Quote from: splishbuzz on July 06, 2022, 01:48:54 PM
...where do you find people to play with...

I tend to play with friends and acquaintances, and tend to not play with strangers (that's not a die-hard rule, it's just how it works out for me). If you do that, you kinda automatically know who you're inviting to the table (or not) beforehand.

Greetings!

Yes, just mention TRUMP and watch the woke Libtards froth at the mouth!

An *excellent* way to screen these morons away from your game group.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I appreciate OP kicking off this this topic as this is an issue that I'm struggling with too.

I'm currently between groups and am looking for non-woke players myself.

I had a small group that I had invited over on a probational basis and had to broom the whole lot of them!  The problem was that the SJW's do NOT have a firm foundation based in reality.  And that seems to translate to problems at the table.

I find it odd how nonsensical people have become as of late.  How did these people become so deranged?  Anyone have a clue?

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 13, 2022, 01:28:33 PM
I appreciate OP kicking off this this topic as this is an issue that I'm struggling with too.

I'm currently between groups and am looking for non-woke players myself.

I had a small group that I had invited over on a probational basis and had to broom the whole lot of them!  The problem was that the SJW's do NOT have a firm foundation based in reality.  And that seems to translate to problems at the table.

I find it odd how nonsensical people have become as of late.  How did these people become so deranged?  Anyone have a clue?

Everyone has, not just the woke. And the answer is that our brains aren't equipped for the Information Age.

Quote from: drayakir on July 13, 2022, 02:22:12 PM

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 13, 2022, 01:28:33 PM
I appreciate OP kicking off this this topic as this is an issue that I'm struggling with too.

I'm currently between groups and am looking for non-woke players myself.

I had a small group that I had invited over on a probational basis and had to broom the whole lot of them!  The problem was that the SJW's do NOT have a firm foundation based in reality.  And that seems to translate to problems at the table.

I find it odd how nonsensical people have become as of late.  How did these people become so deranged?  Anyone have a clue?

Everyone has, not just the woke. And the answer is that our brains aren't equipped for the Information Age.

We must return to Monke.

I once recruited a player for my Discord game from a "Weekend AD&D" Facebook group. Five sessions into the game he had a conniption over a conservative post that I made on a public forum (on how I wouldn't use gender confusion pronouns) and then quit.

Easy Answer?

Play or reff GURPS 4/e and don't allow politics at your game table.

There, problem solved.

-Ed C.

Quote from: drayakir on July 13, 2022, 02:22:12 PM

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 13, 2022, 01:28:33 PM
I find it odd how nonsensical people have become as of late.  How did these people become so deranged?  Anyone have a clue?

Everyone has, not just the woke. And the answer is that our brains aren't equipped for the Information Age.

You may be on to something.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on July 22, 2022, 12:04:48 AM

Quote from: drayakir on July 13, 2022, 02:22:12 PM

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 13, 2022, 01:28:33 PM
I find it odd how nonsensical people have become as of late.  How did these people become so deranged?  Anyone have a clue?

Everyone has, not just the woke. And the answer is that our brains aren't equipped for the Information Age.

You may be on to something.

Or maybe just on something...

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on July 11, 2022, 02:18:46 PM

Quote from: splishbuzz on July 06, 2022, 01:48:54 PM
...where do you find people to play with...

I tend to play with friends and acquaintances, and tend to not play with strangers (that's not a die-hard rule, it's just how it works out for me). If you do that, you kinda automatically know who you're inviting to the table (or not) beforehand.

That was normal for tabletop gaming but it's not my faraway long-term friends who are playing online now.

Quote from: Timothe on July 22, 2022, 02:05:38 AM

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on July 11, 2022, 02:18:46 PM

Quote from: splishbuzz on July 06, 2022, 01:48:54 PM
...where do you find people to play with...

I tend to play with friends and acquaintances, and tend to not play with strangers (that's not a die-hard rule, it's just how it works out for me). If you do that, you kinda automatically know who you're inviting to the table (or not) beforehand.

That was normal for tabletop gaming but it's not my faraway long-term friends who are playing online now.

I play exclusively around a table and don't play online, which is probably (another) big disconnect between me and the modern RPG scene.

