This may be true if referring to what are called "hardcore gamers"
Allo, I saw my name mentioned a couple times, which is like, "heeyyy, they know me!"
Oh, to speak to what I quoted above, yeah, I think it is pretty safe to say at least with what I said that I was hereby using gamers to reference what others might call "hardcore gamers". I do not recognize the mobile/facebook population as gamers in that precise sense. Not out of some sense of gate-keeping, but purely because the difference seems obvious to me. If I were in a cited "dancing with guy scenario" and the guy asked my hobbies and I said "gaming" and he said "oh me too, I love candy crush, pokemon go, and temple run", he might be a very nice and lovely, non-weird-totally-normal person, but he certainly isn't vibing with me. It's not a snob thing, so much as just recognizing we're different species. In general, most of the studies I've looked at, will say women are equal, if mobile gaming is included. If we're talking about hardcore gaming, which it seems games like "Zelda" would fall into (at least in my book. If I were dancing with a person and they said they liked zelda in response to my saying I was a gamer, I'd think we at least worked in the same department.) then it is a predominantly male field.
but everybody plays and is around video games these days, even if only mobile games.
I basically addressed this up here, but I don't see mobile gamers as gamers in the sense that is useful or speaks to me. And I don't think the girl who asked this question would feel assured by the idea that all her friends are playing farmville and pokemon go while she's playing Zelda, because she would likely recognize the difference between "hardcore" and "mobile" gamers. If all your girlfriends normally play a mobile game, and you play Zelda, I don't see that helping you sleep at night if you're already concerned with your normality.
The view you and Misty are referring to is hardly representative.
It's representative of...a view? Which is what the thread asked for? I mean, I know, since you already basically said so, that you think I'm a faux-intellectual with deep emotional problems (which like, yeah, ya know, ya got me, that's pretty true), but when I answered the question, it wasn't out of that or a need to look smart or a lack of social understanding, it was out of a potentially misplaced, or poorly articulated attempt to express my view.
Which to quickly boil it down would be: "No, it is not normal for girls to be gamers who play games like Zelda." My answer was based off of all the statistics, personal experience, and understanding of what "normal" means. And if I had to say what I hoped the girl reading would take from this by the context of me being a very clear, female gamer, is that it is better to not care about this sort of thing, but it isn't acceptable to lie to yourself or get a bunch of people on a (ZELDA FORUM) to yes-man you so that you feel better.
I just find it a bit obnoxious when people make a stance of constantly correcting people on it so smugly and self-assuredly
I apologize for you finding me and my good friend obnoxious when I attempted to express what I see as a true, positive, and honest message that was potentially not stated in a way that carried that because I assumed it would be obvious based on my own "female gamerness".
for what I can only assume to be for the purpose of stroking their own egos,
Right, and like, I totally understand you think that, but like...here is another way to imagine Deus and I more complexly. (Keep in mind, it will be less fun and significantly lower the opportunity for self-righteousness than the way you currently have us pegged.)
We're just people, people on the internet. People behind a screen. People who have been gamers our entire lives so far and lived what that means. We've been lame or cool depending on who we were talking to. We grew up in an era and generation where being gamers at all, no matter gender, was pretty weird. It was the sorta thing assailed on the news constantly, related to being in a basement cheeto eater, awful, or somehow connected with school shootings and Marilyn Manson.
I cannot speak for Deus, maybe he came up really cool and all. But I will tell you from my point of view, as the daughter of a guy who owned a comic and gaming store, besides my mother, and the daughter of a guy who ran our magic tourneys, I was the only girl in that place from dawn until dusk for nineteen years. And I admit, among all those guy nerds, I was seen as pretty cool and swell. But among the rest of the world, I hardly met any women who shared my interests. And the girls I did hang with despite that, treated it like the herpes they'd accepted I had. Even in Uni, I didn't meet a lot of people who shared my interests, guy or girl, but if I did, they were guys. And the same has largely been true online.
And that sort of life, we're you know you're not normal or cool, or whatever way you wanna define that social phenomena, it has a shaping force. The best one possible, is that you decide you don't care and you just be you, because the other option is to be this horrible quivering mass who doesn't want to give up their passions but constantly strives to please a world that doesn't really like the thing you like.
And so every time I meet a girl or guy who games or is nerdy in some specific way and they're like "hey, Misty, is this thing I do "normal", I tell them no and that's ok, but not to even measure themselves near normal, because doing that only hurts, it's only a lie, it's allowing others to define something. And yeah, I probably say it in a somewhat caustic way, a mixture of answering a question a lot, finding the question dangerous, and not really being an outwardly "sweet" person.
But ya know what for all my egomanical flaws and cruelty, I did make an attempt to speak a truth, to free another human from chains that could easily bind them, and to offer them something I'd learned in my own life.
And I'll admit, I felt constrained, because a lot of the people here and around me have this very like...well a "**** you" attitude towards the world. It's the whole "revenge of the nerds" and "now I'm the one that's cool" thing that you can find underlying this "just be you" message. And like, yeah, on some level, it's pretty ****ty to have people judging and not liking you for a hobby or passion that isn't mainstream...but something about the whole "**** you revenge of the nerds" approach leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Because in some fundamental way, you allowed the people around you to form who you are. You aren't just a nerd or gamer, you're like a "**** you" nerd or gamer. And that's as much of a victory for the world to have made you a bitter, harsh, and self-consciously throwing them away sort of person.
It wasn't for my own ego, it was because I cannot imagine what it'd be like to live as a female gamer, caring what others thought in any direction, in a world that scorns gamers, and is particularly harsh in various subtle and strange ways to the females and males who game and I wouldn't want anyone else to have to live that. The only way out I see from this without letting them form you, is to accept you're abnormal and not really feel one way or another about it. Just let it stand as fact to yourself and others.
One of the first steps in that "right direction" (my perception), is being able to read on an internet forum of people like you some other gamer girl telling you the unvarnished truth, unfriendly, and sometimes difficult to swallow truth.
especially since the two main people I'm referencing here have a well-documented history of this across the forum.
Oh boy, I hope you're still talking about me. I'd love to have a well-documented history. That'd just make my little ego that I stroke daily explode.
Again, I could always be wrong, but I don't really think I am.
I'm glad for you. It is a very nice feeling to hold a truth in your hand and mostly know it to be true.
Considering who I'm talking to and referencing, I think the accusation of condescension is pretty hypocritical as well.
Hey, now, I never called you condescending, I said you had a certain limitation with your ability to imagine why people say things complexly. But I don't think it is possible to be condescending when you're almost certainly a better person than Deus and I. It'd be like calling Jesus condescending...is it condescending if you created the universe?
