Zero Charisma

Alright, I finally broke down and watched it.

I'm not happy about that.

Scott is a jerk. His friends are losers. His family is reprehensible. Milo has it right but he and his fellow hipsters are shallow-minded self-absorbed scum. The whole film is just so resoundingly pathetic, humiliating, and my worst fear is that it might be spot on. No, not with everyone but with enough people to make me think that gaming as an adult is simply a bad idea. That maybe life would be better for all of us if we just stayed at home and watched TV or updated our facebook status for every spare night for the rest of our lives. That maybe, just like drinking or doing drugs, gaming is something you should fool around with in your early 20's and then leave behind before it screws up your life.

It's not just this film. This film is just the tip of the iceberg floating towards the Titanic. It is all those times I have run across truly desperate and lost people like Scott and his friends inside our hobby. People who seriously need to get their shit together before they should bother with entertaining themselves. The last convention I went to was Altcon here in Tallahassee. For some stupid reason it was held in the basement of a convention center where nothing was happening on the main floor. It was crowded with people like Scott and his friends. I wandered around for about half an hour before having to leave because the stench of body odor was so noxious.

I once had a girlfriend who didn't know I ever had anything to do with TRPGs. Once at work it came up in conversation and I distinctly remember her saying, "Please don't tell me you're one of those people. God, I hate those people." She meant it, and quite seriously. I loved her and so I didn't tell her. I wanted to. I wanted to tell her about all the good times I have had gaming, about all the friendship and camaraderie, about all the good people I have gamed with, about how much promise there is in the simple matter of hanging out with your friends, rolling dice and playing elf games.

Instead there is just this hopelessness. It feels like I'm trying to pump the water out of a sinking ship which is taking on far too much far too quickly. Between this and gaming's white male whatever problem and the gentrification of hipster story games and the relentless sameness of it all. I'm thinking of calling it quits. I am going to finish up what I have been doing, release it, hang up my dice bag and go back to writing fiction which is probably what I should have been doing these last few years.

Humanity let me down today.