Try your local gun club or pitbull breeders association meetings. Also, NASCAR events. It might be hard to find gamers as such at these kinds of shindigs, but any you do find won't be libtards. Good luck!

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2022, 12:12:53 AM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on July 22, 2022, 12:04:48 AM

Quote from: drayakir on July 13, 2022, 02:22:12 PM

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 13, 2022, 01:28:33 PM
I find it odd how nonsensical people have become as of late.  How did these people become so deranged?  Anyone have a clue?

Everyone has, not just the woke. And the answer is that our brains aren't equipped for the Information Age.

You may be on to something.

Or maybe just on something...

The epidemic of mental health problems about the current generation is a proven and worrying fact, and the unhealthy relationship with social media is considered a key factor. Sane social psychologists ranging from Jonathan Haidt to Jean Twenge have traced a direct connection between "Social media era" ---> "Mental fragility" ---> "Mindless polarization". In her book "iGen" Twenge writes:

"The complete dominance of the smartphone among teens has had ripple effects across every area of iGen'ers' lives, from their social interactions to their mental health. The average teen checks her phone more than eighty times a day.
[...]
They are obsessed with safety and fearful of their economic futures, and they have no patience for inequality based on gender, race, or sexual orientation. They are at the forefront of the worst mental health crisis in decades, with rates of teen depression and suicide skyrocketing since 2011."

Jonathan Haidt wrote "The Coddling of the American Mind". This book contains, in a chapter among many, an astounding series of examples of "Words are violence, violence is safety" in contemporary American campuses - with such violence hitting from alt-right speakers (check Berkley 2017), to speeches sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (by a group called "Refuse Fascism" - one cannot make up such things), to courses about "Sappho, an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos and an icon of both feminism and lesbian liberation." (because "the Ancient World was white"). When the lecturer of the latter, Lucía Martínez Valdivia, asked at least to not be physically assaulted because she suffers from PTSD, the answer was a chilling word salad. If you bother to read that remember how it is about a gay, mixed-race, feminist woman with PTSD who was physically assaulted by the writers of that manifesto.

I hope that the above is not considered political, because it is not about politics at all but about how "politics" (firmly between quotes) are symbolic of a whole generation deeply confused, scared by words, whose beliefs are rooted in slogans but not in the real, practical application of those slogans. The result is blind violence even against "their own", and guided by beliefs as strong as they are illusionary.

Haidt and others look at politics, beliefs and their application (or delusional application) only as a thermometer of social mental health. The fact that there is a precise cut off year, 2012, for the decline of the mental health of a whole generation was an important clue. What happened? Haidt sums up five years of research in a very long article for The Atlantic. An abstract among many:

"By 2013, social media had become a new game, with dynamics unlike those in 2008. If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a post that would "go viral" and make you "internet famous" for a few days. If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful comments. Your posts rode to fame or ignominy based on the clicks of thousands of strangers, and you in turn contributed thousands of clicks to the game.

This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics: Users were guided not just by their true preferences but by their past experiences of reward and punishment, and their prediction of how others would react to each new action. One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the "Retweet" button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place. As he watched Twitter mobs forming through the use of the new tool, he thought to himself, "We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon."

As a social psychologist who studies emotion, morality, and politics, I saw this happening too. The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking."

Amusingly, later in this article we even find why TBP got all of it wrong:

"John Stuart Mill said, "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that," and he urged us to seek out conflicting views "from persons who actually believe them." People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain. People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider"

tl;dr: We thought we were ready for the information age, we took a wrong turn and a whole generation entered in a nightmare eyes wide open. Even worse, politicians from both sides of the aisle, media and entertainment companies of every kind and level are chasing this twisted reality, compounding the echo chamber effect.

What will happen ten years from now is in the lap of the Gods. For sure, a whole generation is about to enter real life totally unprepared. Haidt sees hope in "the exhausted majority": those with too many broken bones and too many frustrations to be able to go on the way they are now. If the number of people who invite TBP to suck wind increases in the next few years, he will be proven right. If not, that will not be my problem.

