The Line Is Not Thin

(Category A)
Here are some things that are important:

-War
-Death
-Imprisonment of the innocent
-Fair wages and living conditions
-Racism
-Sexism
-How you treat people you talk to
-How you treat customers who give you money
-Doing what you said you'd do

(Category B)
Here are somethings that aren't important:

-The state of the D&D game played by someone you'll never meet
-Whether something written for free and given to you free on the internet is written the way you want it to be
-Whether some picture drawn for free and given to you free on the internet is drawn the way you want it to be
-Whether 4000 people you'll never meet write, draw, or play in a way that is or isn't up to your standards

I draw this distinction because I would like to make what I think should be, but apparently isn't, a very obvious point:

If you make a personal remark ("fuckhead", "dipshit", "immature", "ignorant" et fucking cetera) about someone because of their attitude about something in Category A, you may well be justified. Antonin Scalia is a fuckhead and also a dipshit and very possibly very ignorant. Or, at the very least, the issues over which he presides are important enough to life on earth that my rage and--more importantly--my time may be worth spending to point it out.

If, on the other hand, you make a personal remark about someone because of something in category B, then you are this man:You are this man:You are these men:That is: you are That Guy. You are The Pathetic Mother's-Basement Masturbator With The Tiny Penis that people who do not play pen-and-paper assume are the only people who play RPGs. You are all the bad things about the stereotype. You are the fearful and unfortunate genetic accident. You are the only thing truly bad about this hobby.You are the reason there are no girls at the convention. Do not mock the lonely Star Trek fanfic writer in a post as long as the fanfic. He will not stop, and if you write that post, he is you.

And why is that?

Not because, at your top-dollar-best and most effective the best you could even potentially do by bitching at people who already play RPGs about a given person who already plays RPGs is exacerbate the only thing RPGs have which even begins to approach a real and important Category A problem and the only one we can't just rules-hack our way around (that is: not enough players).

Not because at least the Star Trek fanfic guy was trying to make himself (and probably someone else's) life better whereas you were just hoping to...nothing. Your complaining about him had no purpose. You just couldn't contain your special little emotions.

Not because really mostly what happens when you rag on someone is you bring attention to them and they inevitably get more blog followers or whatever and so your whole project is just automatically self-defeating.

Not because this here blog (for reasons even I know are totally unfair) will always be more popular than yours and so you can merely stand helpless before my vast powers. If you draw my attention to a blog you don't like, I can magically give it more followers with a wave of my hand, thus pushing you beyond irrelevant and into anti-relevance. You become less than zero. Your attempt to hurt them makes them stronger. Watch as I link to a hardworking blogger who got trolled by some dick and watch him get more followers.

Not because, if you are doing this because you are trying to be funny, you will never be funnier than Joesky, or if you could only manage to turn that humor toward something other than a harmless, defenseless nanotarget you might actually be able to use that humor to your advantage in the real world rather than in impotent (in every sense of the word) nerdrage.

Not because the only difference between you and the worst kind of people is just one of scale (unlike you, they are not so timid as to pick only on select targets who can't fight back) and the fact that they actually manage to get shit done about the things they're disproportionately panty-bunched about.

No, the reason you are a magnificently pathetic example of a human is because while all the rest of us were spending our limited lives eating Italian food or watching movies or writing movies or playing minigolf or sailing or talking to drunks or fingerfucking sluts or reading books or learning new things about math or having fun, or at least trying, or doing things we needed to do like fixing wiring, or even, perhaps--on some days--addressing ourselves to truly important Category A stuff, you were going out of your way to read irrelevant things you did not like and then type about them.

This is your hobby. This is how you chose to fill the hollow hours. You couldn't think of anything better to do than to complain about someone whose downfall--even if it were possible that you could cause it--will achieve nothing. Each word you type about some poor sap who happened to catch your attention is, in actuality, one more brick in the temple you're building to your own lack of creativity. Whatever it is that makes your life dull, it is not the fault of someone somewhere on Blogger or Wordpress--it may not even be your fault--but you could be doing something better to dig yourself out of it than whaling on them. You may have someone else to blame than yourself for having empty hours full of nothing, but you will never be able to say you tried your best to do better.

When you are typing, remember this, small troll: This is your basement. You are building it. Letter by letter. tap tap -click-


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Joesky's Rule:

Trolls: What actually sets trolls apart from ogres and the like is not just regeneration but the fact that, due to their part-goblin nature, they are always bound by transactional magics. If this then that, etc. It's one reason they're so often found under bridges. Each troll's contract or curse is unique to that troll.

Some examples in the form of a d4 table:

1-For each hit point regenerated the troll must take one from a living creature.
2-The bridge they guard crosses an ancient fey-boundary. For each creature who passes the troll is responsible to the Fairy Queen for his or her safety in the Midsummer Land. So it's easier just to kill them before they get there
3-This troll's enemy is of humor. Making a joke about a troll which everyone at the table thinks is funny destroys its ability to regenerate.
4-This small bridge troll can only attack those taller than it (thus the bridge). Crawling past (or being a halfling) makes a foe immune to attack.