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I find this interesting because the facepaint stuff really doesn't bug me almost at all. I come from San Francisco, where seeing people dressed up freaky isn't weird our unusual at all. (Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are some of my favorite people). However, people in fursuits that cover up their face really make me angry/upset/scared. I think it's because it's a combination of thinking that they're sexually weird, combined with anonymous, that just seems threatening to me. Is there an actual difference between the people who just facepaint and those who use face-obscuring costumes? The former seems much more a "This is me with makeup" and the second "This is not me, I am someone else now", and that bothers me on a philosophical level as well. One of the things I have been most annoyed with from the few furries I've actually had to talk to or listen to was the whining about being oppressed and likening that oppression to that of gays or black people or transvestites or whatever. What percentage of furries really feel like they're expressing an innate part of their nature in a similar way to those other groups (the comparison with black people is always bad, but whatever) and how many recognize it's just a kind of fetish/cosplay thing and not deserving of protection in the same way?
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Jun 10, 2015 18:51
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Vic posted:The part about not judging anyone sounds like something many people would stand behind. I imagine that after the years of therapy there should be acceptance of the fact, instead of sadness and anger. Instead of this series of passive-aggressive posts, why not just ask directly what you want? Sadness and anger are perfectly appropriate emotions to have in response to things to come out of therapy. Therapy isn't Zen.
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Jun 10, 2015 23:52
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Vic posted:I'm not sure if this is passive-aggressive, I'm curious about the emotional impact something like this had on him particularly. I have no idea. You keep sniping at him. Just cut it out and be direct. When he said the bit about not judging people, and you responded with quote:The part about not judging anyone sounds like something many people would stand behind. I imagine that after the years of therapy there should be acceptance of the fact, instead of sadness and anger. You first castigated him for leaving this place of 'not judging'--and of course judging is good. Nazi horsefuckers are bad, and should be judged. So should those people who grope others. Etc--and then imply that he's failed at therapy because he's angry.
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Jun 11, 2015 00:11
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Vic posted:This is not about furries meeting publicly. I'm talking specifically about the act of adults in fursuitsplaying with kids. On the surface this might be innocuous, but kids might be thus susceptible to trusting a big fuzzy wolfdog not triggering the stranger danger alarm. By this standard, anything kids like is actually a perfect tool for an aspiring pedo. So, like, being a soccer coach, running a day care, being a superhero cosplayer or professional superhero actor whatever the hell they're called, volunteering to read stories to kids. All you're doing is stating the tautological fact that access to kids would be useful to a pedo. A fursuit, while maybe being a 'magnet' for kids, gives less access than an actual job working with kids. So what the gently caress is your point? You have a really, really bizarre approach to this thread, or maybe just to conversation in general.
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Jun 11, 2015 15:38
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Vic posted:It's the mask and the fact that you don't have to have any actual job to get kids attracted. Not sure how you got all that from it. I was just elaborating on my previous question, and I think it's a sentiment many people share. If you can't handle criticism of your posting, then put me on ignore or something. You might notice, though, that I'm not the only one who finds your posting bizarre. Try to follow your logic a bit more. Kids, in public, aren't running around unsupervised. Pedos generally don't just grab a kid in public and take them off to a dark room to do poo poo to them. They generally abuse positions of power and trust in order to predate on kids. While I explicitly find the anonymous fursuited people creepy as gently caress, for it to be a 'successful' tactic for a pedophile, they'd have to have kids come up to them and pet them, and then, like, grab them and run away with them without being spotted by someone, and/or slip the kid their contact info or something. Just think through your own scenario and ask if it makes any sense. Not to mention the only time that fursuits are not seen as aberrant and therefore drawing a ton of attention--exactly what you don't want if you're a pedophile--is at conventions and poo poo where kids are really unlikely to be roaming around unsupervised.
