I'm so much better than you that you don't even count as a person

| Wednesday, March 10, 2010
A couple Saturdays ago I explained how ninjas are actually idiots, causing harm to the community overall and therefore to themselves, eventually.

My favorite social made a more recent post about the same issue, but he had an entirely opposite take on it. He took into account something that I'd not considered: Everyone else is stupid and therefore I don't need to show them the slightest shred of decency or respect. How silly of me to forget this.

The world looks quite different if you start with the assumption that 95% of the world is stupid, lazy, and nearly incapable of even basic survival on their own. Almost any activity makes more sense after making this assumption. Steal? Go for it, they're probably not putting it to good use. Murder? Saves air for the smart people and we can take their stuff. Genocide? Well that's just murder with economies of scale. Starvation, disease, natural disaster? Same as before, probably just killing people not worth caring about, except they don't even require any work. It's like the real wold equivalent of a world drop during dailies.

We all complain about how everyone is stupid or lazy or corrupt or all manner of problems. We've all said how all politicians are crooks or all voters are idiots for voting for them. Maybe they are. People are likely less intelligent than they could be, if they cared enough to try. But we tend to say these as asides, little comments or complaints which don't mean much. A lengthy way of swearing, perhaps.

It is rather stupid to instead use this as the basis for viewing the world. To play spin the bottle, except instead to point at the target and say "moron." This cannot give any benefit beside an ego boost. It's rather non-objective to decide the fate of all other humans on a pessimistic hunch. Then again, he is a social after all.

I am reminded of Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) creation of the Induhvidual. Induhviduals are stupid people; expressed in this way so you can say it to their face: "You're quite an induhvidual!" without violence resulting. He later wrote of how we're all induhviduals at some time or another. At some points in our lives we are stupid. Everyone. So to attempt to use instances of induhividualism to label a population is to open yourself to extremes of conformation bias.

Consider that at this very moment you can find someone being stupid. Right as you read this, millions of people are doing something stupid. Hundreds of thousands are risking death for no good reason. And the 6 billion others are going about their lives doing nothing particularly smart or stupid, just being human. At worst we can call them unmotivated, but stupid is hardly accurate.

People don't walk around tallying the non-moronic actions people take. You'd run out of notebooks. Instead you notice the stupid stuff. It's simply more noticeable, since humans didn't evolve and survive by noticing the ordinary. The very fact that we notice stupid actions rather than smart ones indicates that stupid actions are the unusual ones. Smart actions are the ten thousand faceless commuters; stupid actions are the guy in a clown suit on the train.

It would be rather ironic to have a fit of induhvidualism while explaining that people as a whole are not crash-helmet stupid or perhaps worse, while claiming to be in the only worthwhile 5%.

Or a copy-paste of my comment on his blog, since it's probably buried under ten thousand people saying more or less "omg communist! Hiss hiss!"
You're basing this entire argument on the pretty risky assumption that 95% of players are useless and you're not.

Based on your blue raids, I won't argue if you are better than that 95%. But to assume that the 95% is worthless is rather stupid. That 95% might not be the greatest ever, but truly useless players, players who ideally would not even play, are rare.

What do you even base your claims on, random people in heroics? They're probably going in with the same greedy, self-serving attitude. A group full of assholes will tend to perform poorly. If instead they cared about the rest of the group, they'd try harder, and not ninja every drop out of spite.


When we all pretend we're superior, when we all dismiss the other 95% of the world, we end up as a whole lot of selfish people, wondering why the other people are such lazy dicks, and asking why we should care when that other person sucks so much. A world based on "fuck you" "well fuck you too!" is hardly going to be profitable for Blizzard. And then who would make more raids?

7 comments:

Dwism said...

"I'm so much better than you that you don't even count as a person"
I know you are, but what am I?

..No, wait.

I'm finding it hard to argue against your points. But then again this -to me- seems very much like a post where you write that breathing is very good for living.
personally I ignore everything he posts, because I usually end up getting angry at how dumb smart people can actuelly get.
I always imagine that his posts are a clever disguise to get people to revolt against selfish behavior seeing as it is so blatantly stupid on both the short and long run.
He has yet to out himself though

Anonymous said...

You are obviously superior, since you beat me in that duel!

Gevlon said...

After I read your comment, I noticed that the 95% statement can be misunderstood. So I changed the text "In a PuG you encounter worse than the random player, because many good player refuse to PuG. You have 5-10% chance to meet a worthy player and 90-95% chance to meet an M&S." That was 3 days ago. Of course it's easier to argue against a misunderstanding...

Anonymous said...

Would you actually like to be in a guild with such people. If their group wipes whoose fault is it all them being perfect and all?

People who group with such people 'deserve' the grief however with the new lfg system it is incredibly easy to get put with such people.

But on a better note all these people are now in the same guild so if you see you know their values and have a choice. For the sake of 15-30mins its just not worth grouping with them.

They are the M&S of WOW as they generally con people into grouping with them. If they were honest they would say from the start you don't deserve the loot, i will dump the group if i don't get what i want, you can never improve, your a moron, look at me i've got blue gear and i can underperform too etc

The Gnome of Zurich said...

But the point still stands, Gevlon. Your ninja strategy makes sense in a context of 95% completely useless (or worse than useless) players. But most of the players you are calling M&S are perfectly capable of clearing a random dungeon, possibly even without wipes, even without a single player good enough that you wouldn't call them a M&S (i.e. good enough to pull their weight in naxx wearing blues).

Guys who do 2500 dps in full t9 aren't good players, but they aren't keeping you from making the timer in CoS unless they also do stupid shit beyond mere dps suckage.

IMO, somebody who is pulling their weight for where you are running deserves the basic benefit of the doubt, even if they are doing it in gear that should allow them to solo the place if they were good.

And pulling weight means what you need to do to clear the place easily, not equivalent to what you or other good players are doing.

By my standards, I'd say around 25-30% of random lfd pug players do not pull their weight. Which means it's possible to get in a group with 4 such, but it doesn't happen often. Usually at least 3 of the 5 can do their job successfully. That's not 95%.

LabRat said...

Meanwhile, the central argument of "saying you are entitled to abuse people because you're better at a game than they are is a stupid justification" stands monolithically next to the math...

Klepsacovic said...

@Dwism: That was going to be tomorrow's post. Instead I'll try something like, "Water, while it does promote excessive urination, is still a good thing."

@crankyhealer: Shamans are just that OP; they can beat level 13 rets!

@Gevlon: Even if a player is worse than me, which I'm sure is the majority, why should I deny them an upgrade? Let's say the M&S gets only 50% use of the gear, an exaggerated low figure. What is my DPS gain from another shard? The upgrade for the M&S is still more useful than one more shard for me. I don't need the gold or the shard; I've bought just about any gold sink item I could want, why should I grab one more shard?

The M&S might be terrible, but the angry M&S is even worse. Or consider this: if they get their upgrade and don't do much better, they have no more excuses to give themselves. If they get cheated out of the upgrade, they have someone else to blame.

@Anonymous: I'm not really sure how to respond to this.

@The Gnome of Zurich: I would make an exception for players who impede progress, but those are even more rare than the low DPS.

@LabRat: Is it full of stars?

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