I think a lot of it has to do with the hobby itself being of escapism. People who delve into things like miniature or card gaming or tabletop RPG’s are rarely people with strong social lives, athleticism or stable home lives. (No Henry Cavill, you sit the fuck down)
So you’re going to see more people with crappy lives trying to escape or have some kind of social connection with others. Kids who were never taught by a parent figure how to properly maintain their lives and bodies, neurodivergent people who have a very hard time with some personal care, people with particular kinds of anxiety or depression.
My father was a big, wealthy narcissist a lot like Trump, he had “people” under him, he owned land and restaurants and all that, was always the drunk, coked-up “big man in charge” and grifted people out of millions of dollars in his life. He could barely read and was incapable of telling the truth, he was obviously neurodivergent in some way but was a literal baby boomer and never got any kind of care as a child other than regular beatings, so he was a mess. One thing that was particularly weird was his aversion to showering and wearing clean clothes. He hated cleaning, he often smelled like livestock, people pretended not to notice because they wanted to stay in his good graces but it was rancid.
He only made one comment ever about it that stuck to me, because he rarely said anything with any level of honesty but this seemed to have a kernel of reality. “I don’t like being in the shower because I feel like I might miss something.”
And that led me to realize that being in a shower or maintaining yourself means being alone with your own thoughts, being focused on yourself as a person, paying attention to your body in space and separating yourself from the environment and world around you, thinking carefully about how others view you, looking in the mirror… If you’re someone constantly escaping those kinds of potentially existential moments of self-examination, self-care can feel like emotional torture, a laborious exercise in trying to revalidate all of your decisions and feelings.
I’m so curious about this. Why are they like that? I don’t understand how that happens, and what specifically about gaming makes it more prevalent.
I think a lot of it has to do with the hobby itself being of escapism. People who delve into things like miniature or card gaming or tabletop RPG’s are rarely people with strong social lives, athleticism or stable home lives. (No Henry Cavill, you sit the fuck down)
So you’re going to see more people with crappy lives trying to escape or have some kind of social connection with others. Kids who were never taught by a parent figure how to properly maintain their lives and bodies, neurodivergent people who have a very hard time with some personal care, people with particular kinds of anxiety or depression.
My father was a big, wealthy narcissist a lot like Trump, he had “people” under him, he owned land and restaurants and all that, was always the drunk, coked-up “big man in charge” and grifted people out of millions of dollars in his life. He could barely read and was incapable of telling the truth, he was obviously neurodivergent in some way but was a literal baby boomer and never got any kind of care as a child other than regular beatings, so he was a mess. One thing that was particularly weird was his aversion to showering and wearing clean clothes. He hated cleaning, he often smelled like livestock, people pretended not to notice because they wanted to stay in his good graces but it was rancid.
He only made one comment ever about it that stuck to me, because he rarely said anything with any level of honesty but this seemed to have a kernel of reality. “I don’t like being in the shower because I feel like I might miss something.”
And that led me to realize that being in a shower or maintaining yourself means being alone with your own thoughts, being focused on yourself as a person, paying attention to your body in space and separating yourself from the environment and world around you, thinking carefully about how others view you, looking in the mirror… If you’re someone constantly escaping those kinds of potentially existential moments of self-examination, self-care can feel like emotional torture, a laborious exercise in trying to revalidate all of your decisions and feelings.
Sheeeesh daddy-oof
Glad you turned out good enough for the both of you!
TY, I learned a lot in the two decades I was stuck in that world.