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Jun 11, 2015 16:19
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One of the weirder things to me is that you must know you're anthropomorphizing the animals. Wolverines are not clumsy, independent, temperamental, restless and playful-- those are adjectives that we use to compare human beings to other human beings. If you're using them to talk about animals vs. human beings, than wolverines are definitely not clumsy, 'independent' just doesn't make sense because that's far too human an attribute to assign to an animal, they're not temperamental, restless again is far too human a feeling, and playful is directly opposed to 'independent'. So it's not just a distant and imperfect interpretation, it's a knowingly false interpretation, an interpretation of the animal not from an actual understanding of the animal and how it fits into nature and the ecosystem and its real attributes, but only as repurposed and repackaged as some sort of projection of yourself. In a way, it's like a horoscope. One person can say they're into wolves because they're fierce and independent. Another person can say they're into wolves because they're gentle and group-oriented. Another can say they're into wolves because they're smart and social. None of these are real descriptions of the animal, they are all equally valid, but all also totally invalid. To put it another way, despite their attachment to animals, one of the things that bugs me most about furrys is that they fictionalize the animals entirely, while often believing they have some knowledge or connection to the animal that's entirely a projection. When someone says "I'm a lion" or "I identify with a wolf", they're saying something not just inaccurate but really, really false and antithetical to an actual appreciation of the animal. I think this is actually important for the understanding of furries--it's not actually about the animals, except on the most surface, fetishistic level. It's not a bunch of people who all independently got interested in animals and felt this kinship and found each other, it is entirely a human social thing and furries get into it mostly by meeting and being exposed to other furries. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 20:59
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DeliciousPatriotism posted:I firmly disagree with a lot of those points, in particular the idea that an independent entity can't be playful, but I totally get what you're at here. Also if you've ever owned ferrets you would know that restlessness can apply to animals as well: they're either getting their fill of exploration, attention and fun for the day or they start developing depression and behavior problems. No, you're still not getting what I'm saying. "Restless" isn't a natural attribute of the animal, it's what happens to the animal if it's natural state is interrupted. Ferrets in the wild aren't 'restless', they just go about their ferret stuff all day long. It'd be true to say that ferrets have a high energy level or something, but 'restless' is a human emotional state, not applicable to an animal except when you gently caress up that animal's natural state, and then what you're seeing isn't 'restlessness', really, it's just "I'm being prevented from doing what comes naturally to me". Even when you say a 'wolflike thing', it's not. The only part about it that is 'wolflike' is the way it looks, and even then it's a caricature. I'd say, in a way, that furries are into cartoon versions of animals--in both senses of the word--not real versions of them. Though, perhaps the zoophiles are different--i'd like to think the actual animal-fuckers are different than the sad awkward nerd types. But anyway, that's a minor quibble because you got the rest of what I was saying fine. It's not really about the animals, it's the same as the people who talk about being otherkin or psychic vampires or whatever; the point and the reality of it is in the social communion of it, not an actual personal identity. That's part of why furries who claim persecution because it's just like gay people being oppressed, man, are so annoying. quote:Yeah, this. There's no high church of furry dictating the rules, though some (awful) people will say that. It's human social cliques, the animal part is a fun theme ranging from sexless creative outlet to oversexed and unsocialized catastrophe. I think this speaks to why it was, in retrospect, damaging and harmful for the OP, or at least limiting and time-wasting. It's a clique, going by clique rules, and the 'social' skills you learn in the clique don't really transfer over. It's got it's in-group socialization and it's explicitly not about learning to get along in the way non-cliquey social groups do.
