I'm having a bad day

| Friday, February 11, 2011
I'm having a bad day. My awareness is shot. My reflexes are slow. I'm easily distracted and in a bad mood. As a result I am likely to fail, get mad, and blame you. You probably think I'm an idiot. For the next few hours you will be correct.

I queue for a random anyway.

What a selfish prick, right? Well, yes. Absolutely.

But let me ask you this, would you do any differently? Answer honestly, especially to yourself. Are you altruistic? You would have to be to not queue. After all, queueing could bring you rewards while the added costs would be carried almost entirely by others. Are you so kind to others that you will sacrifice your own benefit for their good? Perhaps. But I doubt it.

Or do you not queue because you have standards? What are standards anyway? They're you sacrificing to maintain these standards, a move which I applaud, but you, I suspect you do not truly believe in standards when they come at your loss. No, standards are for other people. Why maintain your own standards when you cannot be sure that others will replicate? You are not the sort of people who does the right thing because it is the right thing to do. You want your certain payoff, which you of course cannot get when attempting to maintain standards. So you're going to queue.

Of course saying you would have done the same does not justify the action. Instead it merely means that you should reanalyze your own actions and justifications.

If you are going to argue for untainted self-interest, then you must be prepared for the consequences of people acting in their own self-interest, and the negative consequences of that. You can whine about the idiots, you can try to vote kick, you can kick and scream and Go Galt, but in the end the idiot who ruined your day is just you in a mirror.

As for Mr. Galt, well he's the most world's most famous fictional whiny labor strike organizer.

6 comments:

Caramael said...

Both altruism and selfishness can lead to stupid shit. And both are equally irrelevant, because stupid shit is caused by stupid people.
Gevlon's Gulch is a great place to avoid the randoms and the stupid shit they're likely to cause.

Nils said...

If you give food to a hungry man you act altruistically. If you give money to a wealthy man, you are not altruistic, you are just nice.

Is there a moral responsibility to be altruistic? Yes!
Is there a moral responsibility to be nice? No!

Issy said...

Yes I pug when I'm tired and in a bad mood, I hope that doesn't make me be an idiot, or treat anyone with disrespect because of it. I am also generally sympathetic to people who apologise for screwing up and admit they are tired or had a bad day.
Unless you're the guy who says he's tired because he spent all day stoned and then couldn't sleep or something.

Syl said...

There's nothing wrong with queuing when you feel like it, good mood or not - who doesn't?
at the same time I very much doubt a bit of a bad day is the true reason for all the idiots in PuGs out there..
that might be an excuse for someone sometime and be genuine too, like Issy said apologetic people aren't a problem; but simply bad or annoying players aren't bad and annoying because they're just having a bad day - they're just bad and annoying. ^^

Klepsacovic said...

@Syrien: I'm afraid you are slowly going insane. Please refrain from slashing my chest or thinking guns are sticks.

For my own part, when having a bad day I am often wary of entering the incendiary place of PUGs.

@Caramael: But what about the stupid shit of the goblins? Out of the frying pan...

@Nils: The details would seem to matter here, since at least in my mind niceness is a weaker form of altruism, both being socially constructive behaviors, so how does altruism fall under moral responsibility but not niceness?

@Issy: Ah yes, a variation of the classic "it's not my fault, I'm high" excuse.

@Syl: Are you using "we all do it" as a justification?

Now I'm left with two thoughts: quantifying the frequency of bad players as a percentage of total players encountered and total runs, and whether these bad and annoying players are bad and annoying in real life and if not, why not?

Nils said...

Well, it's just my point of view Klepsacovic.

If you earn 2000€ a month and your friend earns 2000€ a month, too, it is not altruistic of you to go to his house and - without any other reason - handing him over 500€.

It would be nice - yes. But not altruistic. Now if it is just about semantics for you: Let's call it 'altruistic', more power to you, but the point is: You have no obligation whatsoever to do this.

The same applies to heroics in WoW. This is not about giving food to starving children. It is about making people have even more fun than they already have (they are playing a game!).

It is nice if you do this, but there is no obligation to do this whatsoever.

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