BellaStrega

Actually, the misogyny among men in the gaming community played a fairly significant role in women not being a part of the gaming community. Why join a hobby where you're going to be abused just for who you are? Why go into stores where you'll be ignored or dismissed as obviously in the wrong place? Having people talk down to you? Being told you can't play a female character because women can't be adventurers? Having people try to roleplay gangrapes to show you your proper place? It wasn't just women being disdainful of gamers that kept women out of the gaming community in significant numbers.

I've been gaming since the early 80s and I have to say that trying to make women responsible for the ridiculous levels of misogyny in gaming communities constitutes either an extreme level of denial or simply another layer of misogyny.

Also, if those guys who were upset about women rolling eyes at them didn't think they were entitled to women, they probably wouldn't be quite so put out when some women aren't automatically interested in them. Most of the gamer guys I've known haven't had much difficulty establishing relationships and marriages.

Ah, nothing like linking a blatantly racist video to make a point.

Blizzard took the same step with WoW a couple of years ago. Not sure that this specific step is actually a bad thing.

Still, Rift is nowhere near in the same position and the same decision may in fact reflect different priorities.

The secret mystery of the Forum Cartel is not that it doesn't exist. It is that we are all the Forum Cartel. Probably not much comfort at this point, though.

I should know, I'm responsible for the Forum Cartel title at P10K.

The dungeon in Savage Coast is not quite the same, although it's a bit entertaining at points as well. The way going through the dungeon is also a story is similar, and you learn a lot about what Hell really is.

Nothing quite like the cinematic helicopter bit in Polaris, which was great. But I haven't done any past those two so I can't speak for them. I know a bit about the third one - the Darkness War? - in Blue Mountains. That one is apparently pretty brilliant too.

I have this same problem.

Here's the relevant post:

http://christopherlbruce.blogspot.com/2010/10/babs.html

No, that's not the definition of rational. The definition of rational is "having reason or understanding." Or " relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason." It has some math-related definitions as well.

I also explained - logically - how they do not mean the same thing.

Now that is nonsense. Mostly because it is completely tangential to my point. It is utterly irrelevant, because what I described was not nonsense. Mental illness isn't nonsense.

These are not objective standards, however. And they are vernacular terms lacking any objectivity at all.

Drawing a connection between the subjectivity of psychological evaluations and the use of "stupid" and "crazy" is nonsense. Psychological evaluations range from short interviews to long, involved administration of various tests. There isn't a single category to draw from. Further, the people making these evaluations have spent years studying the conditions they diagnose, evaluate, and treat. Stupid and crazy are two words that are primarily used to dismiss the validity of another person's behavior, contributions, or even personhood.

Maybe, but doubtful. Psychopaths don't tend to know what happiness is, either.

I never thought we were in disagreement over the major point. It was the judgment of Amanda's actions as something that they were not.

I never said they were beyond reproach. I said your perception of those actions is wrong because you do not understand those actions.

Mental illness does not deprive you of choice, but it makes different choices seem rational and necessary. Without understanding this, anything said about actions taken by a mentally ill person are pretty useless, and serve more as a reflection of the speaker's biases than any kind of useful, logical, factual information.

Can't speak for other servers, but this does not describe Champion. That is the "dead server" stuff.

"Not rational" and "makes no sense" do not mean the same thing. Irrational behavior can make sense if you understand that it has an actual cause, and is not strictly random. Suicidal behavior and self injury are both irrational, but they make sense if one understands the kind of duress that causes it.

For example, someone who is delusional and believes the US government is monitoring his every move and plans to kill him for some arbitrary reason is certainly acting from irrational beliefs and ideas of reference. However, his behavior makes perfect sense if one accepts that to him his delusions are very real.

No, both are not synonymous with irrational. Both are vernacular, and tend to be extremely subjective judgments. They are not clinical nor are they objective terminology. They are primarily judgmental statements. "Stupid" is often used to simply mean "that person did or said something I would not do or say, or something I disagree with." Crazy is used similarly. Neither has any objective value.

Why do you hate that it makes you sad? The fact that it makes you sad means you can almost certainly rule out sociopathy or psychopathy.

I do not hate that this situation affects me emotionally. I hate this this situation happened at all.

In such a situation the question is not relevant, only the matter of preventing the stalker from continuing to act is relevant.

I haven't been debating whether Amanda was responsible for her actions, however. I was debating whether you were accurately representing what her actions were.

