What will happen if our sub-culture goes mainstream?

We as gamers are a subculture that still has not seen total mainstream acceptance. We may have a wider variety of people under our umbrella than we used to, but as the Real ID scare showed us, not everyone is comfortable associating themselves with the gamer label. Sure, some people wear t-shirts or buttons proclaiming their gamer pride, and I've been known to wear my druid t-shirt out in public (though the fact that non-WoW-players wouldn't understand the meaning of that kind of shirt is part of the reason why I'm so comfortable donning it for a public outing), but the people who I see wearing t-shirts that explicitly state their identity as a gamer tend to be the ones who fit the "gamer stereotype" more than most of us do; after all, there is still a stigma attached to gaming, so if one can get away with not immediately being associated with our subculture, it's generally beneficial to do just that.

In many ways, I find being a member of the gamer community to be a lot like being a member of the gay community, and I can say that because I am a member of both communities. Membership in either community isn't immediately obvious to others if one don't fit the stereotypical image of their respective community. (For the gaming community, it's the overweight, glasses-wearing antisocialite; or the gay community, it's the flamboyant man or the butch woman.) In other words, unlike race or religion, being a member of the gamer community or the gay community has more to do with what you do than who you are, so the only way someone can identify you as a member of either subculture is to see you participate in either subculture's defining activities, see you proclaim that you are a member of either subculture, or see that you fit the stereotypes about the subculture and make an assumption based on that fact. Both communities also have varying levels of acceptance in different circles and different areas, though gay acceptance seems to vary more by geographical location than gamer acceptance does, but both definitely vary by the average age of the members of the circle in question.

Of course, being a member of the gaming community somewhat more of a choice than being a member of the gay community, which could lead to the gaming community being more of an acceptable target than the gay community. However, I would argue that we don't choose which activities appeal to us the most, so though being gamer might not influence our lives as much as being gay influences the lives of members of the gay community, being a part of the gaming community isn't as much of a choice as it is made out to be.

So why do I bring up these similarities? I bring them up because I have recently read an article about the end of gay culture, which proposes that as the gay community becomes more accepted in mainstream culture, the "gay subculture" will fade away, becoming less of a defining aspect of our community. To quote the latter part of the article:

So, too, the majority of gay men and lesbians want nothing more than to raise families behind picket fences. There are other signs of increasing conformity in the gay world. Leather is seen by most younger men as more silly than hot. While they may exercise, younger men mostly don’t strive for Adonis physiques. It goes on. (Lesbians are way ahead of the curve on this. They’ve been mating and nesting for years.)

Is this bad? Probably not. We’ve been fighting for acceptance. Now that we’re getting it, it’s up to us to do what we want with it. If younger gay men and lesbians want the same things as their straight counterparts, so be it.

Have we lost something? Probably. Just as blacks lose their jive and soul when they become middle-class suburbanites, and Jews lose their Yiddishkeite, so we shed the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship, and the other facets that defined “gay” for so long. [Emphasis is my own]

Most people, however, would consider it a fair tradeoff.

In other words, as the gay community becomes more accepted as part of the mainstream culture, we could start to shed the trappings once thought typical of gays and lesbians. And this doesn't surprise me at all. It's not uncommon for members of a culture that hasn't been accepted into the mainstream to act as exaggerated versions of their culture, and for that to cease once they have been accepted into the mainstream. After all, the thinking behind it goes, if people aren't going to accept us for who we are, even if why try to earn that acceptance, why try to earn it? Let's instead be as gay (or what have you) as we possibly can; they won't accept us if we try to act like them, so let's act as unlike them as possible for the sake of preserving our sense of identity. However, once the mainstream does accept a sub-culture, members of that sub-culture have a reason to try to fit in with the mainstream culture. After all, for all that we may put individuality on a high pedestal, we humans are social animals, and the desire to fit in is hardwired in our brain for that reason.

I witnessed this phenomenon myself in high school and college. My high school was in a fairly wealthy, very white suburb, so the school was mostly comprised of white students; I could count the number of black students I knew of who lived in that town and went to that school on one hand. As part of a program to try to give inner city children better education, we also had black students from urban areas nearby bussed in to attend school with us. Now, the school wasn't racist by any stretch of the imagination, but these inner city kids didn't fit in, and they knew they didn't fit in and would never fit it, so they would act very "thuggish". I have read that this phenomenon is not isolated to the high school I attended, and it happens for the very reason I outlined above. Contrastly, the college I currently attend has a very racially diverse student body, and though I have met my fair share of thuggish black students, I have also met a lot more subdued, not-so-thuggish black students in my time at college, and I think it might have something to do with the fact that they stand a chance of fitting in if they don't act like exaggerated versions of the stereotypes about their subculture.

In short, we once had the choice between trying to fit in and not being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not being accepted, and since both would lead to the same result, we picked the latter, because it was more fun and didn't force us to sacrifice our identity in vain. Yet now we have the choice between trying to fit in and standing a chance of being accepted, or acting like exaggerated stereotypes and not fitting in. Since we stand a chance of actually being accepted for who we are, the former option is starting to look a lot more attractive.

The question I want to ask is, what will happen to the gaming community if we are accepted into the mainstream? Will we lose the jive and soul, the Yiddishkeite, the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship of our community, whatever that may be? And if we do, will that really be a bad thing?

In order to answer those questions, we need to ask what it is that we stand to lose if we become accepted by the mainstream. What, exactly, is our jive and soul, our Yiddishkeite, our camp, bitchy humor, and diva worship? Well, if we look at what these staples of each community have in common, it is that they are the result of members of those communities putting forth time and effort to be a part of something that defines their subculture. Being "camp" in a showy way takes time and effort, time and effort a gay man might not otherwise spend if he stood a chance to fit in if he didn't act camp. Perhaps when a subculture is assimilated into the mainstream, its members start putting forth effort towards fitting in rather than standing out, since the former can actually lead to them being accepted. Are there exceptions? Certainly; long after gays have been assimilated into mainstream culture, I'm sure there will still be members of our community who try to be as campy as possible and who will still spend time worshiping divas and all that, but it will likely be more rare than it is now.

So what is a staple of the gaming community that takes this kind of time and effort? An easy answer would be giant LAN parties, midnight release parties, and gaming conventions, which could very well be what we lose if we go mainstream. After all, if gaming became more mainstream, you would see a lot more gamers who have much bigger lives outside of gaming than the typical LAN-attending, convention-attending, midnight-release-attending gamer does. These would be gamers for who gaming is not as big of a part of their lives as it may be a part of ours, so they won't have the time to go to and arrange LAN parties or conventions or midnight releases. We could also see people who now spend a lot of time gaming start doing other things outside of their gaming hobby as less and less stigma is attached to it. With this disappearance of stigma will come more acceptance of gamers in non-gaming circles, and that acceptance could motivate once-hard-core gamers to start doing things outside of the realm of gaming. After all, we are all social animals, and social experiences brought about through gaming (like the ones brought about by WoW itself) can only do so much for us.

