Just a quick comment regarding the infusion of Internet "drama" into the 40k community...
If you're a sad geek like myself, you often find yourself trolling different blogs and message boards that cater to our favorite GW hobby. As you scan the web, you'll find that some of those sites take it upon themselves to create controversy in order to stoke nerdrage in the GW community (e.g. Blood of Kittens); and some of those sites take it upon themselves to tell you why your army list is terrible and why you should really be playing their way (e.g. Yes, The Truth Hurts). If you haven't figured it out, many of these sites, like Kittens, feature a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek attitude about the whole thing. And some of the sites leave the irony at home and simply play their 'jerk' role to the hilt -- while probably not actually being jerks in reality. For the most part, these guys are simply playing the Internet personality game. They're usually just playing around, but doing so with the purpose of creating 'buzz' in the community. The approach, it would seem, is that any buzz is a good thing because it keeps people talking, and it keeps people playing the game as they get wrapped up in the Internet drama.
While I understand the desire to keep the community active and to give our small community something to talk about, is this really good for the hobby?
I think it's a bad idea. While I still follow these sites on and off, I would be lying to you if I wasn't disappointed when I stumble across a particularly acidic post. Jerry Springer is fun to watch every once in a while too, but is that show really good for society either? Nope, I don't think it's good for us either.
The problem I have with these kinds of 40k sites is the same problem I have with our current political climate in the United States. In a society that is increasingly controlled by fewer and fewer individuals (in the simplest terms possible: constant business mergers mean that more people are employed by the fewer number of people, and we all have fewer choices where we buy things and what we buy), we, as individuals, have an increasingly smaller say in how things are run. Think about it, the fewer people there are in charge, the fewer opinions and approaches to solving problems there are going to be. That means we don't have as many choices when it comes to backing our horse in the great race of life. We are forced to compromise our core ideals in order to 'fit' one of those horses, and because there are fewer choices, each choice will have a greater number of overall supporters.
Do the theoretical (and necessarily convenient) math: if you've got three leaders and a hundred followers, there's a decent chance that your going to see a 1/3 share of the population for each of those leaders. And while you may have 66 people that won't agree with you all the time, you're probably going to find 33 of them leaning your way some times. Real compromise can occur because the positions do not have to be stark opposites, and gaining favor with 33 of those 66 people is not only possible, it is important.
In the United States, we often get 2 choices... and that's it. That creates vehement polar opposites, and the lack of choices mean that we all have to compromise our core ideals to the most extreme extent possible in order to back one of the two horses available. That kind of makes us mad, and it also means that when we find something we really do agree with, we back it pretty fiercely. And because we do want to feel as though the positions we have are being heard, we often 'tune in' to things that agree with those positions. Media giants and political pundits understand this, and thus they created 'entertainment' venues under the guise of real news in order to cater to what people want to hear: MSNBC, FOX News, etc. We, as people that want to be heard, may not always agree with everything that is said on those fake news outlets, but we like to hear things that make us 'right.' We like to hear evidence that our position is not crazy, and that of the two choices available, we are not backing the wrong horse. And unfortunately, this often means we will believe all kinds of stupid and crazy accusations that have no basis in reality in order to feel as though, at the deepest level, we did not choose poorly.
This is not a good thing. This is not a positive aspect of our society. It demonstrates how willing we are to let a handful of people blow just enough sunshine up our asses so that we will believe some of their more far fetched claims for no better reason than because we think they somehow represent our interests. As Voltaire put it: "Those who can convince us to believe absurdities can convince us to commit atrocities." We, as a greater society, allow ourselves to fall prey to this nonsense... and yet we still have the audacity to put our hands on our hips when looking back in history and say: "Gee, I can't believe people were stupid and cruel enough to follow Hitler." Folks, every time you sit down and watch one of these crappy networks for fifteen minutes and you don't call everything they tell you into question, you're one goose step closer to that same fascist mentality.
Sadly, I honestly think that the 40k Nerdrage sites are really feeding into that same weakness of the human condition. Yeah, it's tongue-in-cheek or there is simply a 'bad guy' role being played, but so what? Jon Stewart says in nearly every episode of the Daily Show: 'Hey folks, this is a comedy show - not the real news.' And yet, how many people rely on the Daily Show to be their political voice? It doesn't matter that the 40k Nerdrage sites are often trying to be funny. It doesn't matter that they are just playing a role for the purpose of creating buzz. The fact of the matter is that they are not being truthful. They are taking approaches that build camps. And sheep will segregate themselves into by the nature of society in general.
What is wrong with taking a positive approach to the same questions and problems posed by these sites? Why do they have to feed the hate? What part of our humanity are we sacrificing for the sake of sensationalism and popularity? In my opinion, any sacrifice of humanity we have to make in order to speak those messages is a betrayal of the fans of those sites. The sensationalism is not a positive influence; the buzz does not do us any favors. Anything that divides our community, especially when it is manufactured for the sole purpose of doing so, is bad for an already tiny community. And it's bad for us as people. The polarization of our actual lives and our political views is already a crime that has been perpetrated by a notorious few for the sole purpose of gaining money and influence. There is no need to replicate those crimes in our hobby. Hobby should be an escape from that bullshit, not an untapped venue to feed an already unending flow of unnecessary hate.
And that's all I've got say about that... for the moment.
