Your therpgsite.com Update
About a year ago there was a flurry of interest and/or outrage about Grey Ranks over at therpgsite.com. I went over there and had some good conversations. There was shouting nerdrage, but there were also curious people willing to give and take, listen, discuss. I don’t know if I changed any minds but at least I felt like people engaged with me, and it was an overall positive experience.
I went back over there recently because a thread had started about Jeepform, prompted I guess by the DJA nomination. The place has changed – most of the thoughtful people appear to have fled, and it has turned into a very hostile echo chamber. Populist absolutism is pretty much the order of the day. Nobody is listening and the level of paranoid rage seems to have been ratcheted up. It was really striking.
Comment by Colin
Posted on August 24, 2009 at 10:30 am
That’s sad. A cautionary tale, maybe, about how a community can change over time. Story Games is not there…yet.
Comment by Jason
Posted on August 24, 2009 at 10:55 am
It’s funny; immediately after I posted this some guy apologized to me and thanked me for answering questions. So … I dunno. Maybe there’s a culture there I simply cannot parse.
Comment by Colin
Posted on August 24, 2009 at 11:54 am
Maybe a culture of lulz? I think, maybe, that there are few things they consider worth discussing seriously – easier to joke about them. Maybe the guy was genuinely surprised that you didn’t join in with the joking and that you were trying to actually have a dialogue about something. Bizarre.
Comment by Jason
Posted on August 24, 2009 at 1:16 pm
The Jeepform thread was aggressively derailed with mocking jokes, which might just be the site’s culture or may have been discomfort with the subject, who knows. But the textual effect was that of a bunch of adolescents plugging their ears and shouting.
Comment by Colin
Posted on August 24, 2009 at 2:06 pm
But the textual effect was that of a bunch of adolescents plugging their ears and shouting.
Yep. Which, when you think about it, is a typically adolescent reaction towards something one is uncomfortable discussing. Probably something there.
Anyway, much respect to you for even *trying* to be a presence there and educate people about something you’re interested in. I don’t think I could do it.
Comment by Michael Erb
Posted on August 26, 2009 at 6:51 am
My personal observation: Any group formed on the basis of hating another group isn’t worth belonging to in the first place.
Comment by Jason
Posted on August 28, 2009 at 12:56 pm
It seems to be up and down. Now I’m having a conversation that seems predicated on miscommunication, which is cool. There’s a guy challenging my assumptions a little and it’s fairly OK. So maybe I spoke too soon.