I only attended two SCA events and both times someone loaned me “beggar clothes”. Which was largely what is sounded like: nondescript pants and tunic, one size fits nearly all. But even that required me to actually know someone well enough to make the offer to me. Agreed about all your points, even the costume one.
May I play Devil’s Advocate for a moment?
Seriously, though, I worked in an arcade during my grad school years (this was early 1980s) and I occasionally saw African Americans playing pinball—not many, but I never perceived pinball as a “white” pastime. However, this was in a college town (the arcade was literally across the street from campus) so perhaps that skews the demographics a bit.
I myself did not call them losers to begin with, this term was brought up by Jophiel to begin with and I used it to respond to his post. I gave a description of a circumstance without personal judgement of that circumstance just as one can describe someone who is overweight as fat, or just descriptively as obese. If you feel that saying someone is of low social status, not successful is synonymous with being a loser then that is a judgment you are adding to what I am describing. Probably I could have been clearer, but this is a message board where people say things, tease out ideas and add clarification.
I also am somewhat confused as to why you chose to respond to my post, singling it out for offensiveness when Incubus said that one of the factors is that they are racist, sexist outcasts - but they don’t really realize it; as if that makes it Ok. But I mean no disrespect in saying this, I really just feel that we are so far apart in our views on things that there is not much middle ground within which we can meet.
Mr. Nylock, here is a pro-tip for you from a long-time poster. Excessive defensiveness and general whinyness will not get you anywhere around here. People will never respect you for it. You can stand up for yourself if you think you have been disparaged but you have to let in go in just a post or two and hopefully in a snarky or strictly factual way. I personally don’t care why you think people are attacking you (and I don’t think that is true at all in your case).
All I know is that you are screwing up the way that threads flow in ways that make them more difficult to read and that hurts everyone. You aren’t aren’t on trial and this isn’t your chance to take a grand stand against the powers that be. We have all kinds of world-class people here along with the worst of the screw-ups. We take them equally as long as they don’t have a persecution complex.
Take my criticism seriously. It will make your life much easier. I promise.
growing up we had pinball machines at the local bar and bowling alley. I remember playing them all night long when we went out for supper to the bar or had a night of fun at the bowling alley. I grew up in a white neighborhood.
Bolding mine. I was speculating on why so many ‘nerdy’ hobbies are full of white guys. We’ve also had this discussion on ‘fake geek girls’ as well- that in some hobbies there is a certain posessiveness to having the hobby fall within a group. Its not limited to geeky hobbies; I’m sure every group, culture, subculture, etc has something they feel is ‘their’ thing and get a little tribal about it.
A lot of times what they are doing is something they themselves don’t even consider racism. But when you look behind the point of view of a person of color, things can end up being not as benign as they might originally seem.
I see what you are saying and it makes sense to me as a general rule, but I think you are seeing the situation from a different perspective, and I do not think your analysis fits this particular situation very well.
In general, the functions of this board allow for one to take remedies if they are not interested in interacting with certain posters. In this case, that option is not available, so I asked the poster nicely to not engage in such a manner, and explained my reasoning. and I did let it go in 2 posts. I do not agree that this interrupts the flow excessively.
I’m not going to say my feelings are right or wrong, but they are what they are and I do not see how expressing them in such a manner is terribly disruptive.
I am fairly certain other people see it differently. Here is an experiment for if you want to try it. Let some things slide for a while and don’t take everything as a personal attack and even if you believe that it is, refrain from responding to it at all even if you think you have to get something off your chest. Give it a month and I can almost promise you that your board experience will be much better for it. That is just a personal tip. I am not a moderator and don’t have any personal opinions about you at all except what I see in this thread. What I see is someone working hard to make things difficult for themself more than anyone else. I always try to help someone that is taking on a bad life strategy at least for a little while.
Excellent post. i feel like a sore thumb when I try to hang out in a geeky way too.
My brother had a pinball machine in his bedroom back when we were kids/teenagers. I don’t know where the hell he got it or how he even got it into his room. That boy was always into something! Then one day it disappeared. Maybe our mother made him get rid of it. I don’t know.
Pinball is certainly very retro-nostalgic as a hobby, so it would large be limited to those who played it in their youth. Pinball was about a cheap as past-time as there was back in the day, so that wouldn’t preclude poor city kids from playing pinball. However, it certainly would take a lot of money to be a pinball enthusiast to the point of going to conventions, buying machines, having space for machines, and so on.
What people haven’t brought up in this thread is that pinball was banned for many years and in many big cities in the US as anti-gambling, anti-mafia measure or anti-juvenile delinquency measures. Mayor Laguardia of NYC used to smash pinball machines with a sledgehammer and the NYPD used to conduct pinball raids. Pinball was banned in New York City until the mid-70s, and other cities such as LA and Chicago also had long-standing bans. Cities that didn’t ban pinball outright often banned minors from playing pinball. By the time pinball became legal in many places, it had already been surpassed by video games. It’s not surprising that middle-aged white guys from the suburbs are the core of the modern pinball hobby, as they were the ones who got to actually play pinball in their youth.
I LOL’d!