| InfinityMax |
January 12th, 2008 07:13 PM |
We're Getting Dumber
Some of you remember when roleplaying games were the target of a nationwide program of extermination. Jack Chick and a whole load of interfering busybodies started a campaign to make us all think that RPGs were Satan's handbooks. And even the non-churchgoers jumped on board, telling us how only nerds played fantasy games. In high school, half of me wanted to play Runequest, and the other half wanted to change the oil and ride a motorcycle, just so I wasn't a nerd any more.
So we came up with ways to defend the hobby, and a huge argument in our favor was that our games were for smart people. We talked about how we learned problem-solving skills and practiced our math. And so for a while, people assumed that we were smart kids who were going to hell with our pocket protectors.
So what in the name of the RPGA is happening today? If you get on nearly any game forum anywhere, you'll find an overwhelming flood of kids who are not stupid, but are happy to look that way. These lazy sods are more than delighted to write absolute drivel, stringing four or five sentences together with no trace of punctuation or capitalization to be found. Reading their typewritten vomitus requires the Enigma codebreaker, and you have to keep your codebook current because the little reprobates are constantly finding new ways to slaughter the English language.
Even worse than these sloppy underachievers are the people who defend them. Why would someone who actually takes the time to communicate effectively be willing to accept the level of inconsiderate laziness that it takes to abbreviate every fourth word with a single letter? And why do these champions of the oppressed feel the need to side with the jackaninnies who can't figure out that a keyboard is not a cell phone?
I blame videogames. A prepubescent 12-year-old these days can text faster than you can talk, and they play games where they have to chat back and forth in a hurry. I can only imagine the slaughter of grammar that goes on in an MMO or other online game. I'm dismayed enough to hear kids who can't get into a PG-13 movie describing acts of sexual deviancy when I play Halo 3 on Xbox LIVE.
Another contributing factor is the attitude of self-entitlement that the upcoming generation seems to enjoy. These kids believe they deserve the world without any effort. The lack of ambition that it requires to write a lengthy message and never even bother to insert a period is indicative of a group of children who believe we all owe them a living. When they can't even practice the consideration of reaching for the shift key once in a while, they obviously believe they deserve more than they should have to earn.
To make matters worse, the Internet has removed consequences. These children grow up believing that they can get away with whatever they want because nobody knows where they live. When the worst-case-scenario for sloppy posting is that someone asks you to stop, there really is no incentive to change your behavior.
Of course, the defenders of the slothful carry a large amount of blame. Attempts to ask for just a little consideration are met with the kind of scolding usually reserved for adults who beat their children in the supermarket. This defense of purposeful idiocy serves only to guarantee that the kids in question are going to grow up and not know how to write a two-page book report. Colleges are going to scoff when they see these slackers coming, and the misguided fools who stood up for their right to be lazy are not going to be ready to accept any blame for allowing the deliberately stupid among us to establish a pattern of failure.
For a very long time, one of the key defenses of our hobby was that we had to be smarter to play our games. After all, you can't be a mouth-breather if you wade through a 300-page Dungeon Master's Guide. Yet it seems to me that we're losing even that defense. These kids might even be intelligent, but they go so far out of their way to hide it that they're making us all look bad. When the vast majority of emerging gamers can't be bothered to capitalize their own names, we all suffer.
So here's my call to action. If you're one of those lazy punks who thinks it's OK to always talk like you were on your cell phone, stop it and write like you were taught in grade school. And if you're one of those bleeding-heart hippies that thinks kids should be allowed to talk like ill-trained apes, consider exactly who you think you're helping. Because if Johnny can't figure out how to write a complete sentence, how do you suppose he's going to write a cover letter?
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