Today's thoughts

[placeblocks]

- Guude some what recently commented on a "new" downvoted Reddit thread asking about Etho going to Minecon with something akin to, "He's not going, not even in secret. Just accept it." It got me wondering--why do you think he's content to defend Etho's decision not to go to Minecon, but has been harboring on Beef to attend for months, even going so far as to threaten to buy him a Minecon ticket? True Nancy Drew union, or is there some deep dark secret Etho's hiding from us all?

- While catting with mindcrack_love earlier, we came to the topic of religion. It's somewhat well-known Guude is a non-believer and BDubs is a believer, but I couldn't immediately produce videos to prove either. Can any of you recall times Guude's gone on about religion, or anything BDubs has said? (I remember Guude once saying he couldn't make an event because he had to go to church.) And while on the topic, does their religious stance translate into your interpretations of their Minecraft characters, and if so, how? Given Pakratt's display of Christian symbolism in his skin and builds, I personally feel like there must be some sort of religion in Minecraftia, even if it's a one-man religion, but I'm atheist myself and I've never really thought about it. I figure it might be an interesting topic...

- What does everyone think of the idea of women eventually joining Mindcrack? In general I really would love to see some women on the server because I want to see more females represented in gaming, and as much as I love the slash, it makes me sad to see such an awesome community full of only men. On the other hand, I really do worry that it might somehow change the way the guys play or act. I'm guessing Guude won't let anyone on that doesn't fit, so it's probably an unfounded fear, but I do find myself still sometimes worrying about it. Is that horrible of me? I feel like such a hypocrite, but other than occasionally popping into a Sixelona stream, I don't watch any women LPers. (Some of it is the culture that crops up around them. I can't stand all the fanboys mindlessly fawning over the fact that ZOMG GURLS and their disgusting/embarrassing comments. That's something I'd really hate seeing brought over to Mindcrack. I'd want a female gamer who was popular because she's entertaining, not because she's female.) Perhaps this doesn't really fit the vibe of the community, so feel free to ignore.

Comments

[mindcrack_love]

* I've gotten this feeling lately that Guude's relationship with Etho is one of wanting to protect him from the world, while his with Beef is more about challenging him to do awesome things. I'm pretty sure yesterday's Vinyl Fantasy is the first time Guude has ever censored anyone on his channel - and I'm pretty sure he did it because he knew Etho was uncomfortable with people hearing him swear. I don't know why that disconnect exists, but I feel like it does, you know?

* Other than the video of Bdubs performing at a worship service in 2008 that I linked to on my journal, I haven't heard much of anything overt about his religiousness. I think that religion in Minecraftia can exist, though it's probably generally not organized and kept very private.

* There aren't many women LPers in general! (They do exist, though.) I have no idea why that is. I come from a fandom where the gender divide (really more of a sex divide) is enforced due to notions of fairness and capability due to hormones due to the physical labor involved, so I've gotten used to fandoms made up entirely of men, as horrible as that sounds. And even there it's difficult to escape ZOMG GURLS BOOBS LESBIANS WOO type douchery, even though those women are strong and powerful and technical just like the men. (There's also some weird cultural divides going on about how women who play sports are perceived in the US versus Europe thanks to Title IX, but that's its own can of worms I'm not going to open.)

I would hope that none of the guys on the server would magically change their behavior if a lady enters the room, but there's only one way to find out.

AND SPEAKING OF LADIES AND RELIGION AND MINDCRACK, some questions about the ladies actually involved in the Mindcrackers' lives!

* Why do you think we know so little about Guude's wife but know so much about the rest of his life?

* What do you think of the wives and girlfriends we do know about? Does anyone else find it strange that (other than for Andrea's past in World of Warcraft) they seem to tend not to be gamers despite the men in their lives playing games very seriously? Would you watch something like, say, Bdubs and Nicole working through a Vechs map together?

* Pardon a believer's ignorance, but what's the difference between just dating long-term and marriage for a nonbeliever/atheist/secular person, ignoring the economic factors? Pause is both definitely atheistic and definitely planning on marrying Andrea eventually "once they feel ready", and Guude is married and definitely not religious. Most of the people in my life who are in that group are either asexual/aromantic or reject the concept of marriage, so I don't really have much insight into that. For me as a believer (and as a member of an organized religion) marriage is a spiritual thing, so care to shed a little light on things for me?

EDIT, ALERT ALERT: Here's Pauseypoo talking about how sexy Millbee, Beef, and Guude are, and describing himself as "the flirt of the server".