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Jun 11, 2015 22:40
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DeliciousPatriotism posted:but as thinking, sentient mammals I think it's much easier (and at times accurate) for us to empathize or relate in functionally general ways with other thinking mammals. Loneliness, happiness, confusion and others are some of those universal feelings we know a lot of living beings share. I think that when you stray away from the most basic of emotions, like the above, into stuff like 'restless' and 'playful', you're anthropomorphizing. A wolf being lonely because there aren't other wolves around is not the same as the nerdy kid being lonely because he doesn't have any friends. They both might share a basic discomfort that they lack a social group, but humans can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, we can be happy and sad at the same time, etc. Given the immense difference in brain structure and other stuff, saying that there are universal 'feelings' doesn't ring at all true to me. I don't think we experience them in the same way animals do, and I don't think animals experience them in the same way as other animals; I think we project that onto them. As to the both helping and harming thing: I think compared to zero socialization, a clique is better, but that's compared to nothing. It is definitely not better than non-clique friendships where you don't have some artificial, exterior thing that bonds you together but actually just like each other despite being different and not having some common ground to cling onto. To me, there is a huge difference between socialization inside a medium--be it being a furry, or being on a sports team, or a magic group, or trainspotters--and socialization where it's just people liking each other with nothing acting to draw them together. One of the harms of cliques is that they necessarily include people who, if you didn't have that common thing, you'd prefer to not socialize with, or even would vociferously reject.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:06
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Vic posted:I'll be honest, all you guys telling me about how pedos really work, although really convincing, didn't mention this scenario: What the hell are you talking about? When would this possibly happen? It's more than far-fetched. As someone said above, these lunatic scenarios distract from the way that pedophiles actually get access to children. You started out weird and are getting weirder.
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Jun 12, 2015 01:31
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Congrats on being the creepiest guy in the furry thread!
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Jun 12, 2015 03:10
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DeliciousPatriotism posted:
No, you can't. You specifically can't understand them if you're projecting onto them. There's nothing morally wrong with it--I have cats and I do it to them--but it is definitely not actually understanding the animal as an animal. You're making them into something they're not. You're not understanding them. quote:Well in the case of my crowds it's often a) you like creative animal themed stuff b) you like to party or c) both. I often see people that are there for the easy sex, the strict anthropomorphic sexualiuzation, or just that it's a thing they're into where they can meet other people in a place separate from their familiar environment. Getting away from familiar circles, family, school, etc. is a common motivation and was mine when I was early into it and that theme of "THIS IS A SPECIAL PLACE WHERE NORMAL RULES DONT APPLY" sorta self-deception is common. This didn't have anything to do with what I said. quote:Yep, but the fandom's so big now (and still growing and bizarro speeds) that it's so much less about a macro clique than micro cliques. If you're a sensible person there's a lot of different places you can fall into and be happy there because they're people you would be friends with otherwise. I've got more acquaintances literally world-wide than I ever thought I'd have, but I still produce really-close friends at a faster rate than I'd ever have expected. I make good friends from work and school and hobbies, but the sheer volume of people I've been exposed to has resulted in me meeting people I've really struck a mutual chord with and retained for years. The point is that this sort of clique interaction forces the acceptance of people who are lovely, just because they're in the clique. It's worse than something like a softball team, because the only purpose of the Furry stuff is to socialize. If some dude on your softball team is actually a weird libertarian misogynist rear end in a top hat, it's pretty irrelevant to the main point of why you know him: playing softball. If some Furry dude is, you can't eject him from that social group, anyone who is a furry and isn't wildly, wildly misbehaving is allowed to come and socialize with the rest of you. I'm not sure how else to explain it. You're acting as though i made a claim that you can't really make good friends through meeting people there, which isn't what I said at all. quote:I work in airsoft, graduated in political geography, study conflict on the side and fanboy over Brown Moses wherever I go and ended up with a bunch of friends I talk conflict, exchange bad aloha-snackbar memes, throw politically themed parties that most folks don't really get, dick around in online games, go to punk concerts together, etc. If you're making it about finding your own kind of fun, you're doing it right. None of my political flavor friends have fursuits, but we all have an array of costumes from UN troops to communists to Rhodesians to WW1 bedouins to Saddam Hussein and so on. Further Confusion in San Jose has a communist party, a pirate party, a capitalist party and a klingon party as regular staples. All are run by furries but if you saw the people actually throwing the parties you wouldn't see any tails or ears. When i throw a party I invite people I like to it because I like them. That is the thing we share: we like each other. That's the point I'm trying to make: the 'themed' stuff is an artificial communality. Saying that furries also run different cliques is kinda just confirming what I'm saying. Also, do you get why wearing the heads, making you anonymous-unless-someone-knows-you, also breaks socialization? Literally wearing a mask to socialize?
