What Makes Us Rage?

  I was reserving this blog for Part 2 of my Feminism in Gaming blog, but I honestly didn't feel it deserved another blog. I pretty much said all I had to say in my last entry. Instead I am going to talk about a subject that I've covered here, and there, but never really tackled head on. Anger in the gaming community. I know I've covered trash talk, hate speech, misogyny, and other topics here before. But I've never actually touched on the subject, or source rather, of anger.

  Oh, before I begin, I got an email from someone reading my blog (at least I assume they were) telling me my blog was set so that only Google+ members could comment. Sorry about that, guys. I thought the default setting automatically allowed for anonymous comments. My bad. I've fixed it now. So...there's that.

  Now, onto the subject at hand. What causes anger? There are many theories on this, and I really don't have the time to get into them all. So, I will just give my own interpretation of the emotion. To be perfectly blunt, anger comes with being human. Anger is a response of our own fight or flight mechanisms. When something, or someone may threaten us, our ideals, or our personal security we lash out in anger. I live in the American South. I see this all the time.

  I know I use cognitive dissonance here a lot, but it really is the best term when analyzing an emotion such as anger. See, our brains have sort of formed the mechanics of cognitive dissonance to survive. In our early years, as a species, on this planet we had to rely on two things: our ability to work as a group, and our wit over potential predators, and other forms of danger. In regards to something that is unknown it's better to assume it is going to harm you and guard yourself from it, or attack it than to be proven wrong and...well...dead. This worked great for human beings when braving the harsh world, and all it's perils. However, human beings are no longer fighting for survival, and this system really has little benefits outside of that scenario.

  How does this tie into the gamer community? I'll get to that shortly.

  I've noticed one thing that will completely envelope gamers into a nerd rage of almost cosmic proportions. That would be breaking the gamer code of conduct (there really isn't a word for this little niche...I just made that up). See, game developers are the ones that set the fundamental rules and mechanics of the game, but the gamers that play them develop their own system of what is acceptable behavior and what is not based on exploited mechanics within certain games. The obvious unacceptable activities are camping, spawn killing, etc, but they change from genre to genre.

  However, I have noticed that just the simple act of breaking one of these unspoken rules is enough to send some players spiraling into an inescapable fit of rage; regardless of whether it was actually beneficial, or harmful to the person responsible for the offense. This is where cognitive dissonance comes into play. It isn't the consequences of the action that actually incites rage as it is the simple act of it. The brain has already told the person that someone has violated a particular accepted norm, and has targeted them as a threat; whether they are, or are not. That's one of the many ways our brain will fuck with us.

There's that, too. 

 

  My advice to anyone dealing with this type of rage is simply calm down, and rationally ask the person to stop doing whatever they are doing. A well thought out request usually yields better results than just blindly yelling derogatory epithets and insults. If they ignore you and continue there are usually options in games to vote for a player to be booted from the game. If it's pissing you off odds are it's pissing everyone else off as well, and is going to replace the fun you were having with contempt. If neither of those work just leave the lobby, session, etc. It's far better to just walk away from the situation than to dig the hole even deeper.

 

  That's all for this blog, but I have so much more to say on this subject. So, keep an eye out for future blogs, and thanks for listening (or reading...whatever).