[guiltyshirts]

Re dating/marriage: I'll have a bash at answering this, since I'm a previously married nonbeliever. :)

Aside from the economic reasons as you said, I don't think there is any one definite reason, other than just wanting to be married. Perhaps it feels like more of a sense of permanence, perhaps wanting to declare your relationship to the world in some way. I realize you don't need the piece of paper to do that, but you may want to have it anyway. I mean, I don't need to hear my boyfriend say 'I love you' to know he does, and he doesn't need me to say it to know I do, but we say it anyway because it's nice to hear and to say.

Re edit: I was just listening to that. <3

[placeblocks]

Guude protecting Etho vs. pushing Beef is interesting, but just isn't a satisfying answer to me. But I'm not sure any answer could be satisfying to me. Kurt doesn't like crowds either, but he's going to Minecon to meet his friends and fans. I'm sure we can never really know, but I hate to think that Etho might not be going because of fear of fans, and of revealing his face because he'd then be hounded at home. I love the whole Mindcrack community, but I hate some of the entitled mentality of the younger fans. I wonder how film celebrities deal with this sort of stuff. Do you think Justin Bieber gets the same sort of entitled fans stalking him as Etho, or is there something about YouTube celebrity that makes fans feel closer and thus more entitled?

- As for me personally, unless the girlfriend/wife was really into the game and somewhat good, I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy watching one of them play. Having said that, when Pause does episodes with Andrea, I find it really difficult to listen to them because he's in-game and she's not. I would enjoy them more if she was playing along side him.

- As for marriage, I don't need God to valid my love for me, so I'm more on the "marriage is a license for benefits" side of atheism, but most of us are raised in a culture that glorifies the whole wedding/marriage concept. I never had childhood "getting married" fantasies, but a lot of my friends, both male and female, have fantasized about their white dresses or "perfect weddings" and walking down the isle with the one they love while their family and friends gather to congratulate them. To me, that makes absolutely perfect sense--to really celebrate your love publicly in front of everyone, and to make a vow to uphold certain standards together, and none of that has anything to do with religion. I don't think marriage SHOULD have anything to do with religion, in fact. Obviously I think it CAN for those who are religious, but I don't think the whole church and priest/pastor/blessing stuff should have anything to do with the actual benefits of marriage. It's why the whole marriage debate for gays is so disturbing, because it's religion denying people a government benefit, and that's unconstitutional. We have separation of church and state for a reason. If churches don't want to marry gays (or atheists or blacks or midgets or horses) they are absolutely 100% allowed not to because they are a private institution. But they're not allowed to force that across the board. Christianity didn't invent marriage. They don't get to monopolize it for themselves.

Sorry, ranting there.

- As for genderqueerness question later down the post, I do find it interesting that there don't seem to be many. I know Sixelona and RainbowCrisp are lesbians, but in terms of "YouTube fame" they're pretty small fry. Statistically speaking, out of the 20+ guys that have been on MindCrack, at least one or two of them should be some level of queer. (Granted, Guude may fit one of those statistics. I have no idea if he's actually bisexual, but I wouldn't be surprised.) But it is interesting that several of them are so openly atheist or non-believers (which is still a very hot topic and a dangerous one to announce when you're trying to be popular) but would remain quiet on the subject of their bisexuality if they were. Guude especially seems like the kind of guy who'd happily admit he used to have a boyfriend or something, if that was the case, and "fuck you if you have a problem with that."

Perhaps there are other queer LPers out there. I don't watch many outside of Mindcrack and there's no one obviously open on Mindcrack, sadly.

[mindcrack_love]

Etho vs. Kurt: Kurt is constantly pushing *himself* to become less socially anxious, though; it's why he started making videos in the first place. I don't get that "I want to learn more about interacting with the world" vibe with Etho. And I do think other celebrities have problems with entitled fans - I see it all the time with famous footballers and man, it makes me *sad*.

Wives and girlfriends playing games: See that's what's weird to me. I'm a lady and a gamer, and I chose a partner who is a gamer, and they chose me too - and we bond over games. Why are so many of these guys dating ladies who aren't gamers, who can't bond with them on something so important to them?

Marriage: Makes sense, makes sense, viewing it as a public celebration and declaration of love. As I said, the romantic atheists in my life tend to view said ceremony as just unnecessary, which is also a valid view. Thanks so much for the enlightenment!

I don't condone everything Christians say - I think in terms of the legal benefits everyone should be able to marry whoever they want! But I will say if legalized gay marriage turns into "everyone who is capable of legally marrying people has to marry every pair that comes up to them and asks, otherwise it's discrimination" that will be a significant problem for the Catholic Church. Why the Church is officially against gay marriage itself right now is a complex thing I don't really want to go into at this point, but yeah, that's a big sticking point in the issue, at least from my understanding. I like the German system where no one involved in a priesthood can do the legal part of marrying - so even those who have "church weddings" generally have a "court wedding" as well - but that comes with its own complications.