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Jun 13, 2015 12:37
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Camrath posted:
Good point. And this goes along with the clique thing, too--everyone is obeying a set of social rules that are way different from normal social interaction. This can make things fun--it's why halloween is cool--but halloween is not meant to be a main way people socialize, but to have fun by inverting social norms. In a way it reminds me of the way some people approach Burning Man. I've got SF Bay Area tech friends who are bland dudes who basically just work and geek out on the internet, but at Burning Man they get super-social because it's explicitly divorced from their real lives and they can gently caress around socially without it having a real impact on them. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it is when it's the main source of your socialization, and if you're well-socialized, you don't actually need it.
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Jun 13, 2015 13:51
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mediadave posted:
Serious question: If the meetups are just meeting up and chatting, why do you do it with this clique of cosplayers and not just with people in general?
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Jun 13, 2015 14:05
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mediadave posted:Well, I did want to cosplay, hence why I joined the group in the first place, and then I found that cosplayers in this group at least) are just people in general, and people that I would want to meet up and drink with, and talk about things like genre fiction and making clothes (which I am interested in beyond cosplay, as are a lot of cosplayers). Okay. Let me put it another way. I go to a kickboxing class.There are some of the people in the kickboxing class I like and get along with and am interested in. So I invite them out to social stuff. Not the whole class. Likewise, I go to a meetup that's a book-club kind of thing. I like some of the people there. So I invite them out to social stuff. Not the whole book club. And when they do come out, we don't mostly talk about kickboxing or book club, but other stuff. If your socialization with this group is still based around in-group stuff--genre fiction, making clothes--then I understand that you want to have a clique around that, but do you get that people talking to each other despite not sharing specific hobbies and interests in common is different? Like, taking an interest in what other people are interested in even though it doesn't do it for me? My wife's friends are mostly other scientists and med-school people. I'm not. I find it interesting to talk to them about their science stuff; they like to talk to me about the non-science stuff I know about and they don't. I'm not saying that all in-group socialization is bad, but that, first of all, selectivity is not a bad thing--choosing to hang out with only some people, and not others, and not being forced to hang with everyone in a group because they are also into genre fiction/cosplay/kickboxing, and second of all, that hanging out with people and talking to them without a shared interest is a different, and I would say more valuable, if more difficult, form of socialization than hanging with people you share a hobby with?
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Jun 13, 2015 14:25
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mediadave posted:Hey guy, it's a once a month meet up. Yeah, that doesn't get to what I'm asking, but never mind, I guess you're either going to dodge what I'm actually asking or genuinely don't understand it and I can't put it any more clearly.
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Jun 13, 2015 19:45
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Megabound posted:I think you're painting these cliques very black and white. It is possible to be into cosplay, yet still have a life and interests outside of it that you can converse about. I didn't say you couldn't. quote:One of the main social gatherings I attend weekly is an indoor rock climbing group. While we're all there to climb and support each other in the sport we're also a very diverse group of people who chat about whatever. We've got engineers, sign language interpreters, biologists, roboticists, a professional opera singer and so on. While we all share a hobby, and met through the one area, we are fully capable of communicating on a broader topics, as I'm sure the cosplay group is. You've gotta meet people somewhere, and it's a lot easier to find people if you happen to have a common interest. I'm not sure why you'd think that I was saying the people can't be of different backgrounds. It's entirely possible to have a clique that is made up of people with good social skills, just like you can have a working environment or an office where people all actually really like each other and get along. The point is that even if someone adds nothing socially, or has weird and sketchy views, or serially hits on every woman in the group, a clique is far more likely to still include that person. Again, this can be a good thing for that person--if someone's super-awkward and shy, being part of a group that has a synthetic social reason for existing can be great for them--but that same looseness means that if someone meets the minimum requirements for the group--is into indoor rock-climbing, cosplay, kickboxing--you're forced to socialize with them. Good for learning how to socialize with them, but the group dynamic isn't the same as a group of friends who just like each other for their personalities. The comparison I'm making is between, say, the group of friends my brothers and I have, where people are just added to the group not based on wherever the hell we've met them, just based on them being interesting or cool and funny, and the softball team my brother belongs too, who are cool guys and the socialization is fine, but it is distinctly different, and most important, operates under distinctly different social rules than the group of actual friends. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Jun 14, 2015 |
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Jun 14, 2015 13:32
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Hedrigall posted:A lot of people bring up the "How come there are no bug/octopus/naked mole rat furries? The naked mole rat furry should just die within days.