In other words, I think the best conclusion to draw from this logic is that if gaming becomes more accepted by the mainstream, we will see a decline in the number of hard-core gamers. It wouldn't surprise me if the current stigma attached to gaming is what drives hard-core gamers to play as much as they do in the first place; they know they can't fit in with mainstream culture, so rather than trying to fit in, they just do more of what they love: gaming. Once that stigma no longer exists and gamers are more accepted by the mainstream, maybe they will no longer be driven to these isolating levels of dedication to their hobby. Just as the black community lost their soul brothers, just as gay community may lose it's flaming queens, we may lose the most extreme members of our community to mainstream assimilation.

Is that a bad thing? That's a topic for another post, though I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on whether it is or not in the comments section.

From someone who has been there...

If you are new to my blog, you might not have caught on to my general posting schedule, so let me set it out objectively here before I take full advantage of it. On Mondays, I post posts on miscellaneous topics. They might be WoW related, they might not be; I give myself the freedom to go either way. Wednesday's posts can be either miscellany or philosophy (or advice posts, if I have something I can actually give advice on), but I try to make those about WoW whenever possible (though I don't always succeed, as you saw last Wednesday). Friday's posts are the ones that I guarantee will be philosophy posts and will be about WoW. I keep a flexible schedule like this because I know I need a posting schedule of some kind to stay motivated to write, but I also need the freedom to go where my inspiration goes, which doesn't always follow the usual pattern that would otherwise make up a more rigid schedule.

That very phenomenon has happened this weekend, for the source of inspiration for this post comes from a post on the Pink Pigtail Inn that is only tangentially related to WoW. Said post inspired me to write about something that is both personal and somber. My blog normally isn't all that gleeful and light in its subject matter, but it will be especially serious today. My post today will be about a topic that makes many people quite uncomfortable, a topic which is impossible to discuss lightly. If you that's not what you are looking for, then I apologize for disappointing you, but you'd be better off skipping today's post.

So what, exactly, am I planning on writing about that is such a downer of a topic? Well, Larisa's post that I mentioned previously discusses what happens when real-world death and Azeroth intersect, but more than that, it talked especially about suicide, for it was inspired by Aurdon of I Sheep Things's post about the suicide of one of his guild members. A lot of what Larisa wrote about hit close to home for me, for I'm a person who struggled with suicidal thoughts for longer than I would have liked to; about four years, give or take. As someone who has been there and can discuss it from a more personal, potentially less phobic, perspective than most people, it brought up a lot of thoughts in me, so as Larisa herself said, "I'll deal with it the way that bloggers do it: I write. It usually helps."

Now, what do I mean when I say "less phobic"? What I've often found in the few times when suicide has come up in a discussions I am having with other people is that the topic makes people really uncomfortable. This uncomfortable-ness is multiplied ten-fold when personal experience with suicidal thoughts and attempts are brought up, as they often are. After all, a group of people who have never experienced suicidal thoughts will tend to avoid the topic of suicide, and thus, 99% of the time when it is brought up, the conversation involves someone with personal experience with the matter. When that happens, those personal experiences come out, and people get more uncomfortable.

Why do people get so uncomfortable? My suspicion is that someone who has never experienced being suicidal just can't fathom what could push someone to seriously consider ending their own life. When they themselves haven't experienced those kinds of thoughts, I'd imagine that fear can develop, fear of the kinds of thinking that can lead to being suicidal. A wise man once said that when someone we respect attempts suicide, we are left to wonder what they knew that we don't, and perhaps it's fear of gaining that potentially dangerous knowledge that makes people so uncomfortable talking about suicide.

But I'm rambling. I brought up the point of me being less phobic about suicide than most people because that puts me in the position to write about it (the anonymity of this blog and the fact that it isn't connected to any other online identities that could be traced back to me helps, too), and potentially dispel some of the misconceptions about suicidal thoughts. Reading Larisa's post and some of the comments on it really made me realize just how big the disconnect between people who have never considered suicide and people who have really is. The number of incorrect assumptions the former group has about the latter is staggering, as is their magnitude, so today, I'm going to give a first-hand account of what it's like to be there, and account that those who haven't been there can hopefully learn from.

You might ask why I'm posting about suicide on a WoW-based blog, but like I said, Monday's posts can be on any topic; they can go wherever my inspiration goes, and that's where my inspiration has gone today. Besides, real life issues do often make their way into WoW, and as Aurdon's post illustrates, suicide is no exception. (This edition of WoW Insider's advice column Drama Mamas, written by someone who went by the name "Nameless Rogue", further illustrates that point.) And though this may be a WoW blog, all of my readers, simply by virtue of being human, could encounter this kind of situation at some point in their life, so its something we all have the potential to have in common.

Now, back on topic. One of the most common things I hear said about suicide and suicidal people that is patently wrong is that suicide is a selfish act. From the survivors' perspective, it certainly seems that way: someone who has witnessed someone they are close to kill themselves can't help but be focused mostly on how the situation affects them, and the way it affects them is that they will never get to interact with the suicidal person again. It doesn't surprise me that a survivor would, in their grief, focus on what the suicide victim has taken away from him with his act (his presence, namely). From this self-focused perspective, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that the suicidal person thought that his problems were more important than the joy he brought into the lives of those around him, and that that selfishness drove him to do/try to do what he did/tried to do.

In reality, suicide is not an act of selfishness, but an act of desperation. Suicide is the result of a person thinking that there is no solution to whatever problems they are having, that there is no way out of there situation, and no way it can get better. It is motivated not by self-centered-ness, but by a lack of hope. Someone who commits suicide really believes that what they are doing is the best way to handle their problems, and potentially the only way they will escape whatever their problems are. That may seem extreme to someone who has never considered suicide, but the other important thing to consider is that suicide is often a rash act, as well. Though there are people who commit suicide due to a profound existential conflict they cannot resolve, the majority of suicides are much more motivated by isolated periods of depression. The fact that suicides are statistically more likely to occur on Wednesday shows just how small the causes of suicidal thoughts can be in their scope, and how ephemeral those thoughts can be.

I can tell you from personal experience that when I was considering suicide, the thoughts would often last no more than an hour or two, after which I would be right back to normal. Though I did have persistent issues that lead to those thoughts in the first place, had I tried suicide, it would have been because of a small trigger that sent my thoughts spiraling downward, not because of a long-persisting issue I had. That kind sudden rush of melancholy could explain why so many people say about suicidal people, "He seemed so happy, and then he just did it." They probably were happy, but then something brought up those thoughts in them until they were finally pushed over the edge. That kind of pre-act happiness can also sometimes be explained by the fact that once someone has decided to commit suicide, they feel like they have finally found a solution to their problems, and the relief they feel at finding that "solution" could manifest as seeming happiness.