Great points, but I'm far more pessimistic than you and I don't think anything can be done about this. This is also true for RPGs, which are actually surprisingly popular (for now) on social media and social media types infest it.

Quote from: Reckall on July 22, 2022, 07:42:12 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2022, 12:12:53 AM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on July 22, 2022, 12:04:48 AM

Quote from: drayakir on July 13, 2022, 02:22:12 PM

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 13, 2022, 01:28:33 PM
I find it odd how nonsensical people have become as of late.  How did these people become so deranged?  Anyone have a clue?

Everyone has, not just the woke. And the answer is that our brains aren't equipped for the Information Age.

You may be on to something.

Or maybe just on something...

The epidemic of mental health problems about the current generation is a proven and worrying fact, and the unhealthy relationship with social media is considered a key factor. Sane social psychologists ranging from Jonathan Haidt to Jean Twenge have traced a direct connection between "Social media era" ---> "Mental fragility" ---> "Mindless polarization". In her book "iGen" Twenge writes:

"The complete dominance of the smartphone among teens has had ripple effects across every area of iGen'ers' lives, from their social interactions to their mental health. The average teen checks her phone more than eighty times a day.
[...]
They are obsessed with safety and fearful of their economic futures, and they have no patience for inequality based on gender, race, or sexual orientation. They are at the forefront of the worst mental health crisis in decades, with rates of teen depression and suicide skyrocketing since 2011."

Jonathan Haidt wrote "The Coddling of the American Mind". This book contains, in a chapter among many, an astounding series of examples of "Words are violence, violence is safety" in contemporary American campuses - with such violence hitting from alt-right speakers (check Berkley 2017), to speeches sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (by a group called "Refuse Fascism" - one cannot make up such things), to courses about "Sappho, an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos and an icon of both feminism and lesbian liberation." (because "the Ancient World was white"). When the lecturer of the latter, Lucía Martínez Valdivia, asked at least to not be physically assaulted because she suffers from PTSD, the answer was a chilling word salad. If you bother to read that remember how it is about a gay, mixed-race, feminist woman with PTSD who was physically assaulted by the writers of that manifesto.

I hope that the above is not considered political, because it is not about politics at all but about how "politics" (firmly between quotes) are symbolic of a whole generation deeply confused, scared by words, whose beliefs are rooted in slogans but not in the real, practical application of those slogans. The result is blind violence even against "their own", and guided by beliefs as strong as they are illusionary.

Haidt and others look at politics, beliefs and their application (or delusional application) only as a thermometer of social mental health. The fact that there is a precise cut off year, 2012, for the decline of the mental health of a whole generation was an important clue. What happened? Haidt sums up five years of research in a very long article for The Atlantic. An abstract among many:

"By 2013, social media had become a new game, with dynamics unlike those in 2008. If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a post that would "go viral" and make you "internet famous" for a few days. If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful comments. Your posts rode to fame or ignominy based on the clicks of thousands of strangers, and you in turn contributed thousands of clicks to the game.

This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics: Users were guided not just by their true preferences but by their past experiences of reward and punishment, and their prediction of how others would react to each new action. One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the "Retweet" button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place. As he watched Twitter mobs forming through the use of the new tool, he thought to himself, "We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon."

As a social psychologist who studies emotion, morality, and politics, I saw this happening too. The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking."

Amusingly, later in this article we even find why TBP got all of it wrong:

"John Stuart Mill said, "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that," and he urged us to seek out conflicting views "from persons who actually believe them." People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain. People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider"

tl;dr: We thought we were ready for the information age, we took a wrong turn and a whole generation entered in a nightmare eyes wide open. Even worse, politicians from both sides of the aisle, media and entertainment companies of every kind and level are chasing this twisted reality, compounding the echo chamber effect.

What will happen ten years from now is in the lap of the Gods. For sure, a whole generation is about to enter real life totally unprepared. Haidt sees hope in "the exhausted majority": those with too many broken bones and too many frustrations to be able to go on the way they are now. If the number of people who invite TBP to suck wind increases in the next few years, he will be proven right. If not, that will not be my problem.

tl;dr: Goddang those young uns with their goddang phones and whatchoosamicallits.