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Jun 14, 2015 14:05
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" thing but choosing an ugly animal to be ironic is becoming as cliche as going for something mammalian and Disneyfied.
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Megabound posted:Those 2 groups, friends and cliques, do not need to be disparate things. Small cliques can be very self selecting and have higher minimum requirements from the outside population of that activity, and fall into what I think you're classifying as "true friendship", or be a just as valuable form of socialisation. If they are not disparate things, then you're not learning how to make friends without first having something in common. This leads to a more limited group of friends. I never used the phrase 'true friendship'. quote:I frequently hang out with other climbers from my group outside of the activity itself, to see movies, grab a beer, or invite them and their partners around for dinner, and would say I have few friends outside of my main two cliques. Sure, we've had our fair share of weirdos or creeps, but they get pushed out very quickly, and both groups mingle at other non-activity related gatherings. Okay, since I'm talking about socialization within the clique, I'm not sure why you're bringing up socialization outside the clique. If you have few friends outside your main cliques, then, again, you're obviously missing out on anyone who doesn't take part in those activities. There is nothing 'bad' about that socialization, but what I'm saying is that learning to be able to make friends with people without having that common experience first is a good and valuable social skill, and that social groups formed by people just liking each other and introducing them to other people and building a group dynamic based on the actual people and not an activity is, in fact, superior. It's not saying anything about true friendship. You can disagree with me--you can think that clique socialization is better, even, and that that shared experience bonds you better together. That's fine. But there's an obvious difference between a group of people who don't have a common experience just making friends with each other, and those who have the shared hobby as a jumping off point. A lot of the limitation of this is going to be that activities are self-selecting and strongly divided by race and class and is part of why people often have very few friends outside their ethnicity and class. Some activities have a very low economic bar to entry and can actually introduce people across class and race lines, and that's really cool, and good, but the point is that those friendships then extend outside that group. Obviously, rock-climbing has a high class barrier to entry and is going to be mostly white, but you do selectively only invite a few people from your rock-climbing group over for more personal gatherings. You don't invite the whole group, and you invite partners, who aren't part of the rockclimbing group. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You seem to keep interpreting what I'm saying as clique socialization being bad. I'm not.
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Jun 14, 2015 15:14
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Bitter Mushroom posted:please stop pseuding it up in every thread on the forums It is a derail, and I'll stop talking about it now. But you sound bitter, myconid.
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Jun 14, 2015 17:11
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Xun posted:Kind of off topic, but what traditions of reenactment does Europe have? I've never really heard of anything like that before. Lots, actually. This is just for the UK: http://www.historic-uk.com/LivingHistory/ReenactorsDirectory/
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Jun 15, 2015 20:32
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The gradations you're describing don't really matter that much. The basic idea of it is what's shocking and repellent to me. Sorry to be blunt, I know it was a reaction to trauma and you've worked through it, but it isn't the representation of it for me, it's the literal idea of regression and, no matter what, it has a sexual component to it even if that component is the abdication of sexuality. Camrath, are there other intersections of, non-pejoratively, fringe sexuality or other behavior with furries? On the sexual side, I've heard that BDSM is quite a bit more prevalent than in the 'average' population, on the non-sexual, aside from being overwhelmingly a geek thing, does it have any other intersections? We covered politics already, but what about the 'otherkin' people, people claiming to have lived before, people calling themselves stuff like 'psychic vampires', the other fringe stuff like that?