But if suicidal thoughts are often caused by these temporary states of mind, you might be wondering, why can't suicidal people just wait them out? Why can't they recognize the triggers for what they are and learn to ignore their thoughts because of their irrational base? The answer lies in something else someone who hasn't been suicidal has probably never experienced. Since I don't want to make any assumptions about other people's experiences, I'll speak only about my own. When I would consider suicide, my mental state was such that I was incapable of seeing anything good about my life. All I could think of was all of the bad things that were happening to me, usually whatever lead to those thoughts in the first place. In that moment when I was considering suicide, I would forget that those feelings would eventually pass, that life was generally good, and that I really did have a lot to live for. In that moment, none of that would come to mind. I was only capable of thinking about bad things, plain and simple.

The larger point I want to make by bringing that up regards something a survivor will often ask themselves: "Why didn't he just..." That "just" could be going for a walk, or talking to someone, or getting help, but they all share one thing in common: the are incredibly obvious from the outsider's perspective. For someone considering suicide, though, none of those options are that obvious. Because the person's mind is so pervaded by those suicidal thoughts, they either don't think of those options, or, more likely, think that attempting to get help or talk to someone will not help them. To the outside perspective, it's clear that it probably would help them, or at the very least, it couldn't hurt, but someone who is that hopeless has probably reached a point where they are incapable of conceptualizing ever not feeling like that. They become so hopeless that they can't imagine that anyone or anything could help them.

Now, the causes of suicidal thoughts are varied and many, so though I would like to end this post on a positive note saying what you could do for the person suffering from these thoughts, there isn't much I can tell you that I could feel certain would be helpful. I will do my best, however, for it is better than doing nothing. After all, you might one day be like Nameless Rogue, whom I mentioned above concerning when he wrote in to the Drama Mamas about a mage he encountered who talked about wanting to kill himself. You might one day encounter someone who is thinking the same thing, and knowing what to do will make you a lot more comfortable and able to potentially help the person.

If you know the person well, make sure the person knows they matter to you
When I was going through my own period of suicidal thoughts, the thing that always managed to motivate me to pull through was the thought of those I would leave behind: my family, my closest friends, and how much they would miss me. Conversely, often when someone is feeling suicidal, they believe that by ending their life, they'd be relieving those around them of the burden they place on them just by being alive. I've heard many stories of people who say they were suicidal and the only thing that kept them going was the thought of how much those around them would miss them, so if you know or suspect that someone is suicidal, make sure they know how much they matter to you. If they tell you out right that they are considering suicide, you might need to flat out tell them that they're really important to you and you'd really miss them if they were to do it, but if you suspect they might be feeling that way and don't have any concrete proof, it's better to be more subtle, to say that you really enjoy spending time with them, maybe mention how crushed you'd be if they moved away or if they had never come into your life. Now, don't lie and say that is the case when it isn't, because that can make the situation worse, but if you know the person well enough that they would confide in you that they are considering suicide, there's a good chance that you matter to them, and the inverse is likely to be true, as well.

Encourage them to get help
Suicidal thoughts are a sign that something is terribly wrong in the person's mind. In my case, it was really destructive thought patterns that I just needed a therapist to help me break. In other cases, it might be medical depression or some other mental disorder, or any number of things. Point is, as a friend--or maybe just an acquaintance, like Nameless Rogue--there is only so much you can do. If it gets to the point where someone is considering killing themselves, a professional is usually needed to help the person get better. Make sure the person you are talking to does get help. Since I'm no expert on sources of help, I'll copy something I found via a fifteen-second google search; you can recommend these to a friend if you think they need them:
• Send an anonymous e-mail to or call the The Samaritans
• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TTY:1-800-799-4TTY)
• In Australia, call Lifeline Australia at telephone: 13 11 14
• Teenagers, call Covenant House NineLine, 1-800-999-9999
• Look in the front of your phone book for a crisis line
• Call a psychotherapist (this is a more long term solution, but one that will likely be necessary in the long term)
(source)

Don't panic
The natural reaction to finding out that someone is suicidal is to worry about them, to worry that if you don't do something soon, they might go through with their thoughts. If someone tells you that they are feeling that way or hints that they might be, do not visibly make a big deal out of it. Do tell that that you care, do listen if they want to talk, do tell them that you're happy they confided in you, and do tell them that you'd really miss them if they were to do anything. But don't overreact. Overreacting to someone telling you they are suicidal could make them regret ever telling you, and they'd probably be less likely to confide in others for that reason, and if they aren't confiding in others, they're less likely to receive help.

Don't try to solve their problems
This point is courtesy of Sthenno of What's Wrong With WoW: "...there is a natural inclination to try to solve people's problems when they talk to you. When someone is considering suicide and they are talking to you about whatever problem is making them consider it, resist the urge to try to think of solutions for them. It is an emotional state that is driving them to consider suicide. Being there to talk to is a great help, but the real problem is their immediate emotional state, and no solutions you can come up with regarding their job, their school, their relationship, or whatever else they are fixating to put those emotions into words are going to remove those emotions. Just listen, be encouraging, and express sympathy."

Don't tell them to "just cheer up"
I feel like this should be evident from what I have already posted, but in case it isn't, I'll say it clearly: telling someone who is suicidal, or even just depressed (the two do often go hand-in-hand) to just cheer up or just get over it is about as effective as telling a quadriplegic to just get up and walk. If they have reached the point where they are considering suicide, it is because they can't "just cheer up". If it were that simple, don't you think they'd do it? It would certainly have been nice to have been able to "just cheer up" when I was feeling suicidal, but a suicidal person's brain just won't let them do that. This is really a very simple point, so I'm not going to give much exposition; just don't do it. It won't help, and it can often make the person feel worse for not being able to "just cheer up."

And whatever you do, don't ask the person to promise you that they won't kill themselves (or any euphemism for the act). This is quite possibly the most self-centered thing you can do when you find out someone is considering killing themselves, for all it does is reassure you, and it does nothing for the suicidal person themselves. When someone is grappling with suicidal thoughts, they often can't be sure they won't go through with it. If they aren't sure whether they'll go through with it, and you make them promise they won't, you've either forced them to lie to you by saying they won't (a lie which will certainly stress them out later), or you've made the both of you sadder by forcing them to admit that they can't make that promise. And if they really won't go through with it, they don't need a promise to you to motivate them not to. By not asking a suicidal person to make that promise, you show tremendous understanding of what they are going through, and that will make them value your friendship more, which will make your support more effective. What you can ask them to do is to be strong, or to call you when they are feeling down, or something along those lines. You can offer encouragement or support, but don't ask for anything, not even a promise that they won't do it.

The thing about suicidal thoughts is that getting rid of them requires, above all, the effort and will of the person who is experiencing them. As much as you may try to help them, if the problem is a problem in their way of thinking, you can only help them so much. If they are going to really get better, they have to seek help of their own volition. That's a scary thought for someone witnessing someone else going through suicidal thoughts, for it might make you feel helpless in the face of an adversary that intimidating, but if nothing else, it takes the burden of total responsibility for the person's fate off of your shoulder. That might be a perverse consolation, but it's the best I can offer.

And if you yourself are feeling suicidal, try reading that page I linked to before. Here, I'll link to it again for your convenience.

