Seperated by a common language
So, it's been more than a year since I posted here. I've moved in with my girlfriend, had a life, saw my former roomates and best friends married to eachother and never felt the need to share much with the universe at large. But something as simple and mundane as an IRC roleplaying game and an associated chat channel has given me something that I feel I need outside commentary on. Or at least to stream of thought into public place where other peoples typing won't interupt my paragraphs.
Now, I probably won't be the first person to say that I have a caustic sense of humor, BUT, I'll certainly be the first one to agree. This usually isn't a problem but now I have a friend of a friend who's reading everything I write as if they were personal insults to his immediate family. A joke it being earlier in the evening here on the west coast because of the time zones is responded to like it was a tirade against every decision his parents ever made.
That's a big thing, but there are a lot of little things where one person will write something and I won't understand it the same way as everybody else in that channel. Some of these can be attributed to a lack of common memes and my own lazyness and others... actually it does come back to that common meme thing. A filter that seperates the us from the them and at the moment I'm pretty clearly still a them.
Now the question becomes, do I want to be an us? I have two friends and an aquantance with the us status, and I at least think I get along pretty well with three of the other people in that channel. It's possible that they dislike me just as much as the gentleman two paragraphs up and simply haven't let me know in quite such a stark manner. The game itself is interesting, but large parts of it take place in one or two person minisessions that I don't often take part in, (Reinforcing my outsider status), and my character is not one that I put a great deal of work into. (The characters that I have tend to have five or six variations/refinements that then bounce around in my head until I find a place for them to go. This is why Ard will kill me if I ever play another character named Taki or Ten again.) On the other hand, I was invited into the channel to play this game.
On the other other hand this is compleatly inconclusive, but as far as my thoughts have taken me.
Now, I probably won't be the first person to say that I have a caustic sense of humor, BUT, I'll certainly be the first one to agree. This usually isn't a problem but now I have a friend of a friend who's reading everything I write as if they were personal insults to his immediate family. A joke it being earlier in the evening here on the west coast because of the time zones is responded to like it was a tirade against every decision his parents ever made.
That's a big thing, but there are a lot of little things where one person will write something and I won't understand it the same way as everybody else in that channel. Some of these can be attributed to a lack of common memes and my own lazyness and others... actually it does come back to that common meme thing. A filter that seperates the us from the them and at the moment I'm pretty clearly still a them.
Now the question becomes, do I want to be an us? I have two friends and an aquantance with the us status, and I at least think I get along pretty well with three of the other people in that channel. It's possible that they dislike me just as much as the gentleman two paragraphs up and simply haven't let me know in quite such a stark manner. The game itself is interesting, but large parts of it take place in one or two person minisessions that I don't often take part in, (Reinforcing my outsider status), and my character is not one that I put a great deal of work into. (The characters that I have tend to have five or six variations/refinements that then bounce around in my head until I find a place for them to go. This is why Ard will kill me if I ever play another character named Taki or Ten again.) On the other hand, I was invited into the channel to play this game.
On the other other hand this is compleatly inconclusive, but as far as my thoughts have taken me.