Hi. I have major depression, and it sounds like you do too (or something similar).
Please see a doctor. Do you have health insurance? Having suicidal thoughts is life-threatening. It's something that's been with me for many, many years; when I told the doctor about it, the response was immediate that I should see a counselor weekly and start taking medication.
It really helped. Yeah, stuff like positive thinking and going to the gym also matters, but you know what helps chemical problems in the brain? Medicine. It's a medical issue, so treat it like one.
Let me know if you need to talk about this privately.
I really enjoyed the part where you critiqued my entire ideology and belief system but I was let down that the rest of the podcast wasn't also about me
to the point that I'm an "armchair designer" that hasn't made games: I'm a writer. What I do is write. My subject is games, and specifically Magic. I'm not pretending to be a designer
re: Rosewater: you say yourselves that you have to ignore and filter out his hype about new sets. Doesn't that kind of prove my arguments that he's not relevant, if some percentage of his articles you just accept as "oh yeah this one is just ad copy"? But more fundamentally, you misunderstand what I mean about him. He is a marketing agent of the game, so even when he's speaking honestly about Tempest or whatever (and to be clear, I think he is by far at his most interesting when he's talking about the past, because he doesn't need to filter) he is still coming from the perspective of the Wizards employee. "A History of Video Games Presented by the Nintendo WiiU" is going to have certain biases that color the material, so the same applies to Rosewater
also he's not funny
on to the "why magic sucks" portion: I was disappointed you only touch on 1/4 of the points I made, but sure, price is a big one. The snowboarding analogy is well taken, but the difference I see is that there are physical objects required to be a Serious Snowboarder: you will physically go down a hill in a different way with different gear. Magic, though, only has some cards as more expensive than other cards due to their economic model of Magic as a TCG and not a living card game. With a different economic model, there could be the same games at a fraction of the cost
it's also telling that whenever people try to make comparisons about Magic's costs w/r/t the cost of other hobbies, they always compare it to physical hobbies for outdoorsy white people: snowboarding, fishing, hunting, that sort of thing. Doesn't it say a lot about this CARD GAME that the closest things in terms of cost are things that require so much equipment? Compared to other non-active games, anything that can be played at a kitchen table or on a couch, Magic is super expensive
yes, you don't have to spend as much if you don't want to be competitive. But the decision to make Magic more expensive when played competitively is a decision; it is not integral to the cards themselves.
I've taught Magic to a bunch of people too and one of the reasons many of them stop is, "it's so expensive"
sure, YOU know how to have fun with 10 thrown-together decks for $10, but the newer player just sees booster packs and goes "oh wow that is expensive"
I grade cards as my profession. Those cards are not fake. Mirage cards, as noted, have high variance from one to the other, and people often think a certain Lion's Eye Diamond is fake because of that.
I have major depression, diagnosed when I was twelve (I'm 24 now). "Exercise" is good advice, but it's not the be-all end-all that non-depressed-exercisers make it out to be.
As David Foster Wallace says in Infinite Jest, depression isn't a state, it's a feeling. At least for me, even when I'm happy, I know it's always there, just waiting to come back to the surface.
Accomplishing things is a good goal, but can be double-edged. When I'm really depressed, I've found that I do my best writing. The downside is that, if I don't get anything written, I feel terrible for not having done anything.
I try to keep myself doing anything that I can remotely construe as productive. Reading a novel that a friend lent me. If I'm too depressed to concentrate on a novel, reading the news and learning about some issue I hadn't learned about before. If I can't write anything, trying to jot down an outline, or even a turn of phrase.
I don't have this figured out, obviously. It's extremely helpful for me to have friends that I know I can talk to about it. People who, when they ask how I am, I don't feel the need to say "fine." People to whom I can say, "I'm really depressed."
Yeah, by all means.
To comment on the subject further, I think it makes sense at times (for example: this post). I've used it both in the manner you're describing (attack or comment on each segment of a position in piecemeal), and as a way to break up distinct thoughts. I can see where you're coming from on the piecemeal approach, but I'm not certain that it's something that is never appropriate so long as the segments are broken up according to complete thoughts.
Where I think it almost always makes sense is when replying to posts like yours where there are actually two very distinct issues that have little interaction with eachother. (hence my breaking up my response in this post)
The way that you responded to mine is an outrageous slander totally fine, and not what I mean. I'm referring to posts that look like this (not an attack on that poster, because I certainly didn't read that post): incredibly long, broken into a million pieces, and on twenty different debate paths with the same person. It's a nightmare just from an aesthetic perspective in addition to a writing/clarity/debate one.
It's unclear to me whether you're objecting to actual multiquoting or to people breaking up individual posts into multiple posts. Regardless, as you noted I don't think it's something that site policy could solve.
As to the ban on double-posting, most subforums don't have this rule. It was certainly abolished on the site-wide level months ago, and off the top of my head I can't think of a subforum that retains it.