This post last edited on 12/29/10 at 9:42 PM.

The obligations we create for ourselves

Not many of my non-blogging friends (which comprises the entirety of friend-base, save for one person who I never talk to outside of social networking sites) quite get the whole blogging thing. The idea that I have set out a schedule for myself (three posts a week, Monday/Wednesday/Friday, six a.m.) that I do my damnedest to stick to seems to boggle them, for they can't see how these obligations I have set out for myself could be so worth sticking to. It's quite similar to WoW, actually, in that many non-players probably view the obligations raiders have to their raid groups in a similar way. Those doubtful onlookers probably wonder why we take our obligations so seriously when they are involving something that is, after all, just a game. (Yeah, about that...) But since that isn't the topic I want to discuss today, I'll summarize my thoughts on raid obligations by saying that no matter what it is concerning, a promise made to someone else is a promise, and breaking that promise is no less significant because the promise concerned a game, be it a digital game or otherwise.

But back on the topic of bloging, just like raiding, sometimes we can burn ourselves out while blogging, and we may feel the need to take a break. A certain favorite blogger of mine had to do just that recently, and when she came back from her break, she announced she'd probably be limiting her posting to once a week. This is quite a big shift for a blog that had previously posted four to five times a week, but considering that her posts often rival/exceed my posts in length, I can't say I'm surprised. I personally limited myself to three times a week because I knew I'd need that time, and more than a year later, it's a choice I'm glad I made. But it made me think: the posting habits we have set up what our readers expect from our blog, turning fulfilling those expectations into a sort of obligation. What I wondered was, is it ok to go back on that obligation? Is it acceptable to reduce the frequency with which we post when our readers have come to expect us to post with a certain level of frequency?

It may seem like a silly question to ask. After all, if we have a legitimate reason for reducing our posting frequency (time constraints, blogging cutting into other areas of ones life, a desire to get back into old hobbies, etc.), shouldn't it be a no-brainer that balance comes first? I wish it were easy to say yes, but I often find that behind their attractive wording, questions like that are often based on the assumption that blogging (or whatever the hobby in question is) should always take a backseat to our other obligations. I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but considering the parallels between blogging about WoW and playing it, imagine if you told someone you were spending too much time playing WoW and wanted to cut back a bit. While they might encourage you for doing so in the name of balance in your life, they would probably really be encouraging you do so because they think that WoW should never take precedent over any other activity (let us not forget the stigma that still surrounds MMOs).

Perhaps the best place to look for a precedent on this kind of issue is the raiding scene, which, as I mentioned, has quite a few parallels with the blogging scene. In the raiding communities I've been in and the ones I know about second-hand from my raiding friends, taking a break from the game can bring about a mixed bag of emotions. In the more friendly guilds I've been in or known about, people are happy for those who want to take a break, since it shows that those people know they need to reevaluate their priorities. In the more cutting edge guilds I've heard about, though, someone taking a break can be a bit more of an issue. In those guilds, raiders are harder to replace due to the higher standards those guilds hold their members to, so when a guild member takes a break, I often sense a bit of hostility or resentment in conversation about him. I often get the idea that his fellow raiders feel abandoned because of his absence. So in short, it seems that how acceptable it is to take a break from WoW or to reduce one's frequency of play all depends on the company one keeps in-game

How can we apply this to blogging? I suppose the best way to answer the question of whether it's acceptable to reduces one's frequency of blogging is to look at the readership one has garnered. If you garnered your readership based on your frequency of posting and little more, then by posting less frequently, you are reducing the biggest draw of your blog, taking what made your blog appealing away from those readers. In that case, it's understandable for them to stop reading. But if it's your insight, your interaction with your readers, or anything else that primarily draws readers to your blog, then as long as reducing the frequency of your posting won't take away from any of those draws, then I see no issue with it, for they probably won't, either. And in the end, only two entities matter in all things blogging: the blogger, and the readership, and if both are ok with the blogger posting less frequently, then there is no issue.

Real ID and the necessity of anonymity

Edit: We did it, folks; the change isn't going to happen. Rejoice!

I am publishing this post early because I feel the significance of the events in question warrants it.

Sometimes, the best way to summarize your feelings about recent events is with a loldog.

Boy, have the proverbial feces ever hit the fan on this one! In case you missed it, Blizzard announced that starting some time in July, if you post on the official forums, your real name will be displayed, rather than your character's name. It's a shocker, I know. They are apparently doing this in the hopes of curtailing trolling on the official forums, but it's going to have a lot of negative consequences for decent posters, as well. If this is your first time hearing about this and you haven't had time for the news to sink in yet, I suggest you give it time before you continue reading this post.

Back? Calmer? Good, let's begin.

Blizzard's decision reflects a general trend in the evolution of the internet: privacy is getting harder and harder to have. The ease with which someone with your full name and your general location can look up your address and phone number and--if they are willing to shell out a bit of money--so, so much more, is alarming. In a world that is becoming increasingly connected, staying comfortably and safely detached is getting more difficult. These aren't abstract concerns I'm saying here, either. When community manager Bashiok posted his real name, the community responded by finding out his address, phone number, and the names and ages of his family members using simple Google searches, and using that information to harass him. (though apparently, they may have mistaken a random California resident for Bashiok, for Bashiok may have an unlisted number, but that doesn't make it any less sobering) While I don't agree with their methods, I do agree with the message these rogue googlers are try to send; when people have access to your full name, it can lead to all manor of bad things.

Now, if I were to write this post the way I have written many other posts, I would here propose a hypothetical question contrary to the point I wish to eventually prove, something along the lines of, "Could the lack of anonymity do more good than harm?". I would then examine this question, attempt to answer in the affirmative, and then show all of the problems inherent in an affirmative answer. This time, however, I just can't bring myself to do it. I certainly could do it if I were so inclined. I could talk about how anonymity on the internet has lead to a lack of ownership of one's behavior and perhaps postulate on how seeing people as avatars with user names, rather than real people with real names, leads us to have less empathy for others. (If you are looking for a good article on the subject, I highly recommend Jason McCabe Calacanis's "We Live In Public (and the end of empathy)".) But this is an issue I feel so strongly about that I just can't bring myself to feign an understanding of the other side of the argument, so I'll just have to skip that part.

Put simply, anonymity is not only something we denizens of the internet are accustomed to, it's a necessity. There are just certain parts of our lives, parts frequently made possible by the internet itself, that we don't want the people we meet in our daily lives to know about. For the sake of relevance, I'll go over the one most relevant to us, the WoW community; outside of the gaming community (and the few non-gamers who still support the gaming community) it's still not cool to admit that you are a gamer. Though we, like many sub-cultures, are gaining more respect as the years go on, many still think of the stereotypical pasty, basement-dwelling, no-life stereotype when they think of video gamers. The image of the casual gamer (a category which the majority of gamers fit in to) just hasn't seemed to have caught on, so if an employer Google's your name and sees that you have posted on the WoW forums, he will judge you for that, even if he can't be sure it's really you.

