Friday, August 20, 2010

No Pants Friday: On Cheating

Its Friday and you're at home rather than out and doing something fun.  LETS TAKE OUR PANTS OFF!

That's right, bitches - It No Pants Friday!  Before we get into it tonight, here's your obligatory disturbing image for the night:

Ahhh, South Carolina
Right, tonight's post might not actually be all that fun.  You see, its been a while since I've got my rant on.  I've been trying to hold back a bit - I find that ranting begets more ranting and eventually leads you down the path of the asshole.  Often times an asshole who then has to spend time defending being an asshole.  I'm not really in to needing to defend my self all the time. So I I've been trying to keep it cool and engage people in conversation rather than hit the caps lock hey and scream at idiots.

But this week has surpass my ability to avoid drama.  Well, lets get into it...

The big C.  Not cancer (phew), but cheating.  Its serious business no matter what you're doing. Its the kind of thing that costs you friends and gets you kicked out of places.  And for whatever reason, and for a while now, our little subsection of the internet has been taking an increasingly hard line on what constitutes cheating and what's the best tar:feather ratio.  More recently, we have iamaddj's self righteous bull-shit on would allocation and TastyTaste's best attempts to stir up trouble with the NOVA open.  I am just absolutely at the end of my patience with this bullshit. 

I know its just a silly game we play and all, but calling someone a cheater is about as serious an accusation you can make.  Shit man, that's the kind of thing that could get you in a fist-fight in the playground back in the day if you weren't careful.  So why the fuck are so many people just tossing this word around like its nothing?  I've seen everything from honest mistakes, rules confusions and even playing the game correctly be labeled as flat our cheating.  Fuck that.

Now, there is actual cheating.  No denying that.  But too much of what gets called out by the internet pundits with an axe to grind is not it.  C'mon on guys, common rules mistakes are a cause for someone's 40k membership card to torn up?  Really? 

There is still such a thing as a mistake in the world I live in.  You remember those, right?  All the accidental fuck-ups that you make everyday?  Hell, I've even got enough shades of gray in my world for there to be many different levels of mistakes.  We're all human beings.  We're all playing an extremely complicated game that almost completely relies on human operators to make it go.  Loosen the fuck up, people.  Take that hard line and shove it up your asses.

For me, I'm going to continue being a normal, flawed human being and continue to accept that shit happens and that not all of it happens on purpose or maliciously.

5 comments:

  1. Preach on brother!

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  2. Intent defines the line between cheating and mistakes, and when the line is crossed. I played fantasy the other night and my opponent got the rule for generating dispell dice wrong (we used the low die instead of the high one), which probably cost my Slann to Foot of Gork. Honest mistake yes, cheating no.

    I guess the best way to define cheating is much like Justice Stewart defined what legally constitutes pornography: I know it when I see it.

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  3. Thanks for saying that, it's good to hear some sense on the matter. I know I've made plenty of mistakes myself over the years and would feel terrible if someone thought I had been trying to cheat them. And in turn I've played numerous games with people who have made mistakes as well, but not once did I think it was done intentionally or in some sort of underhanded manner. My hope is that this hyper-sensitivity and vigilance against supposed cheating is not as prevalent in actual face-to-face gaming but instead is the product of internet melodrama... if so, let's keep it there.

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  4. See opening editorial of my latest article. :)

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