Friday Night Shots – Never-Ending Arguments

Welcome to Friday night!

It’s the weekend, hopefully you’ve got something good planned.

Pull up a chair, and let’s talk about some stuff.

So, what is a wargame?

No, no no, don’t worry your pretty heart about that.

I’m not actually asking you that question.

I don’t want this post to become a huge argument between the Kirks and the McCoys.

(sorry for that reference to my international readers who probably won’t get it)

No, I just wanted to use that as an example of what I’m going to talk about.

Why do people constantly go to places like Boardgame Geek, or even Twitter, and poke the bear with these questions or comments that are never going to be fully agreed upon, yet everybody gets up in arms about?

Granted, “what is a wargame” isn’t usually posted out of the blue.

Instead, it’s used when somebody wants to denigrate somebody else’s opinion about a game.

“Root is my favourite wargame of all-time.”

“What are you, an idiot? Root’s not a wargame!”

“Yes it is!”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is!”

(3rd person, 4th person, 5th person, 85th person gets involved and suddenly we have a 100-page thread that’s full of posts removed by the BGG moderator)

I see threads like this and I sit back and marvel.

Why are people wasting their time with this argument?

Why can’t we all get along?

How about this one?

Did you know that I just discovered that this 10-year old game, Viticulture, purports to be about making wine…yet you can win without making any wine?

I think I will go post on the Viticulture forum complaining about this!

Why should I bother looking through the forum to see if I’m the first person to notice this?

I’m sure I am.

Suddenly we have a 200-page thread full of people agreeing with the initial complaint, people disagreeing, people saying “it’s not a wine-making game, it’s about running a vineyard, so you’re just a dipshit for not recognizing that” and that one person who just seems to like eating grapes and wishes they could go back to talking about grapes (but for some reason keeps reading the thread).

It all just kind of boggles my mind.

Here’s another one.

Dune: Imperium is a terrible deckbuilding game because it doesn’t have many ways to get rid of cards from your deck or wipe the market row (though it does now with the latest expansion).

I just discovered this as well and I refuse to actually look at the forum for earlier threads about this.

I’m sure I’m the first person to notice this!

Why are we addicted to internet arguments?

And it’s not just Boardgame Geek, so don’t think I’m denigrating just those denizens.

It’s on Twitter, it’s on almost any Internet forum that has any kind of traffic.

Is it the anonymity of the Internet? (that’s my opinion)

I know that people don’t react the same way in person as they would on the Internet, so they definitely wouldn’t get so vehement.

But would they still happen at all if we were all in person?

What makes this all worse is that each of these questions/comments seems to have a few people who just live for this argument, waiting for the next person to bring it up so they can give their Loonie’s worth of opinion, even though they’ve done it in countless threads before.

Why can’t we just leave well enough alone?

Or back out of the argument if it starts getting too heated?

Especially about stupid stuff like this?

Sure, stay involved if it’s a big societal debate or whatever. Though even those usually end up being pointless because nobody’s mind is going to be changed (but occasionally it does happen, I guess).

But “that’s not a wargame?”

Is that worth all the vitriol?

All the electronic ink being wasted?

Occasionally these threads can get entertaining for a little while, but I usually stop reading after page 5 or page 6, and I never take part in them.

I’m not an argumentative soul anyway, but even if I was, I wouldn’t add to these.

They’re just stupid.

I know part of it is the Internet.

Way back in 1991, when I was in college (yes, I’m old), I was on Prodigy (remember that, you oldsters?) and on a Star Trek: The Next Generation forum.

There was this one guy who did nothing but bad mouth the show, saying how the Original Series was superior and this new show was trash.

I don’t remember how much I got involved in this, responding to him, but I know I did more than I would now.

He really seemed like an Internet asshole, even maybe a troll (at least trollish in the sense that he liked aggravating TNG fans).

Anyway, I found out that he lived in Iowa (I was at Iowa State University) and I messaged him and asked him if he wanted to grab a drink or shoot some pool the next time I was home (he lived a relatively short drive from my home town).

He agreed, and we met up at a pool hall. We played some pool, had a few beers, and just chatted.

He turned out to be a super nice guy, and he even admitted to liking a few episodes of the new series (though he still overall hated it).

I was new to this Internet thing, so seeing such a difference between online and in-person was a real eye-opener to me.

Now when I see arguments like this, I stop and wonder: what is this person really like?

Sure, they may be an asshole in person too.

But maybe not.

(though I do think being trollish is still being an asshole, even if you are “nice” in person, and you shouldn’t do it).

As with most Friday Night Shots, this is just me going off on a topic. I don’t really have a solution to propose.

Other than one.

Yep, that’s what we all need in this world.

I wish more people lived that.

(This post brought to you by Canadian Club, the number 69, and the letter “ä”)