Metaplanar Babel

Bryan Veloso, who has a neat blog, wrote a post recently that sort of underscored my growing ill-content with people in general. Apparently, someone left Bryan a comment demanding that he “make” them like his blog again. This kind of self-centered, self-important bullshit is at the heart of half our problems these days. This “I deserve whatever I want” mentality. This “The world should work how I think it does” mindset. It’s blind, it’s foolish, and it’s so far beyond arrogant that I’m appalled to think I might have fallen into that mindset on occassion. I originally started to comment on Bryan’s post, but after my comment got longer and longer, I decided I’d do better to just write here.

I’ve never understood why people get like that. I see it happen in every MMO that I play - there are always players who take every change personally and proceed to flame away on the forums because the server maintenance cut 2 hours off their playing time. Or because their class changed and wasn’t wtfuber any more. It’s like some people just expect their every whim to be answered, and if they come across anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow view of what it should be, then they cry up a storm. Oh you suck now, WoW, make me like you again!

It’s especially frustrating to see that on a personal site, though. What exactly does this reader give Bryan that justifies his courting their approval? (Besides an interesting subject to write about, anyway.) The MMO example at least has money changing hands - Blizzard benefits from its fans liking its games, since they continue to pay for the privilege of playing. But on a blog? Who are they to demand that the blogger deviate from his own mindset to suit theirs? A blog needs its readership, surely, but that doesn’t make the blogger subject to every whim of its readers. You’d never get anything written if you tried to cater to everyone. Bah, it just makes me angry, and I don’t even have to deal with it.

Why is it that so many people cannot accept anything that flies in the face of their own personal wants? I want my character to be badass, and these changes bring me back down to the same level as everyone else, so I’m going to bitch and moan about it until they fix it. Does this sound familiar to anyone? It sounds an awful lot like my nephew-in-law, who’s 4 years old, when he can’t play with the toy he wants. I want the whole world to be just like me, so I’m going to go bully anyone who’s different into being just like me! Who cares if they don’t think the way I do, I’m making them better, cause *I* know best! Is the world so plastic-coated and instantly-gratifying that we don’t have to grow up anymore? Maybe that’s what’s really happening in America. It’s not that we’re really dumbing down, it’s that we’re not growing up.