EDIT: Nathed by Gals
Yes, I am referring to breaking up individual posts into multiple. I'm not looking for a policy change, but I think it's a Community Issue that The Community can solve on its own without staff making rules changes!
And I didn't know the rules had changed on double-posting recently. I could have sworn I had seen some double-posts infracted and merged into one post recently, but I can't remember where. My mistake, ignore that portion then!
I hate multi-quoting. You know the posts I mean: in some Debate or pseudo-Debate thread, where posters break each other down
Quote from this post »
line by line, responding to each other on
what seems to be a sub-clause level,
Quote from this post »
nitpicking every single thing the other person says
and inevitably missing the point of the larger debate,
Quote from this post »
making things impossible to read
because they are no longer written in sentence => paragraph => essay form,
Quote from this post »
but rather some unholy piecemeal concoction
that makes absolutely no sense to anyone other than those who've been posting at each other for dozens of pages already.
I'm not asking for a rule against this, exactly, I just want people to stop. I hate reading it. Write as if you have core ideas rather than three hundred unrelated reasons the other person is an idiot, or when you want a citation. The few times I've tried to post in Debate or pseudo-Debate threads, I've responded with what I considered Actual Writing if I wrote more than 100 words: I had core ideas, paragraphs, and internal responses to my debate partners' ideas and strengthened my own. I feel this is what should happen more often.
The multi-quoting style is difficult to read because it breaks the conversational reading path. When two people discuss, one person speaks, then the other, etc. etc. Multi-quoting, instead, makes your posts read like Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, with your pithy comments interrupting every three seconds, except you're not making jokes about Canadians, you're saying women have lower IQs than men or whatever (I don't know, I don't actually read the posts).
Similarly, I don't understand the ban on double-posting in the Serious Forums. It's been very difficult to stop myself from doing this, since it's so accepted on other forums: you have a good response to someone's post, so you quote their post, write your response, reply. You have a good response to someone else, so you quote their post, write your response, reply. Two different conversations, two different posts. Why does it matter, for the sake of the thread, whether someone else posted "i agree lol" in between? Why does the exact same content get worse when it's cleanly separated rather than all in one post?
Conspiracy theories in the wake of horrifying tragedies are a fairly well-studied phenomenon. Even rational people try to make sense of senseless, catastrophic acts. It helps shield us from facing our own powerlessness; the world seems like a more sensible, logical place, where our actions have real meaning, if the most important acts in history have meaning.
If I ask you, in the dark, is it more likely that the destruction of buildings that cost (in 2013 dollars) $2.3 billion, took thousands of lives, and irrevocably shaped our culture and policies are the work of someone's well-budgeted plan, or some randoms with virtually no resources? The idea that people half a world away can cause that much damage is, frankly, harrowing.
Similarly, would we rather our most-beloved president in modern memory to die as a result of his policies and actions from a conspiracy, or some lone nutjob?
The development of conspiracies is, in many ways, a coping mechanism.
Alex Jones is another case, though. This is a guy with a pretty clear messiah complex and a large following that is so far deep down the rabbit hole that they assume anything that contradicts their beliefs is a plant by The Enemy. There is literally no evidence that could persuade them, because they will interpret it as something planned by enemies of Jones. (Not to mention that vast conspiracies such as this inherently appeal to the mentally ill, which, as someone with a lot of mental illness in my family as well as dealing with forms of it myself, is very saddening.)
Please see a doctor. Do you have health insurance? Having suicidal thoughts is life-threatening. It's something that's been with me for many, many years; when I told the doctor about it, the response was immediate that I should see a counselor weekly and start taking medication.
It really helped. Yeah, stuff like positive thinking and going to the gym also matters, but you know what helps chemical problems in the brain? Medicine. It's a medical issue, so treat it like one.
Let me know if you need to talk about this privately.
to the point that I'm an "armchair designer" that hasn't made games: I'm a writer. What I do is write. My subject is games, and specifically Magic. I'm not pretending to be a designer
re: Rosewater: you say yourselves that you have to ignore and filter out his hype about new sets. Doesn't that kind of prove my arguments that he's not relevant, if some percentage of his articles you just accept as "oh yeah this one is just ad copy"? But more fundamentally, you misunderstand what I mean about him. He is a marketing agent of the game, so even when he's speaking honestly about Tempest or whatever (and to be clear, I think he is by far at his most interesting when he's talking about the past, because he doesn't need to filter) he is still coming from the perspective of the Wizards employee. "A History of Video Games Presented by the Nintendo WiiU" is going to have certain biases that color the material, so the same applies to Rosewater
also he's not funny
on to the "why magic sucks" portion: I was disappointed you only touch on 1/4 of the points I made, but sure, price is a big one. The snowboarding analogy is well taken, but the difference I see is that there are physical objects required to be a Serious Snowboarder: you will physically go down a hill in a different way with different gear. Magic, though, only has some cards as more expensive than other cards due to their economic model of Magic as a TCG and not a living card game. With a different economic model, there could be the same games at a fraction of the cost
it's also telling that whenever people try to make comparisons about Magic's costs w/r/t the cost of other hobbies, they always compare it to physical hobbies for outdoorsy white people: snowboarding, fishing, hunting, that sort of thing. Doesn't it say a lot about this CARD GAME that the closest things in terms of cost are things that require so much equipment? Compared to other non-active games, anything that can be played at a kitchen table or on a couch, Magic is super expensive
yes, you don't have to spend as much if you don't want to be competitive. But the decision to make Magic more expensive when played competitively is a decision; it is not integral to the cards themselves.
