Losers lose when loser activities aren't for losers

| Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Imagine that you're socially inept and awkward around women. What's the ideal activity? No not that. Yes, gaming. You can do it either with or without other people at your own discretion and no one is in your personal space. There is distance.

Real life is pushed away and ignored. The well-dressed guy with money might be intimidating at a party, but in a raid he's just another person. The good-looking guy who knows how to talk without giggling and spilling Mountain Dew on himself isn't a problem anymore. All that matters is how well he plays. No friends, no job, no life? No problem!

It's a little haven for losers.

Then some person or some company goes and ruins that. Suddenly normal people start playing. And girls. And what's a loser to do? As much as they might wish girls played what they play, the unfortunate reality for them is that girls playing what they play just brings back home their social ineptitude and awkwardness. They want girls to play what they play, but what they really want is to play what girls play. They want to play barhopping and basketball and beach and being socially adept. But those aren't games that one can simply pick up and play, or even grind up. They can be overgeared, as can be seen by unfortunate numbers of rich and entirely worthless individuals*, but in general they are skill-based, and not everyone has those skills.

The losers lose.

* This isn't an attack on the wealthy, but on that douchebag who no one likes, but he has money, so he can buy drinks until people can't see what a douchebag he really is.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure how to comment, without making light of something maybe not so light, and my response has become a series of points rather then something that makes sense.

So do they become less like 'losers' or do the girls stop playing barhopping and stuff.

If your chasing girls that are only interested in money then they aren't worth keeping

procrastination is a issue of the adept and inadept - motivation is what makes the difference.

I don't think I know many people who met someone meaningful at a bar. So this meeting thing seems to happen outside the bar. So the Bar is not the place to be. Just somewhere to go.

wear sunscreen. ( and if you haven't heard it look up "The sunscreen song by Baz Luhrmann"

and delete this if its meaningless/irelevant/too long winded.

Klepsacovic said...

I don't quite know how to respond, but if I deleted everything that was meaningless and long winded, I'd have no blog.

Sven said...

I'm not sure I buy this whole "video games attract losers" hypothesis. All the gamers I know are successful professionals who work in highly social environments (i.e. not the clichéd geek loner).

Is there anything other than anecdotal evidence (and a few poorly constructed web-surveys with loaded questions) to support the idea that this connection even exists?

Quicksilver said...

aaah the teenage world (and overly american conception) of binary categorization of people into losers and non-losers.

Of course losers feel even more like losers when non-losers shove themselves into their activity turning a pure geek territory into social one. But who are these "everyone" you are mentioning?

"Suddenly normal people start playing. And girls."

Great, normal people started playing. But wait? are they really normal? Sure, the social guy has friends, but what is he doing hanging out online? Why isn't he going outside to pick up chicks and get smashed?

Surely the kid who plays tennis instead of wow, and spends his summer evenings at the beach instead of raiding is cool; but what about the social guy who raids. He is a bit of a loser isnt he? But wait, he's actually cool...

Girls? Are those who play playing because gaming is cool or because they are afraid to look in the mirror? They aren't exactly gonna find prince-charming in the body of that fine blood-elf there.

hmmmm... so what does that leave us?

We have the beach and tennis kid: clearly cool. We have the raiding social guy with lots of friends: clearly cool... but wait actually a loser as well; and the loser pimply 28 year old virgin harcore raiding.

so winner, loser-winner and loser... hmmmm. But what about the guy who spends his evening studying and reading books but not playing? He's not wasting hes time so he's clearly not a loser, but he is probably a virgin as well, so clearly a loser... hmmm

so winner, winner-loser, loser-winner, loser.

But some of those beach kids are actually wasting their youth just hanging around and there will be a time where reality will hit them in the face. Or the good looking guy with money fall into the pit of his own depravity (look at Michael Jackson lol) so loser-winner again. wow... another category

so winner, loser-winner, winner-loser, wow-loser-winner, wow-loser

Oh wait but what about the guy who..........

Rest assured, wow is and will remain a loser space its far from becoming anything else. And if a loser wants to hide from hes problem, he can simply just go deeper into his isolation. (e.g. dont join social guilds and join hardcore no-lifer raid or pvp guild, or simply just solo stuff or god forbid play another game)

Klepsacovic said...

@Sven: Those friends of yours are the ones ruining it for the losers.

@Okrane S.: My mother and most of my aunts were described by my grandmother as "duds", with no boyfriends. Now they're all pretty successful: smart, kind, and reasonably well-off. Except my one aunt who always had boyfriends and was the cool one: she lives mostly alone two states away and seems to only survive because her husband works so hard.

So I agree that loser is a temporary, arbitrarily defined existence. But what fun is that?

Analogue said...

How about professional successful, adult, married, competent people who don't really have any other nice easy time-killers at their fingertips? Losers or not losers?

Loser is very temporary. The pimply nerd kid goes to school and gets a real job and becomes a success but is not any different inside. It is becoming socially acceptable to game at older ages than previously, so the gamer community skews toward "not losers". But that's just an illusion.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SlikRX said...

Generalizations are even more fun when they get hackles raised. :P

Simply because something is a stereotype doesn't meant there isn't a nugget of reality involved.

Maybe that isn't as true elswhere in the world, but kidney failures implies globalization, to at least *some* degree.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't watching you.

Klepsacovic said...

Analogue: They are the not-losers ruining it for the losers. WoW isn't a loser activity anymore. Perhaps it never quite was and only had the leftover loserness of EQ.

@SlikRX: To be honest, I just liked the sound of the title.

Reversion said...

Before I was a mid twenties guy with a good job but no social life that spent is time gaming and rarely met girls. Totally loser right? Now I am an early thirties guy with a good job, nearly no social life that spends a lot of time gaming. Still a.. no wait, now I have a wife and a kid. Not a loser any more I guess. Last I checked I did not change internally, my circumstances changed externally. Funny how we define loserness. How much of a loser is that pimply kid in highschool going to be in 20 years when the quarter back is waxing his/her car and the cheerleaders are babysitting his kids while he/she goes to a good job, or vacations on the beach. Loser is what you make of it. I am a loser who met a woman on the internet and then got her into gaming. Lesser losers don't aspire to be the 'normal people' in bars. They aspire to be ME and it is entirely possible they are going about it the right way.

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