This applies more generally, as well. I can only speak for myself, but as a member of multiple online communities, there are things I may say and do online only because I know I am among like-minded individuals. On this blog, I can talk about WoW as seriously and as critically as I do because I know I'm not likely to be shot down by someone saying, "You take this way to seriously." (which has happened to me before in face-to-face conversations) In the WoW.com comments section, I can be similarly passionate about this game with the comfort of knowing that those who read what I post will not consider it odd that I care about WoW as much as I do. I'm sure you can think of ways this phenomenon applies to you in whatever internet communities you are a part of, WoW-related or otherwise.

What I mean to say by bringing this up is that anonymity is not a bad thing; it is a tool, a tool that has, unfortunately, been used by many as an excuse for bad behavior. But anonymity can be used for good. Someone who is a member of the GLBT community who is not open about their sexuality to the people they know can take advantage of the anonymity of the internet to join an online GLBT group for support in the process of coming out. Someone who is a member of the furry community who may never meet another furry in his life can go online to a furry group and realize that he is not as unusual as he may have thought. A man who is a fan of a show typically aimed at women can go online to find fan groups and use his anonymity to discuss and praise the work without the risk of ridicule. Someone who is a gamer but also has a life outside of gaming can use the fact that online gaming forums are anonymous to discuss his game of choice without the risk of ridicule from those who don't understand the gaming community... oh wait.

But really, the issue of the potential for real-world harassment (a potential we have already seen come to fruition) should be enough to prove that us being forced to use our real names on the forums is a horrible idea. It may curtail trolling (truth be told, it probably won't; I know some trolls in real life, and believe me when I say, trolls will be trolls, no matter what we may do), but it will only encourage trolling's real-world counterparts: harassment and stalking. This is a dangerous path to tread down, Blizzard, both for you and your players; I am begging you to turn back now.

Not at the computer currently

I'm putting this post up in case I don't get back in time to write anything else. I'll be going on a three-day trip this weekend to visit my sister from Friday to Sunday, so I won't be near a computer long enough to type an entry of reasonable length. Don't worry, though; by Wednesday, I'll be back with your regularly scheduled lengthy ramblings and oddly coherent stream-of-thought writing.

Spontaneous grouping and what it may mean for the real world

As you know if you spend any significant amount of time reading WoW news (as yours truly does), researchers love to look at WoW for their various projects to gain insight into how humans act in group and how they can apply the things we do in-game to the real world. One of the things that captures their interest frequently (such as in the latest project detailed by WoW.com) is the ability of WoW players to spontaneously form groups to cooperate on a certain task (be it a quest, a heroic, or killing an enemy player who walked too far into your starting zone) then disband the group and continue on their way, perhaps forming another group later. Many of the researchers who look at fluid group formation WoW are interested in how they can get that dynamic to apply to the real world. After all, if we could get people to cooperate more frequently, we could probably solve certain world problems more easily. But is it that easy? Can the elements of WoW that facilitate spontaneous cooperation really be replicated in the real world? Now, keep in mind, I'm only talking about fluid, spontaneous group formation here; I'm only talking about groups you cooperate with but don't get attached to. As such, I will not be going over the various motivating factors for joining raiding guilds and the like.

To answer that question, we must first look at what elements of the game facilitate those spontaneous groups. Some of those elements show themselves while we are out questing in the open world; they include a perceived common purpose and the knowledge that if you cooperate, it means less individual effort for each participant. If you need to kill tigers in Stranglethron Vale and you see another person killing those same tigers, it's reasonable to assume that they are doing so because they are on the same quest as you. This coupled with the knowledge that if you are in a group, you will both get quest credit for the kill, makes it a very reasonable idea for you to simply send the person a group invite without even needing to ask if they are on the same quest, and for the two of you to cooperate to kill the tigers. It means less effort for both of you, and you won't be competing for kills.

Another element that makes grouping up in WoW so easy and lucrative is the fact that, in some cases, it is automated. You want to group up with some allies and fight the opposing faction in a battleground? Automated. You want to run a heroic but don't want to go through the effort of finding a tank, a healer, and/or three DPS? Automated. Simply click a few buttons and you are now automatically grouped up with people with the same goal as you (there's that common purpose, again). For heroics, you are automatically put in a group that, from a composition stand-point, is capable of beating the heroic (assuming no one lied about their role), and for battlegrounds, you are automatically put with people with similar gear and pitted against people of similar gear. The heroic finder contains similar functionality, in that it won't let you queue for a heroic that you don't reach the minimum standard of gear for. So not only is some grouping in WoW completely automated, but those automated grouping systems won't pit you against a challenge you are completely incapable of overcoming.

Another important motivating factor for these groups is that the better rewards in the game are only available to those who are willing to cooperate with other people, and that the more one is willing to cooperate and work with others, the better the rewards get. While heroic raids give the best rewards, they also require commitment and extensive teamwork, something many people aren't willing and/or able to put into the game. However, spontaneous groups allow a middle-ground between the inferior rewards of being a lone wolf and the superior rewards of extended group play. By joining a spontaneous group, one is able to do group quests and run heroics for gear that may not be the best, but is certainly vastly superior to what one could get on his own. It also helps that, thanks to the clear indication of numerical stats, those rewards are objectively better than the rewards one can obtain exclusively through solo play.

So, in review, there are five aspects of WoW that make forming spontaneous groups so lucrative and easy: an implicit common goal between those considering cooperating, clear benefits to that cooperation, automation of the process, said automation limiting you to reasonable challenges, and objectively better rewards for cooperating. While I'm no sociologist or programmer, it seems reasonable to me that these motivating elements could be transitioned into the real world. I imagine that wish some decent programming skill and a good knowledge of how to motivate people, these motivating aspects for spontaneous group formation could be replicated in the real world. Perhaps there could be a web program that has you answering a few questions about things that interest you, for it could then match you with a cause you can feel really motivated about without matching you with one that you aren't capable of doing anything for. It could then match you with other people to work for that same cause. If the satisfaction that comes from doing good isn't enough to motivate people to use such a program, perhaps tax breaks or similar incentives could be given to people who do so, or perhaps the networking involved would be its own reward.

But should these motivating elements really be transitioned into the real world? I know it seems like the obvious answer should be yes, but I am a bit hesitant. Imagine a world where these elements were successfully implemented to get people to more easily cooperate on solving various issues, from intra-office issues to global problems. It seems like a recipe utopia, and it probably would be, but therein lies the problem. As I said in my post on the wisdom of Death Knights (and for the record, what follows in the rest of this post will be much less shocking to you if you have read the wisdom of Death Knights; if you haven't read it, then please, do so for my sake), our lives are defined by how we overcome the difficulties we face, so making those difficulties easier to face and automating the process almost seems... cheap. In other words, copying these elements of fluid group formation into the larger world could vastly reduce the amount of hardship in our lives, which might not be a good thing.