I've taught Magic to a bunch of people too and one of the reasons many of them stop is, "it's so expensive"
sure, YOU know how to have fun with 10 thrown-together decks for $10, but the newer player just sees booster packs and goes "oh wow that is expensive"
I wrote this, which should help. http://blog.cardkingdom.com/?p=77
As David Foster Wallace says in Infinite Jest, depression isn't a state, it's a feeling. At least for me, even when I'm happy, I know it's always there, just waiting to come back to the surface.
Accomplishing things is a good goal, but can be double-edged. When I'm really depressed, I've found that I do my best writing. The downside is that, if I don't get anything written, I feel terrible for not having done anything.
I try to keep myself doing anything that I can remotely construe as productive. Reading a novel that a friend lent me. If I'm too depressed to concentrate on a novel, reading the news and learning about some issue I hadn't learned about before. If I can't write anything, trying to jot down an outline, or even a turn of phrase.
I don't have this figured out, obviously. It's extremely helpful for me to have friends that I know I can talk to about it. People who, when they ask how I am, I don't feel the need to say "fine." People to whom I can say, "I'm really depressed."
I have received this infraction. It was for "trolling"...
Harkius
The way that you responded to mine is
an outrageous slandertotally fine, and not what I mean. I'm referring to posts that look like this (not an attack on that poster, because I certainly didn't read that post): incredibly long, broken into a million pieces, and on twenty different debate paths with the same person. It's a nightmare just from an aesthetic perspective in addition to a writing/clarity/debate one.Yes, I am referring to breaking up individual posts into multiple. I'm not looking for a policy change, but I think it's a Community Issue that The Community can solve on its own without staff making rules changes!
And I didn't know the rules had changed on double-posting recently. I could have sworn I had seen some double-posts infracted and merged into one post recently, but I can't remember where. My mistake, ignore that portion then!
what seems to be a sub-clause level,
and inevitably missing the point of the larger debate,
because they are no longer written in sentence => paragraph => essay form,
that makes absolutely no sense to anyone other than those who've been posting at each other for dozens of pages already.
I'm not asking for a rule against this, exactly, I just want people to stop. I hate reading it. Write as if you have core ideas rather than three hundred unrelated reasons the other person is an idiot, or when you want a citation. The few times I've tried to post in Debate or pseudo-Debate threads, I've responded with what I considered Actual Writing if I wrote more than 100 words: I had core ideas, paragraphs, and internal responses to my debate partners' ideas and strengthened my own. I feel this is what should happen more often.
The multi-quoting style is difficult to read because it breaks the conversational reading path. When two people discuss, one person speaks, then the other, etc. etc. Multi-quoting, instead, makes your posts read like Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, with your pithy comments interrupting every three seconds, except you're not making jokes about Canadians, you're saying women have lower IQs than men or whatever (I don't know, I don't actually read the posts).
Similarly, I don't understand the ban on double-posting in the Serious Forums. It's been very difficult to stop myself from doing this, since it's so accepted on other forums: you have a good response to someone's post, so you quote their post, write your response, reply. You have a good response to someone else, so you quote their post, write your response, reply. Two different conversations, two different posts. Why does it matter, for the sake of the thread, whether someone else posted "i agree lol" in between? Why does the exact same content get worse when it's cleanly separated rather than all in one post?
If I ask you, in the dark, is it more likely that the destruction of buildings that cost (in 2013 dollars) $2.3 billion, took thousands of lives, and irrevocably shaped our culture and policies are the work of someone's well-budgeted plan, or some randoms with virtually no resources? The idea that people half a world away can cause that much damage is, frankly, harrowing.
Similarly, would we rather our most-beloved president in modern memory to die as a result of his policies and actions from a conspiracy, or some lone nutjob?
The development of conspiracies is, in many ways, a coping mechanism.
Alex Jones is another case, though. This is a guy with a pretty clear messiah complex and a large following that is so far deep down the rabbit hole that they assume anything that contradicts their beliefs is a plant by The Enemy. There is literally no evidence that could persuade them, because they will interpret it as something planned by enemies of Jones. (Not to mention that vast conspiracies such as this inherently appeal to the mentally ill, which, as someone with a lot of mental illness in my family as well as dealing with forms of it myself, is very saddening.)
Also, if it was a magic card, it would be a colorless permanent.
That's correct.