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Jun 16, 2015 02:57
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I think part of the crossover between furries and baby-diaper fetishists is the reaction by outsiders is "No you're not." "I'm a lion". "No, you're not." "I'm a baby." "No, you're not." Most people don't 'roleplay' in their lives, and for those that do, it is mostly associated with sex, and the 'roles' they take on are believable ones, perhaps stretching the imagination a bit, but they are not ludicrously impossible. Furries can sort get away with it by saying they enjoy looking like a lion, and the above conversation about anthropomorphisation kinda shows they're not really 'acting' like animals--they're acting like furries. But the baby-diaper fetishists are putting on a self that is so obviously, and kind of pathetically, unreal that the overwhelming response is that it's both disgusting and just obviously untrue. Also 'queer' is very problematic if you just mean 'non-standard sexuality', and appropriating it like that blurs an important distinction: Queer people aren't queer as a coping mechanism or because it turns them on more than other stuff. It's intrinsic to them. I don't get how you're queer in the least, either, from your self-description, unless you mean you're queer because of the baby-diaper stuff, in which case you're using a sexual term for something you're claiming is non-sexual and shooting yourself in the foot.
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Jun 16, 2015 13:53
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Vic posted:That's factually incorrect. Vast majority of people are in fact closer to a baby than to a lion, genetically speaking. Congrats on still being the weirdest person in this thread. And no, it's not factually incorrect that they're not a baby. Jesus you're weird.
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Jun 16, 2015 14:02
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Hedrigall posted:Maybe we're all the weird ones for posting in this thread, or even knowing of its existence :\ He is our king.
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Jun 16, 2015 14:25
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jiffypop45 posted:
I didn't say a lion is closer to a person. You didn't understand what I said. I basically said the response from the exterior was pretty much the same. "No, you're not." If you really break it down, most furries aren't actually playing the role of that animal, they're dressing up more like cosplayers and playing the role of these weird human-animal hybrids. it's still garnering the response of "No, you're not." Whining about being negatively compared to furries is silly, since I'm saying they get basically the same response. For you, and other people, it really does seem like it's a psychological problem being manifested in behavior, and I'm not sure why it's surprising to you that people are going to be seriously weirded out and repelled by it when you admit that it was an unhealthy coping strategy. People see it and they go "That poo poo's hosed up" and the poo poo is, indeed, hosed up.
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Jun 16, 2015 14:57
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jiffypop45 posted:I would argue that it would be easier for someone with a mental issue to pass in the furry community than society at large (in addition to what you stated about ABDL's likely having a high likelihood of psychological issues). The "I am autism" thing that the OP touched on extended to ABDL'S as well. Though that may have been an overlap with the furs. Nobody argued against that, and that's been a main theme of the thread. quote:
I hear lolicon people saying the same thing. It is very difficult for an outsider to really understand or believe how acting like an infant when you are, in fact, a sexually mature person does not have a sexual component to it, even if it is, as I said, the abdication of sexuality. In fact, I don't even get how it's logically possible. You're combining adult sexuality with infantilism because you are an adult, and sexually mature, and dressing as a baby. In the same way, furries are combining adult sexuality with weird anthropomorphized animal stuff. That is weird, but the baby stuff is not only weirder, but represents an actual, horrible, real thing that happens to other human beings. At the very best, it's in incredibly poor taste. "I wear diapers but don't poo poo in them" is not really a hell of a lot of comfort. It leads to the "Why do you wear diapers then" question, which is not really answerable in any remotely sane way, other than "It makes me feel like a baby", which, again, is going to freak any remotely ordinary person out because the separation between adults and children is a very important thing, and that necessarily touches on sexuality.
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Jun 16, 2015 15:41
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I would quibble with you here. Almost everyone does. Yes, it is.
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Jun 16, 2015 21:12
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Toph Bei Fong posted:How so? For gently caress's sake. At work we actually have a different role. It is not a role we're assuming for fun, or out of pathological reaction. If I'm tutoring a student, I really am their teacher, they really are my student. That relationship is a real one, it doesn't just exist because we're pretending it does. At work, we don't invent new characters out of whole cloth, and we especially don't claim to be a mythical species that doesn't exist. "Elf" doesn't have any real meaning. it is not a real thing. You are pretending, when you pretend to be an elf, to inhabit a different world. Your work 'persona' is a mostly a matter of adjusting your reactions to things, moderating emotions. You can 'roleplay' an elf that has character traits you don't have, has a physical being you don't have, has a history you don't have. Of course, you can go into work and lie and claim that you've got a past you don't and are American Indian and whatever, nothing's stopping you, but that's not the kind of 'roleplaying' you're talking about. This is something that's totally obvious to the average person. Playing a social role is nothing like pretending to be a completely different person, with a different past, a different ethnicity, different desires, wants, attributes, and a different physical being. You even somehow conflate treating different people differently into 'roleplaying'. That's not roleplaying, in the last. You're treating different people differently because you really, actually, literally have different roles towards each other. You're not playing them. The roles are real.
