You Are All Deranged

Us geeks are a weird lot, and perhaps this helps explain some of it: Five Geek Social Fallacies

I can definitely see aspects of what he describes occuring in places like EverQuest. The whole notion of a guild in these games is an artificial construct put together by people rife with these sorts of problems, so it’s not surprising to see them occur within the guild as well.

Within any guild of reasonable size, there are going to be people that many others just can’t stand because they’re jerks, cheaters, abusive, inept, etc. Maybe they were a friend of the guildleader, or they changed over time, or they had a sufficiently large little clique of their own, or they put on a friendly facade for a while, or whatever, but somehow they got in and now the guild is stuck with them.

Since openly identifying and separating these people would cause immediate tension within the guild, those people are often let along on guild events anyway and members are told they should just shut up and deal with it. (GSF1) Of course the bad blood never goes away; people just gripe about it privately instead. Hidden tensions continue to build until trivial little incidents blow up into major conflicts.

Whenever a new person joins the guild, everyone else is often expected to get along with him, even if they did not previously know each other (not everyone gets the chance to know the applicants well during the recruitment process). (GSF4) If you don’t get along with the new person, it’s often taken personally by other friends of the new person, or you might be accused of not being supportive of the guild.

Within the guild, people form little cliques of their own. Abner, Bob, Caroline, and Doug might all be in the same guild, but I might play far more often with Abner and Caroline than I do with Bob or Doug. They usually form naturally based on how well people get along, what times they’re available, etc., but they’re still often looked down upon. “We’re all in the same guild, you shouldn’t be leaving anyone out, you’re hurting their feelings by not playing with them as much…” (GSF5)

Everyone in a guild has their own particular needs they want satisfied, but some people try and use their friendship/guildship as a lever to goad people into satisfying their own needs first. “If you guys really liked me you’d come help me get the Belt of Purity from the Ogre King… :-(” (GSF3) Or, in a variant, your personal needs are dismissed as being irrelevant in favour of the ‘needs of the guild’ as a whole.

And although this isn’t really guild-specific, GSF2 is common. Some people behave in absolutely horrible ways, but with a large pool of potential friends, many of whom suffer from the same problems, there is no incentive for them to listen or change. If you try and criticize them in any way they just respond that their friends seem to think that this person is just fine, and if the criticism comes from one of their own friends, it’s easy enough to drop that friend and find another one that will ‘accept them for who they are.’ [I’m sure I’m abusing plural forms horribly here…]

None of this is new or all that surprising, but it’s interesting to see that it can be broken down in terms of something that affects pretty much all geekish communities.

We are indeed deranged.