I am completely done with the local gaming community. It's taken a while to get to the point but I now I'm all the way there. Now I've been fading out of the community for a few years now, but at first it was mainly due to lack of time to be involved in anything. Being a single parent taking care of two kids will do that to you. But then last year it started changing.
The fucking US election and the clusterfuck it was is the reason. I was friends on facebook with a lot of the local gamers. Boy was that a mistake. It didn't take long for them to start showing their political colors and their very unsavory beliefs to make me stand back and say fuck all that.
Now I know people are always saying you don't have to talk about politics, a lot of the time it never comes up, etc. But the problem it did come up. They spoke some of their deepest shittiest opinions online and several of the others agreed with them. People I had been friends with for years were coming out and saying all liberals should be rounded up and shot/deported/locked into mental wards/etc... and I'm a liberal. Why the ever living fuck would I want to set at the same table with somebody who wishes this kind of shit on me, much less engage in a friendly social activity with them. Got see people supporting the idea of genocide against gay people simply because they wanted equal rights. Many passed around a meme calling for them to be put into concentration camps.
This went on for months. I started unfriending a lot of people, probably dumped around thirty in one day. Family members, friends I've had for decades, you name it I just dumped their asses off my list. Didn't want to see what they said anymore and I never really want to anymore.
It continues to this day. Many of them Trumpstains who think that admitted sex offender/liar/corrupt business man (all of these are proven FACTS) can do no wrong. Who cheer at the idea of millions being thrown off of health care, who cheer at the idea that my son has a pre existing condition that would make in hard for me to get insurance for him in the private sector. They call for forced patriotism or be shot/deported/beaten.
To many in the local community have shown their colors. To many of them have shown what they really are on the inside. I'm done with the lot of them.
I'm in a similar boat... the city I'm in is all guns and flags and bible-thumping self righteously judgemental. My only live games are with folks from beyond the opposite side of the political spectrum... and a number of my non-gaming friends are as well.
ReplyDeleteI've continued to tell myself that nothing good will come of just breaking off with them... but we really can't talk about it rationally either (emotions flare up quickly when we try... mostly theirs).
Most of the gaming I do nowadays is online, but there's something to be said for living in your neighborhood... which might be why we've all drifted so far apart, because it's sooooo easy to find your personal brand of crazy online, rather than work it out with the people you actually live with/around/next door to.