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Jun 16, 2015 21:22
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Toph Bei Fong posted:
Yes, for the most part, they are. It's kind of weird to me that immediately after making the 'work' argument and having that shown to be false, you just pivot to a new one with no real acknowledgement. I have no interest in keeping busting down your bubbles about why these roles are different from "elf", but they really patently obviously are. If you want to stretch and stretch and say that people who believe that they are chosen by god are the same as people who believe they're elves, fine, I really don't give a poo poo. But your original claim was that literally every life-role we play is 'roleplaying' and now you picked up the goalposts and moved stadiums with them. That's not an honest way to have a conversation. If you're interested in a great work on the subject of identity and roles and why 'elf' is different from 'tough guy', read Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. It is old, but still great.
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Jun 16, 2015 22:38
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I said fair enough and was prepared to drop it. We seem to differ over whether "roleplaying" and "playing a role" are the same thing. That's because they aren't. And you didn't drop it, you just pivoted, as I said, moving the goalposts. quote:I'm arguing that we all do it to some extent, and that it is merely the depth to which we do that causes the problem. Have you read much about the "smile mask syndrome" that's becoming a big problem in Japan and Korea? Putting on false selves at work is absolutely a problem. And it's completely different than role playing an elf in a fantasy game. Having a stiff upper lip, acting macho because you grew up in a macho culture--these are real problems with identity, but they in no way, at all, in any way, shape, or form, resemble you role playing an elf in a fantasy game. At all. Conflating the two is absurd. If you act a certain way out of cultural expectation, that is nothing at all like you creating a character who you try to roleplay faithfully in a game. There isn't even a single point of connection. quote:I then asked a separate, but related question, trying to figure out exactly where you define the borders of fantasy and reality when it comes to self-concept, because I'm trying to understand your position better. We seem to differ on the degree to which a person is subsumed in playing a part, and how that checks out vs. the "real" person. I'm not sure what you think you've "proven" here. It doesn't make sense to talk about the 'person' being subsumed in the 'part'. I don't know what you mean by the 'real' person. What I've proven--actually, what is just obvious but I spelled out for you--is that there is a difference between an actual role--teacher/student, father/son, spouse/spouse, friend/friend--and a roleplay role like roleplaying an elf in a game, or being a furry--and roleplaying the elf and being a furry are also very obviously different. quote:Dude believes he's a cowboy and need to prep for approaching government takeover = checks out quote:Dude really believes he's the servant of a mystical being = checks out quote:Dude really believes he's a squirrel = Bull poo poo Again, they don't actually believe they're squirrels--the Furry 'animals' don't have anything to do with what actual animals are like. But translating what you said to something real "Dude roleplays as an anthropomorphized animal", then that is similar to role playing an elf in a game. If the furry is actually far gone enough to think that they really have non-human attributes that are represented by what they're pretending to be, that's a lot different since you don't think you actually have the attributes of an elf because you know they're fictional. But most furries, I think, know that they're engaging in this anthropomorphization and are basically LARPing as these furry beings. If you LARped as that elf it'd be a direct correlation. There's probably a smooshy line between those two groups and not some sharp dividing line. quote:Something doesn't quite sit right about that. You appear to not actually be following the conversation. To sum up: Real roles exist, and when we 'play' them it's not 'play' in the same way as you roleplaying an elf, because the roles actually exist. They actually describe a real relationship between human beings. Some furries may be roleplaying in a similar way to you playing an elf, others are not. quote:I'll check that book out, thanks for the recommendation. You're welcome.
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Jun 16, 2015 23:53
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Vic posted:
Why would he edit that, you weirdo?
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Jul 16, 2015 13:22
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