My time in High School was pretty cool. While I wasn’t captain of the football team or valedictorian I had good times; girlfriends, burger job, class council, Jazz choir, rock concerts, football games, prom, partying, joking and toking. And through it all I was a gamer.
I never thought I was a D&D character, I never worshiped demons, I never had suicidal thoughts, I never looked to a game to solve my typical teenage problems.
But shit like this made being a teenage gamer a lot fucking harder than it had to be.
Thank God my mom was intelligent enough to see through all the hype and hysteria that was fueled by her friends, co-workers, and dumb ass talk show hosts.
Thanks to The Geek Orthodoxy Blog, which brought this to my attention.
Blogging strong there Reis!
Fortunately for me my mom wasn't much of a reader. She wouldn't have liked what I was reading, but she didn't know much about it.
ReplyDeleteShades of Wertham!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the props, Evil DM!
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky in that my parents were at least somewhat smarter than that. They warned me about the things they had heard in regard to D&D suicide. They basically said that, as long as I didn't let the game overshadow the rest of my life I was ok playing. Glad they were so open minded about it.
ReplyDeletePosted just today about one of the peeps behind the perpetuation of this crap...guess you'll have to come over and check it out!
ReplyDeleteTotally agree, as a whole, I'd say gamers are a lot better adjusted than folks who can't stop thinking about going to hell eh?
I know precisely where you're coming from.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little my grandpa gave me a brochure and a scolding to never play D&D, because I would be "possessed by a demon".
I actually argued it for a while, trying to point out the sweet irony. He was saying that in reality I would be, literally, possessed by a demon, on account of not being grounded by reality.
I made the mistake of actually laughing. I think I said something like "Are we still on Earth? Do the laws of physics still exist? Possessed by a demon? Really?"
Yeah. Goofy, ignorant knuckleheads sure made it tougher.
The youngest of my two sisters sat me down and talked and talked to the point of tears about how concerned she was that I was going to conjure demons.
ReplyDelete*sigh*
I will never, ever forget this moment.
I was fortunate that my parents never fell for the stupidity or the hype. Of course, they didn't like my playing D&D, but that was because I was neglecting my schoolwork to play a game, not because the game itself was 'dangerous'. (On the other hand, it probably didn't help that I knew Dallas Egbert - whose disappearance started alot of the national hype - from our local Chess Club. Ironically neither of us knew the other played D&D until after he returned home and started playing in a game with one of my former gamers.)
ReplyDeleteAnd we all owe a debt of gratitude to Michael Stackpole for taking on Pat Pulling and many others on the issue of the (lack of a) connection between D&D and Suicide and other issues. http://www.rpgstudies.net/stackpole/pulling_report.html
(For those who are unaware of the facts, it has been estimated that the incidence of suicide among D&D players is lower than that of the population at large. If anything, D&D makes suicide less likely for the simple reason that one of the primary causes of suicide is isolation and depression and having friends tends to reduce feeling of isolation/depression and D&D is a social activity and leads to making friends).
But we all knew that anyway.
Carl