Dr. Reality and Mr. Internet

I used to go to NeoGAF, one of, if not the biggest gaming forums on the Internet. Then I realized everyone there was angry all the time. Or insane. Or both. Mostly both.

I think the biggest reason why gamers seem like angry little balls of hate online is because they never learned how to manage it. Instead, they just hold it all in, letting it build up and build up until it explodes. All over the Internet. Incidentally, this is also why they seem normal in the real world: because they can’t express their disappointment or anger in a way that doesn’t make them look insane, they have no choice but to act not insane, until they get to the safety of the Internet, where the insanity just flows out like a volcano.

This is why gaming forums are mostly useless piles of crap. When that many defective people congregate in the same place, all with the same freedom to express their insanity, well, it’s a recipe for disaster.

As a side note, this is why GameFAQs is in some ways one of the least defective gaming forums out there. Having separate boards for each game and system seems to do a good job keeping people with the same defects together, instead of mixing different flavors of insanity in one giant blob of the worst Jell-O you’ll ever see.

I can understand how this happened with the older gamers: they grew up in a different era, where they were frequently picked on and were socially ostracized for being a gamer. A bit of lashing out was probably expected. You’d think that those gamers would be a bit more understanding, but nope. They love to exclude each other. It’s like those bullied kids who become cops so they can finally get their “revenge”, except it involves a lot less effort.

In retrospect, this was probably an inevitable result. And there’s certainly worse ways of managing your anger. I just think it’s awful that gamers ruined their portions of the Internet for themselves. The Internet had the potential to be a great way for gamers to connect with other gamers, but instead they turned it into their own personal high school.