I know this may come as a shock to you to hear me say that there being less suffering in the world could be a bad thing, and I know you may accuse me of having it too easy, as I sit here in my cozy dorm room typing this on my own laptop, to be able to say that a dearth of suffering is a bad thing, but let me explain. As I went over in post on the wisdom of Death Knights, Schopenhauer says that if we don't suffer, our lives become boring and we either "die of boredom or hang ourselves." These may seem like the inane ramblings of a man who is disconnected from the real world, but studies have shown the suicide rates increase as you go up in income brackets, and general satisfaction with life tends to decrease. Having more doesn't make you happier, and it actually makes it more difficult for you to be happy with what you have. I can tell you from personal experience that I am more satisfied with my life when I face some sort of challenge than when I have it easy. Take away that challenge, take away the adversities we face in our lives, and our lives become rather pointless. If you think about it, our lives are defined by the challenges we have overcome and the rewards we have reaped from overcoming them (much like WoW), so it really isn't such a great thing for hardship to be done away with.

However, all is not so bleak as it seems. Now, copying these elements of fluid group formation into the real world probably wouldn't successfully get rid of all of the problems in the world, but it would certain go a long way towards it. After all, if all you have to do to help the world is open up a program that automatically matches you to a cause you can support and groups you with other people who support that cause and can help you further it, people would probably do good more frequently, and if people did good more frequently, perhaps the world's problems could be reduced or even done away with. That's fine and good for the people who are actually doing that good work, for they get the satisfaction of helping other people, and that can replace the satisfaction they would otherwise get from overcoming their own hardship, but what about those that benefit? Well, studies once found that the ideal income in terms of making you happy is somewhere around $40,000 a year, so I'd imagine that as long as those benefiting were being taken out of bad living situations into better ones without having all of their problems disappear, the net effect would be that they would be happier. And if they were the recipient of so much charity that their suffering was relieved to the extent that that they started feeling less satisfied with their lives, they could then open that program and help those in need, and thus it would be a virtuous cycle (opposite of a vicious cycle) that would make lives better for everyone.

That is, of course, assuming people could actually design such a program and market it correctly, and that people would actually use it, but I am in no way qualified to muse on any of those points.

My personal philosophy of the meaning of life

Considering all that I have written looking at WoW from a philosophical point of view, it's amazing how little I have used this blog to look at greater things philosophically. Oh sure, I've looked philosophically at non-WoW-related things in the past, but I'm talking about something greater, the biggest thing one can look at philosophically, the very thing philosophy was conceived of in the exploration of: life. I went through an ordeal this weekend through which I gained greater clarity into my viewpoint of the world, and after going through that, I have been inspired to share my view of life here.

For starters, I am an absurdist. I believe that our existence is inherently without meaning, though it is still the prerogative of the individual to attempt to find meaning in his life. However, that search has yielded little for me. Much of my existential musings in the past have been over what the meaning of it all is, and I could never come up with an answer that satisfied me. That was until I realized what I now see as the truth: our lives are meaningless. We are simply the result of unguided evolutionary change, and our search meaning is simply the result of an advanced mind no longer being occupied by the needs of survival.

You may be wondering, why would I be so interested in philosophy if I am an absurdist and think that our lives are without meaning? Well, the meaning of life is merely one philosophical question. Though many people think of it as the ultimate issue of philosophy, it is merely one of many. (If anything, the question of suicide is the ultimate question of philosophy, at least according to Albert Camus, but that is another topic.) To say that an absurdist cannot hold philosophical beliefs just because he doesn't believe that life has a basis meaning is like saying an atheist cannot have faith in anything just because he doesn't have faith in God. An atheist can still have faith that humans are basically good, or that hope is worth having, or that he will find love, and similarly, an absurdist can examine things philosophically even if he thinks life is without meaning.

Back on topic: for the longest time, I simply ignored the fact that my life was inherently meaningless, for it was too depressing to deal with. My lack of faith in a higher power or an afterlife certainly didn't help to allay my sorrow, but I found ways of coping. One was in recognizing that the possibility of death truly being the end should not be a frightening thought; it should be a freeing thought. If death is truly the end and there is nothing for us beyond the grave, then death truly is the great escape. It is a state without remorse, without regret. It is a liberation from the absurd, for once we are gone, we can no longer ponder our absurdity. However, this solace in the idea of death as the end did not help the issue I faced premortem. If life was meaningless, and death was an escape from the meaninglessness, why live?

I realize now that the angst I put myself through while pondering this question stemmed from the fact that I thought there was an answer. I thought that there had to be some larger meaning to my life that I was just missing, and that if I found that meaning, all of my issues would be solved. I somehow believed this while still publicly professing the belief that our lives are inherently meaningless. I suppose I was too afraid to face the absurd in my private life, even when I publicly put up the facade of having faced it, but that finally changed. The big change came when I read Albert Camus' The Stranger, in which Camus explores the idea of the absurd* and how man can react to it. Without spoiling too much of the plot, I'll say that the protagonist, Meursault, eventually comes to terms with the absurd and comes to the belief that man can face the absurd and live anyways.

This somehow brought about a great change in how I saw the world. I realized that to reject the possibility of higher meaning is to affirm the mundane, to affirm our earthly existence, and to affirm that it is enough, that we do not need a higher meaning to keep living. Two passages from the book brought about this realization in me. One takes place when a chaplain is talking to Meursault, trying to convince him to turn to God, and Meursault tells the chaplain exactly what he thinks of his philosophy: "But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me." That passage made me realize that when we hope for more than just the absurd, we negate the possibility of being happy within the absurd. However, the absurd is all we have; if we wish to be truly happy, we must embrace the absurdity of our existence. We must embrace our suffering, our joy, our life, our death, for they are all we have. When we embrace these things, we no longer need any sort of higher justification for them.

The other passage that really spoke to me takes place when the chaplain asks Meursault, "Do you really love this earth as much as all that?" In the context of the story, it made me realize that when we can affirm our earthly existence and be satisfied with only that, we don't need anything else. We don't need a greater meaning to our lives, we don't need something intangible to make our lives worth living, hell, we don't need anything to make our lives worth living. Loving life is reason enough to live.

The practical question (at least for me; if experience has shown me anything, it's that my beliefs and the subsequent questions I ask are hardly universal) is, how can someone reach that point where life is reason enough to live? Well, affirming the absurd is probably a start. By recognizing that the mundane is all we have and that nothing can come of searching for anything more, we stop seeing the physical world as something to be surpassed. This world is all we have; to try to move beyond it is to be trapped by disappointment. Still, the question remains: why? Why put forth the effort to live in this world? Why face the sorrow that will inevitably visit someone who faces the absurd? Why live a meaningless life? I suppose this article has come full circle, for those are exactly the questions that motivated my first forays into philosophy. So, I ask again: why live?

For me, I am the answer to that question; the thing that makes life worth living is me. If the mundane is all I have, then I am the only thing I can depend on. If there is no higher meaning or power that I can rely on to give my life purpose, who else can do such a thing other than myself? I am the only other option. I live so that I can live. I put forth the effort so that I can reap the rewards. I face the sorrow so that I can experience the joy. I live a meaningless life because it is the only life I have; I may as well make the best of it. These are all things I could have said and believed before discovering The Stranger, but having a reason behind them makes them all the more powerful.

