the resolve to just keep plugging at a job. This often produced its own form of respect. Jimmy has been with this company for 42 years; no, he's not invented anything new, he's not all that clever, we could replace him with someone cheaper... but really, he's still here. Wow. That counts for something.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Jimmy was replaced with someone cheaper. And Jimmy doesn't have the capacity to do all that well in the present climate, where "plugging" will not get you attention on the internet, it will not increase your youtube views, it will not guarantee you a space with the company and, really, we don't care if you plug. What can you do? Hm? Anything?
Pluggers can exist in a finite world. But that world is gone. And unfortunately, there have always been more pluggers than stars. Thus we have the people who have followed the strategy recommended by the internet: post regularly, post often, just keep posting, just keep at it, just count on the future, just plug. But it isn't enough to plug. The 147th boring post is still just boring, it is still just getting 11 views. There isn't a future. The world is too big a place and Jimmy isn't competing with Hal and Mary and Tom for employee of the month. Jimmy is competing with every living soul with access to the internet.
The larger picture here is a conscious understanding that nearly everyone has now that we're very, very small in an amazingly vast and incomprehensibly sized universe. A very large slice of people cope with that by just not getting on the internet at all. Or limiting their contact with the internet to an anti-boredom machine. They don't have delusions of mattering. They don't imagine that something special is going to happen to them one day. They'd like to not be alone. They'd like to be among friends that make them feel important. Friends who want to give them something around a D&D table that it would be impossible to have online. Friends who will let them be a "star" for a few hours on a Saturday night, because the company tells them, "Forget the internet: your place to shine is which you cool new zumbla-raced character with its bahzit character class! You'll be special, you'll be unique, you'll have what the internet and the world cannot give you: relevance."
The corporation, even the pundits on youtube, are selling a very distinct image: that the D&D table can be a finite room where the players can matter because everyone present agrees that they do. All that's needed is to remove every obstacle to this goal: thus, rules can't exist, because that's a hump the players would have to climb over; limitations on action can't exist, because we're here to have fun, not prove anything; every imaginable form of character and self-definition has to be possible because THIS is the goal: to self-define to make oneself important. This is what D&D is selling, in the most analog way possible, because "collaborative" game table is becoming one of the last places where live human beings of the "loser" variety can gather together physically, in the flesh, to "become" more than they are.
It's all kind of... well, I'm sorry to say it, because it's mean and cruel, but it's kind of pathetic.
If, to feel self-important, to feel part of activity you're willing to partake in, you're prepared to give up everything except self-gratification, then you're... well... a child. You're a child who has felt so overwhelmed by the world you've been thrust into that your sole means of ego is to return to the sort of play-pretend games that children play, because they don't actually understand what they're pretending to be. They're thinking that being a doctor means dressing like one and having a stethescope. They're thinking that being a firefighter means having the right hat. They're doing the equivalent of pinning their brand new police officer's badge to their t-shirt and then wearing it proudly in front of their friends, as though this means anything except a piece of tin.
They're not actually perceiving themselves as real life adventurers, who have to overcome impossible odds to achieve unimaginable things, through courage, difficulty, dangers, possible loss of life... they don't want to experience anything even remotely close to those things. They can't even gather the courage to face those things imaginatively. No. What they want is the free badge, pinned to a shirt, so they can strut and pretend they've earned it.
While the company recognises that this impulse is an easier way to make money than to make a difficult-to-understand, but engaging product. The role-player in the present day doesn't want to be "engaged." They want to be empowered, and they want that empowerment to take a shape that the world cannot offer them: with an iron-clad guarantee that they matter.
The world has just become too big a place now for them to be adults inside it.
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