Have you noticed something about my blog, over the past few years? I have. Sit still for a moment and you will too. I want you to be very quiet. Quiet as a mouse. Still your breathing. Don't fidget. Concentrate for just a moment or two on the sensation of your feet resting in their shoes against the floor. And now listen; listen carefully. Do you notice it? I notice it. It is a beautiful sound, isn't it? It is the sound of the absence of drama.
I miss certain things about G+ and the OSR 'scene' (which I suppose moved to Discords and Twitter and other venues in the aftermath of G+'s demise). But what I don't miss are all the fevered egos who there congregated in order to taint our collective subconscious. You probably know who they are if you were active on G+ in those days too; there is by no means just one name on the list. Well, now I don't have to know who they are anymore, and I can live my life safe in the knowledge that their existence is a blissful irrelevance. And in this respect I am very glad that G+ died.
Some of you will have seen the latest resurfacing of Old G+ OSR Scene Drama round and about the internet. Some of you will not. If you do not know what I am talking about, be glad. If you do, be sorrowful, but rejoice in the fact that you are also 'out of the game' - that you are as a Burkean cow, contentedly chewing the cud, paying no heed to the 'little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour'.
We have a poor philosophical understanding of the demoralising effect of having to know about, and to be confronted by, the psychodramas of people who live unsatisfactory lives and write incontinently about those dramas on the internet. But we all know about that effect at gut level. It gets you down. Life is a hundred times better without it. Let us all then take a moment to toast the passing of that era in the OSR's development, and look to the future with an air of greater optimism and calm.
Me, I'm glad ASMODEUS is no longer a big thing around here. It was terrible when ASMODEUS would show up on a whim and do ASMODEUS stuff. Now there's no more ASMODEUS around and we can enjoy an ASMODEUS-free lifestyle. Oh, and same goes for HASTUR, HASTUR's fans, and the whole HASTUR vs. ASMODEUS issue.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Belial, Beelzebub and Moloch.
Deleteon general principle, I want to say 'amen'. I've grown to rather like "osr blogging 2.0" and its decentralised 'many islands' web of engagement.
ReplyDeleteIronic perhaps given how I've just hours before your post done my part in rustling up the 'scene' with my own blog post. My penance for having entangled myself in the first place.
OSR blogging 2.0 is a good one.
DeleteI've had my share of online drama and definitely do not miss it. I never really knew what the point was for G+
ReplyDeleteIt had its uses. The big one, and the thing that I do miss, is that it made it very easy and quick to organise online D&D campaigns with whoever in the world might be interested.
DeleteEloquently said.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteIf you have an Android phone and long press on the home screen, you can get into some user settings that disables the news feed that I would otherwise sometimes accidentally swipe to. I pay $15 a month for a seedbox in eastern europe, torrent all media, and never see ads or commercials. I do pay for YT also for the same privilege. I used to be a part of some online forums which kept me informed of worldly events, but I have quit those also. In life too, there are people who bring you down; I do like some of them in their own way, so I mediate how often and when I interact with them. All good things.
ReplyDeleteSocial media is completely unnecessary - it is almost all downside and very little upside. I quit all of it years ago and have never, ever regretted doing so.
DeleteThe vast majority of my "online D&D time" is spent on dragonsfoot and on Finarvyn's OD&D message boards. I utterly, thoroughly do not understand the attraction of the various online formats that have come after message boards. Take dragonsfoot, or instance: I can easily search over 20 years of posts therein, including an astounding number of insightful and learned posts. But those other formats? It seems that things just disappear on them, and all that really exists is whatever is the latest thing being discussed (which itself will disappear in a matter of days).
ReplyDeleteYes, this is one of the things I worry about - the way people have become used to ephemerality.
DeleteAfter a time there is something unsatisfactory even about laughing at said drama. I am glad I have chosen to mostly channel my destructive impulses into wholesome productive outlets (the spillage I ask you all to take for granted) which has rekindled entire my love of the game.
ReplyDeleteThe edifice you have been a part of has now mostly been occluded and will not be remembered fondly. But your monuments endure, and by right they should, and men play your games with delight. Rejoice for you are free.
Exactly. Even laughing about it is an emotional response, which draws something (unjustifiably) out of you. Better just not to know.
DeleteIt has to do with a way of war.
DeleteThe current meta is hinged around gas-lighting, changing the meaning of words, manipulation, blatant and axiomatic dishonesty etc. The countermeasure is that you must learn to bypass your empathy, to read through the smoke and discern the vector, the underlying motivation of evil. You are no longer conversing and there is no human connection. Any moral consistency becomes just another weapon to be used against you. If you wish to proceed you construct elaborate architecture of categorization, contortion and rationale. A category of the Other, a being with an internal state that does not correspond to any sort of external reality but is solely predicated on word manipulation with the goal of gaining worldly power. A human chinese room. A meat robot.
Once this architecture is in place, and you understand the principles of moral camouflage, you are now more or less immune. But can you contain it? Switch it off?
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ReplyDeleteI do miss the freewheeling discussion of ideas on G+, but even as carefully as I curated my feed, I did get glimpses of the toxic cults of personality emerging in some quarters of the OSR, and I wonder what would have become of the G+ OSR scene had the platform remained. It's possible the whole mess might have collapsed under its own weight, but it's equally likely in my mind that it would have fragmented into two factions, one supporting a churning vortex of backstabbing drama and another, a peaceful shire comprising those who just want to play our elf-games and talk about how we best enjoy them. Alas, the world will never know what might have been. Perhaps blogs are no longer on the cutting edge of the gaming scene, but in being a bit antiquated in our adherence to that format, I feel we've attained our peaceful shire, and I'm cool with that.
ReplyDeleteI think you're probably right about blogs being antiquated - but Substack could be a game-changer. I am thinking of ways to experiment with that.
DeleteI saw this post and one on "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse" and realized, in that glorious moment, that I was out of it entirely. I never participated in such, but was still a victim to it all in the past, enough so that I stopped even bothering to check in on most forums and I delisted plenty of specific blogs from my feed (and G+ before it croaked) so I feel delightfully successful in my personal extrication efforts.
ReplyDeleteRecommended reading:
ReplyDeletehttps://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
The simple pleasure of having a RSS feed, or simply bookmarking nice blogs, is an underestimated balm. As Prince said, laughing at the drama turns you part of it too
Wow, that geeks, mops, and sociopaths blog post just blew my fucking mind!
DeleteWell said (both).
DeleteHow fitting, given you are one of these sociopaths Venger.
DeleteAre you asking if a regime loves the sound of its own voice?
ReplyDelete