Just thought I’d share something I thought was pretty interesting. I have a mother in law who is… well let’s just say she’s a stereotypical older mom who doesn’t own a computer, just an iPad. During the pandemic, she started getting into Nintendo games and bought herself a Switch. Fast forward a few years later and she’s interested in getting a Steam Deck, since one of her “mom groups” told her about some pandemic inspired games, similar to Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing that are only available on Steam.
When it comes down to it, she doesn’t care about her computer, she just wants to play computer games in a way that’s easy and accessible for her. We’ll be getting her a Steam Deck for her birthday, which in my opinion is just super neat. Even PC gaming is becoming extremely accessible, and it’s a fantastic time to be a gamer.
I would really appreciate if we stopped doing the “if you disagree with my opinion you’re an [insult] and also must be out of touch with reality so I will say you need to go outside” thing. It’s really exhausting. This is Beehaw, the be(e) nice server and I’m kind of getting sick of seeing this kind of snark on a server where the expectation is people being nice to each other.
I was skeptical at “normies” but the overall tone of the post is inclusive, so I’m not the target of your rant because I figured it out. I was able to figure it out because I’m terminally online and have the experience with online posts to know that some people use it as a pejorative and some people use it as a self-deprecating catch-all for people who aren’t too into their hobby.
I also have autism and some people with the condition aren’t as good as me at putting together the connotations of words AND the overall post to figure out the poster’s intentions. And some people aren’t terminally online and have less exposure to seeing this word used. They’ve likely overwhelmingly seen it used as a pejorative, and end up very skeptical of this post. I don’t like the idea that people like me, or that people who might have reasonably arrived at a different conclusion about this, are being told that they’re huge dorks who need to go outside.
Really starting to feel like Beehaw is just like any other online space. I see the same amount of snark and negative assumptions of people who didn’t see something the commenter’s/poster’s way. Sure, it’s free of bigotry, but all the spaces I occupied were already bigotry-free. Even back when I was on Reddit, because in the small subreddits I looked at the few bigots were downvoted to hell and had their comments hidden. (I’m aware that not everyone was lucky enough to only be interested in topics that had easily accessible bigotry-free areas so Beehaw still serves a useful purpose for them.)