So, I’ve noticed something as of late…
My single friends (and I’ve got quite a few) are all, as am I, gamer geeks. Get any two of us together for more than five minutes, and we’re going to be talking D&D, Gencon, or, maybe, Lord of the Rings. We eat, breathe, and live this stuff. It’s even more intense for us than it is for, let’s say, the football fan; there’s no season to what we do.
So, back to these friends. They’re single, right? They’re all about the Internet dating scene, too. I just had one of them leave here after working on his profile for a dating web site. But, without exception, these guys somehow leave off gaming when they list their hobbies and interests. Their profiles never show gaming. Yet, if they filled out an anonymous survey, I guarantee gaming would be at the top of the list. Why is that?
One of my friends tried to explain it to me. He said he didn’t want to scare anyone off. He said that, by including gaming on his dating profile, anyone who read that profile might think he was a gamer geek. Yet hunting and “conservative” political views aren’t going to turn anyone off of the profile?
The more I talk with the handful of non-gamers that I know, the more I realize: there isn’t widespread prejudice against gamers or gaming. Pat Pulling is dead, and no one picked up her mantle on the religious side of things; fantasy movies have hit it so big that it would be hard to say the genre isn’t mainstream, even if the Academy is slow to approve. Name a football movie that has done as well as LOTR?
My point is this: D&D isn’t anymore outside of the mainstream than, let’s say, karate. You’re a black belt, and you participate in a karate class twice a week? You’d put it in your profile, and anyone reading it wouldn’t think twice.
That is, of course, unless they’re actually into karate. Same goes for gaming. There are more gamers out there than we realize (over a million D&D players in the U.S.) and some of them are actually women. As for the millions who aren’t gamers, they see the interest in gaming the same way they might see an interest in woodworking: it’s not something they’re into, but it doesn’t mean they don’t like you.
Just $.02 from an old married gamer, who gave up giving a shit what people thought of gaming a decade ago.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
My personal thought is that a great deal of gamers have low self-esteem. I’m not sure what attracts people with low self-esteem to gaming, but man we have lots of them (myself included). And since we had low self-esteem while growing up and going through school, with that comes people who will persecute those who have low self-esteem to make themselves feel better. I know from experience nerds sometimes get picked on and laughed at when they cross paths with some jerk who doesn’t understand that gaming is just another way to have fun.
Not knowing who the jerks are and having low self-esteem means putting gaming on your profile, etc. is basically just painting a target and setting it up on the Internet for someone to shoot at. And a lot of us had enough of that while we were growing up and so they don’t put it on their profile. It’s just avoidance, in my opinion.
I don’t blame them. I’ve had friends that were on dating sites and when he told her he hosted LAN parties and played Halo with his friends sometimes, she called it “gay night”. He got his feelings crushed and doesn’t discuss it with the women he dates until they’ve been together a bit. It sucks.
It’s interesting that you picked karate as the activity someone will put on a profile as opposed to D&D which they won’t. Because I am a black belt in karate, and I met my wife through a dating site, and I put karate down on my profile and not D&D. D’oh!
It really wasn’t until the last couple years that I realized the reason I’m not getting picked on anymore wasn’t because I had learned how to beat the crap out of people who did. It was because I had started hanging out with people who weren’t assholes and avoiding people who were. And it was a little sad that I only figured out it was OK to talk about all my interests with the women I date only after I met my wife.
But I’m not complaining.
ROFL, you’re cracking me up.
Two Rules of Miyagi-Ryu Karate. Rule Number One: “Karate for defense only.” Rule Number Two: “First learn Rule Number One.”