I suppose my philosophy on life could be summed up by saying that the mundane, physical, absurd world is all we have. From there, the other pieces seem to fall into place rather nicely.

*For the uninitiated, the Absurd is defined as the fundamental disconnect between human interests and an indifferent world. In layman's terms, its the fact that our desires really have no meaning or value other than what meaning or value we give them.

Signs you are approaching burnout

I am currently suffering from WoW burnout, severe WoW burnout. It came as the result of chain-running heroics with the Dungeon Finder and thinking more about the loot than the heroics themselves. It was easily avoidable, but I missed the warning signs that let me know I was going down this path. While there are many posts out there on WoW sites that let you know what to do when you have burnout, I have seen fewer posts about how to avoid burnout, so I thought I'd discuss the warning signs here. If any of these are happening to you, be proactive and do something to prevent your burnout. Try another part of the game, level an alt, or just cut down on your WoW time.

You start thinking more about the results than the experience
There are many rewards in WoW. They come in the form of loot, achievements, mounts, pets, and other such items, but they all have one thing in common: if you make acquiring them your reason for playing, you will suffer burnout. Focusing on loot, titles, etc. distracts you from the main reason you should be playing WoW: to enjoy yourself. This allows you to easily fall into playing habits that lead you to burnout, like playing more often than you would otherwise or getting overly worked up about a wipe. As I said in my post on my issue with speed runners in random heroics, if you focus more on the results then the process, you need to re-examine your priorities.

You do things out of habit rather than out of choice
Like prioritizing results before the process, doing things out of habit rather than because you consider them fun (like running a heroic each day just for the badges or doing dailies just for the money) is a recipe for disaster. If you aren't thinking about why you are doing what you are doing in game, you probably won't cut back or stop when it starts to annoy you. By the time you ask yourself why you are doing that random heroic each day when you don't even like any of the heroics any more or why you are doing the Argent Tournament dailies each day when they really aren't that fun, the damage is already done.

You start resenting the parts of the game you "need" to play in order to play the parts you enjoy
If you are a raider and you hate doing a random heroic each day, but you do it anyway for the emblems of frost, you need to really think about why you are running heroics. If you do any sort of group content (raids or heroics) and you hate doing dailies to pay for the repair bills, why are you doing them? You may think of me as idealistic for saying that you shouldn't do anything in this game that you can't make yourself enjoy, but as someone who has suffered the latter problem, I can tell you that those kinds of thoughts are not unconquerable. If you still "need" to run that content, try changing your mindset to one that allows you to enjoy it.

You start doing things you once resented other people for doing
This was the final sign for me that I was playing too much. I can't stand when anyone other than the tank pull enemies. However, during an Ahn'kahet run that I was healing, the tank only pulled one enemy out of a pack of four. He had Death and Decay down, so I body-pulled the other three to bring them into his D&D, just to speed things up. When I realized what I had done, I knew it was time for a break. Becoming what you once despised is a sure sign of burnout, and also a sign that your pre-burnout self what not have approved of what you are doing.

If you recognize any of those signs in yourself, you are likely on the path to burnout, if you aren't already there. If there are any signs that I missed, let me know in the comments section.

How much WoW is too much?

This edition of WoW.com's Breakfast Topic got me thinking about a question I struggled with recently due to the awesomeness of 3.3 (especially compared to the disappointment of 3.2) and my surge of free time with finals and Christmas break conspiring to cause me to flirt with WoW addiction again. (I suffered minor addiction when I started playing but have since gotten over it) That question is, how much WoW is too much? The comments section on that particular Breakfast Topic were an interesting look at how the community views that issue, but I still wanted to think about it for myself, and here is what I came up with.

Before we start, you should know that I view WoW as equal to other things people do as hobbies. I don't see things like hiking, biking, reading, writing, painting, etc. as inherently superior to WoW. (Though I may argue in casual conversation that they are superior) After all, a hobby is nothing more than an activity done to fill our free time. Sure, we can say that there are better ways to spend our time then WoW. Exercise is healthy for us and artistic endeavors exercise our creative "muscles" (a.k.a. our brain), but these are all value judgments that say more about us than the hobbies themselves.

So, how much WoW is too much? It's futile to try to pick an objective number of hours per a week that constitutes "too much WoW" since everyone is different, as are their schedules, so it's better to talk in relative terms. Let's start with the obvious: if you are playing WoW is lieu of eating, drinking, or sleeping, the most basic things we need to survive, that is too much WoW. No question. The same goes for if WoW gets in the way of your job or your school work, the latter of which is, among other things¹, preparation for the former. You need to work so that you can afford food, a house to sleep in, the rent/mortgage, your bills, WoW itself, etc. You need to make money to live, the question wage slavery aside², so putting off work for WoW is just as bad as putting off eating for WoW.

So, if you don't let WoW ruin the necessary parts of your life, but it's all you do in your free time, is that too much? I'd say so. Human beings thrive on variety, and though you don't need to try every hobby out there, you shouldn't spend all of your time on any one hobby (WoW or otherwise), no matter how "worthy" that hobby may be of your undivided attention. We need multiple sources of stimulation to stay well rounded as people, for different stimuli exercise different parts of our brain. If we focus too much on one thing, we lose the ability to do other things. In addition, if all you do is play WoW, you will, at some point, get bored. Maybe you'll run out of content to do, or maybe you'll suffer from burnout. Regardless, if WoW is all you know, then you won't have any hobbies to fall back on. You'll have all that free time and nothing to do with it, and then the real boredom will start. If you want a more direct reason for why WoW shouldn't be your only hobby, let me ask you this: if WoW is your only hobby, what will you do on Tuesday mornings during the weekly maintenance?

So, assuming you have other hobbies, but WoW is your chief one, what if your WoW time starts creeping in on your family time or your time spent with friends? This is one of those things where it's not so clear cut. After all, introverts don't feel as much of a need to socialize as extroverts do, so the standard for when WoW is getting in the way of ones socialization would be higher for introverts than extroverts. Like any hobby, I think WoW become a problem when it causes you to either break your promises or break off your commitments with your friends, e.g. you promise to pick up a friend from the airport, but you did one random heroic too many and are now running late, or you miss your best friend's birthday party because your ICC progression raid was scheduled for that night. When it comes to family time, I can't say with much certainty how much is too much since I don't have a family of my own, but if you spend significantly more time playing WoW than your spouse and/or kids spend with their hobbies, that's probably a sign you are playing too much.

So, that covers your basic obligations to yourself and your obligations to those around you. Assuming your play time doesn't cause you any of the aforementioned problems, can you still play too much WoW? Again, the standard of what is "too much" is different for everyone, but if you encounter any of the problems bellow, they I think you are playing too much.