I wouldn't say that teenagers who want those things are shallow. A teenager's brain is still developing and a lot of their behavior is impulsive or irrational even when they are otherwise fine. This applies to those of us who did not fit in and did not care about fitting in. It is simply that behavior reflected interests and priorities. Someone who wants to fit in will try to fit in, but this isn't a matter of sophistication or shallowness so much as what that person prioritizes.

I would argue that being able to fit in is often a profoundly underestimated and undervalued social skill that plays a significant role in one's adult life (that is, the ability to do so or the lack thereof). I do not mean trying to behave like everyone else, but understanding how to be part of a group.

As far as self-esteem goes, I don't think a socially active teenager necessarily has more fragile self esteem. I think their self esteem may be more vulnerable as they value social interactions and belonging higher than someone like yourself, Tenzhi, or myself. More attempts to be social means more opportunities to be rejected.

So you do not know what it is like to self injure, and you have clearly never actually read or heard another's account of what it is like for them to self injure, and yet you're able to come to a conclusion about self injury derived strictly from information in your brain without any need for reference to reality? It's no wonder your conclusions are specious.

Being conscious does not mean being able to rationally choose to do or not do something.

"Stupid" and "crazy" are two different things, and both seem to be extremely subjective judgments.

The actions are the consequence of mental illness. If mental illness did not cause people to act against their own best interests then they wouldn't be illnesses. You might as well say that someone with leukemia is stupid-to-crazy for producing too many antibodies.

I am not saying that having a mental illness is like having cancer. I am saying that having a mental illness means that one's faculties are not functioning properly, and looking at how the person behaves and criticizing that is profoundly ignorant, perhaps even stupid.

Then you do understand she had a reason (even if it was wrong) for not involving the police. You just seem to have difficulty understanding why she didn't behave as you would have in that situation, as opposed to how she behaved.

If you were being brief, you would have said "killed herself because people stalked, harassed, and abused her." Instead, you changed the context entirely into "she killed herself because people didn't like her." I do not know where you live, but in the real world there's a significant gulf between "I don't like you" and "I am going to follow you everywhere you go and take every action I can to ruin your life."

Not comparable. Someone who is self harming and attempting suicide is in need of assistance. A stalker is someone who is likely putting the first person into that frame of mind. Whatever the stalker's cognition, the stalker is the problem, not the victim. If the stalker is irrational or mentally ill, then that can be addressed once he is no longer a danger to his victim(s).

I value privacy too. I try not to bring up my "real world" life in most places, and I tend not to post pictures. I don't even have a facebook account I use for anything (I did use Facebook for the Dragon Age flash game to get the item unlocks in DA2, but for actual social networking? Hell no).

But, this doesn't mean that I think that anyone who does put their stuff up deserves what happens to them, or caused it to happen. At best, they made it possible, but the responsibility is on whomever actually did something.

Social networking predates Facebook by several years, but even before then word had way of getting around. Here's a book on the topic that might be informative.

No, because blaming the victim is ignorant.

My teen nieces and nephew have been using social networking sites for years and have not had any problems. Most people don't have problems because there isn't a predator for every single person on these sites. Pointing to cases like this as evidence that all social networking is bad for teenagers is sort of like trying to prevent fires by outlawing matches.

No, this sort of deviant behavior is not due to the ability of people to send or access personal info. It is due to the existence of people who engage in this behavior, and such people have always existed. They have always made use of available tools.

I am also not yelling at you, I am telling you that you are full of excrement. Your response has only reinforced that impression.

Also, this wasn't any better. And they never did "just beat you up on the playground for your lunch money." Those weren't good old days, they were awful for those who experienced them.

This is all BS. No one is responsible for someone else's choice to stalk or harass them. The only person responsible for stalking or harassing someone is the person doing the stalking or harassing. The vast majority of people who post these things do not get harassed or stalked.

Try to be remotely rational and stick to facts, okay? Not this ridiculous and possibly self-serving fantasy world you've concocted where victims are always at fault.

Since psychopaths came up earlier, this is precisely the reasoning psychopaths use to justify victimizing people. I am not saying you are a psychopath, I am trying to point out just how pathologically wrong your reasoning is.

The distinction between sociopath and psychopath is extremely flimsy. I recall reading something by Robert Hare who referred to someone as a sociopath because he wasn't a psychopath for his entire life, not because he didn't actively seek to cause pain to others. I think mostly the distinction is illusory.

I posted the first one earlier in the thread, but someone disagreed.

It is a fun game, though.

I seriously doubt that Tenzhi is a psychopath.

I can think of a much better candidate but he hasn't been here (as far as I know) for years.

The vast majority of teens who use social networking sites never have an experience like this. Also, she didn't "let herself become an example." It's something that was done to her.