-You no longer consider WoW fun. WoW is a hobby, and as such, it is only worth your time if you get some form of enjoyment out of it. Burnout is a pretty good reason to take a break, or at least cut down on your playing.
-You start playing for the results rather than the process. In other words, you play for the gear, the achievements, the titles, but not because you actually enjoy playing to acquire those things. As I have said before, a game or hobby is a process you enjoy, with the results being secondary. When the results are the most important thing and the enjoyment of the process takes a back seat to them, then your hobby becomes a chore.

There may be other signs of too much WoW that I have forgotten, so feel free to say in the comments what signs you think I have left out.

Because of the nature of the post that inspired this post, I thought I'd leave you with my favorite answers to that Breakfast Topic.

"When you have to justify your playtime to others." -Knob
"Easy as cake: whenever I find myself saying "I have to farm 26 more emblems" instead of "I want to", I force myself to quit the game for a few months." -Sterdoker
"When you have to plan real life around wow you play to much, a video game shouldn't rule your life to the extent that you have trouble watching a TV show you enjoy." -mjb (this touches upon the point of balance in your hobbies, which I discussed earlier)
"There is no 'time' or 'signs', there are simply priorities. When something more important comes up, WoW stops. Kids in school - wow. Kids on break - no wow. Holidays with family - no wow. Weekend off - wow. Having fun - wow. Can't fit though the door anymore - no wow." -John
"You know you've played to much WoW when you go and play a single-player RPG for the first time in a while and it actually makes you uncomfortable that your character actually is a unique snowflake." -Stormscape

¹This is the key part of that sentence. Though preparing students for their working life is a fundamental role of school, school (at all its levels) can and should be much more than that.
²I will say that I give this theory and other parts of Marxism some credit, but that is a much bigger topic, one I don't have the room to address here.

Thanksgiving and historical pessimism: Is it worth it?

I will warn you right now that this post has nothing to do with WoW. I don't intent to put up many posts like this, but this issue has arisen recently as it does every year. When wow.com put up a post talking about Pilgrim's Bounty (I don't remember which one it is), the comments section was ablaze with people eager to bring up the darker side of the history of Thanksgiving, about how the Pilgrims massacred the Native Americans and stole their land in exchange for cheap trinkets due to a misunderstanding between the two groups about the concept of land ownership. I'm sure you've heard it all before from your pessimistic friends and your high school history teachers who like to pretend that they are the only ones willing to tell you the darker side of history, so I won't go into it in detail. The question I pose to you today: are those people who insist on looking at the darker side of Thanksgiving right or wrong?

Let's forget that for a moment and think about the purpose of this holiday. Some people will tell you that the purpose of Thanksgiving is to remember when the Pilgrims and the Native Americans came together in partnership and cooperation, but really, the true purpose of Thanksgiving is to remember the things we are thankful for. That, as well as to stuff ourselves with food and visit with friends and relatives. All of these activities contribute towards one goal; enjoyment. In the end, that is the true purpose of any holiday: enjoying ourselves, giving ourselves a break from the doldrums of day-to-day life.

In this respect, historical Thanksgiving pessimism (HTP, from now on) is quite misguided in that it distracts us from the true purpose of the holiday; enjoying ourselves. After all, the past is the past; no amount of white guilt or moping about history will change what was done to the Native Americans or the fact that those atrocities were necessary for us to get where we are today as a country. From a purely practical standpoint, HTP doesn't benefit anyone.

That said, there's a danger in forgetting about our history. As anyone who studies history will tell you, the one thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history (paraphrased from Hegel). In other words, throughout history, man has repeated the same mistakes he has made before, and much of history is us just repeating mistakes we have made in the past and suffering the consequences from it. With that in mind, HTP does serve the function of forcing us to keep in mind our past mistakes such that we may not repeat them. Even if its purpose is negative, its intent is not.

So, what's the verdict? Even though HTP does prevent us from enjoying the holidays as much as we could, it stems from the necessity of remembering the mistakes of our past so that we do not repeat them in the future. So, the next time someone brings up HTP in conversation, you are completely justified in calling them a pessimist and a party-pooper, but their intentions are still good, even if they don't realize it.

No philosophy post this Friday

I apologize to all of my faithful readers (all three of you ;-) I kid, I kid), but there will not be a Friday philosophy post this week. I've been spending a lot of time with my family, as well as doing other things that take up a lot of my time, so I can't bring you one this week. Next week's miscellany post, however, will be philosophical in nature, so I hope that will make it up to you.

How to make fishing in Wintergrasp waters worthwhile

Normally I would keep something like this to myself, but I'm sure anyone can figure it out who really wants to, so I may as well put this out there for those of you who don't know about it.

Wintergrasp is a great place to fish. You can fish up Musselback Sculpin and Glacial Salmon, both very valuable on the auction house, without needing to go looking for pools. The problem, though, is that Wintergrasp is a PvP area, and if you want to fish while doing something else, that makes it difficult to do. You can't fish in Wintergrasp for more than five minutes without someone of the opposite faction attacking you, as anyone who has tried to do Dangerously Delicious can attest. Going into Wintergrasp flags you for PvP, and if a battle starts, you'll need to queue for the battle to stay in there. The key then, is to be able to fish in Wintergrasp waters without being in Wintergrasp. This, surprisingly, is possible.

The key is to stand on the edge of Wintergrasp by where the air elementals are. You can stand there and fish in Wintergrasp waters while being in Dragonblight, thus not flagging you for PvP (that won't work on a PvP server, though, but when you rolled your character on a PvP server, you knew what you were getting into) and allowing you to fish in peace, even where there is a battle going on (I have done this before). Unfortunately, those air elementals will attack you in most spots you try to stand, but there is one spot where they won't attack you, pictured bellow. The coordinates are 24, 35 in Dragonblight.











































In those pictures I am standing as close as you can stand to the water without being in Wintergrasp. The spot is in the lower-right (south-east) corner of Wintergrasp. Don't worry about needing to stand really close to the water. Your bobber with go through the rock, as you can see bellow, and you can still click it through the rock.















That said, you'll still want to get as close to the water as possible without being in Wintergrasp. My advice on how to do this is to walk towards the water bit by bit until you enter Wintergrasp and are flagged for PvP. Then walk backwards inch by inch until you are in Dragonblight again. Now mount up and fly directly upwards (space bar) without moving in any other direction. Stay up there so that the members of the opposite faction cannot attack you while you wait for your PvP flag to disappear. Once it is gone, fly back down (x key) without moving in any other direction. You can now fish in peace.

So there you go. Now go enjoy your new-found cash cow!

As a note, this post was pretty short, and all of my posts this month may be the same way, since I am participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Wish me luck!

Some changes in real life

Well, I have finally made the move to college, and though classes have not yet started, I can tell things are going to be different. I am going to have a lot more time to myself, and how I manage that time will determine whether the blog will be able to continue to exist. Classes start on Wednesday, so Wednesday's advice post should go as planned. However, trying to get Friday's post up will determine whether my new schedule will allow me to continue the blog. In all likelihood, I will be able to continue blogging, since they say you get more free time in college, but only time will tell.