Queerness: Aaaaaaaactually the Mindcracker sample size is too small to make any real conclusions. If, say, 10% of males are queer, uniformly distributed across the cultures and age range that Mindcrack represents (which is probably not true, but assumptions have to be made), then the chance of having 22 non-queer people on the server is about 9.8%. That *sounds* rare, but it really isn't - a significance value like that would be considered statistically *not* significant in any modern scientific journal - i.e., we cannot with confidence say "it's extraordinarily implausible that none of these guys are queer". Statistician mod is a statistician! (And yes, I'm willing to redo this calculation with different assumptions on how common queerness is, as well as "there are exactly two openly queer people between all the people on the Mindcrack and Mindcrack Fan Server", but not until I get home from work.)

But it is interesting that people on the server are more likely to talk about religion (or lack thereof) than sexuality. Culture is weird like that.

[placeblocks]

- You make a valid point about Etho vs. Kurt. It's strange, to be sure. I think my brain just wants there to be a ZOMG DEEP REASON for Etho not going/revealing his face (OMG HE'S DEFORMED/HAS NO LEGS/WHATEVER!!!) because I'm so much more outgoing and unshy, so it's hard for me to understand having that fame and NOT wanting to be recognized on the street, or reveal my face. I sort of get it, but it's just not how I'd do it. Harder headspace to get into. Same with Beef.

- I think that some of them didn't expect gaming to take off as a career for them. Perhaps even most of them. BDubs certainly wasn't planning to be a YouTube star when he met Nicole. I think it's a tribute to her love for him that she's weathered the ride with him, as it's not exactly a stable career choice, and they seem very far more traditional when it comes to wanting a stable life. (Versus someone like Pause, who is seems thrilled to be able to afford a two-bed apartment with his girlfriend. BDubs would probably consider that a failure if he couldn't afford a house and car, etc.)

Also, not exactly sure how to go about saying this, but as many girl gamers as there are out there, there are still many more guy gamers. When you're a female gamer, you have a MUCH wider selection of men to choose from for your partner. The reason so many men get all frothy ridiculous around female gamers is because they are so relatively rare. So it's not just as easy to say, "Oh, well I'm a male gamer, so clearly I'll marry a girl gamer." When a woman has 100 men fawning over her existence, she gets to pick the most-suitable-to-her guy. That leaves 99 guys stuck with finding non-gamer girlfriends. (There's also the fact that a lot of gamers don't like the same games. Of all of my awesome female friends who game, only three of them play Minecraft, and none of them play to any serious extent.) So, it doesn't surprise me at all that some of these guys have non-gamer girlfriends/wives.

- Regarding the marriage thing again, I have no problem with the Catholic church refusing to marry gay people. I may not agree with it, but there's a long list of things I don't agree on the Catholic church with. That's why I'm not Catholic. As a private institution, they can refuse to marry same-sex couples. But if two non-Catholics want to get married, I don't see why they should have any say in the matter. I don't think it will EVER become "You're a church, you HAVE to marry people, otherwise it's discrimination." The Catholic church has, for centuries, turned down requests to open the priesthood to women. You could argue that's discrimination too, but they're a private group and they don't have to let in women. They don't have to marry gays. There may be people who protest that or argue with it, but legally there's not obligated.

- Of course your statistics are right, and given some other communities, MindCrack is shockingly open with it's queer acceptance. (Pause's recent, completely straight-faced, "I'm the big server flirt" is a perfect example.) But in a way that makes it even more surprising that there's no one on the server who is queer. (That we know of.) I don't know how the fans would react, but at least you know that the guys on the server would have no problem with it.

[mindcrack_love]

Think of Etho this way: he'd rather be percieved as a mysterious ninja than a normal guy obsessed with redstone and explosions, and part of that is never showing his face. :P He is playing up his persona, just like Zisteau does when he cackles when putting down lava, and that's the role he chooses to play.

This is true about the ladies. I don't want this to turn into my rant of "why don't more girls identify as geeks/gamers in general, it's entertainment just like any kind" because that's boring, but insert that rant here. :P

Regarding Catholicism: Yeah I know, but paranoid conservative Church is paranoid. I don't agree with everything they think, as I said before, but I empathize with their fears. I think we've both said enough here on that, though.

Queers: It is entirely plausible that someone is closeted - I never said it wasn't - but it's also entirely plausible that it really is just 22 straight guys on a server together capable of making that much (awesome) innuendo. I imagine if someone is closeted it's an open secret amongst the boys themselves. (Another thing that is sadly quite possible in my other fandom. Siiiigh.)

[bookworm2692]

My parents really didn't care if they got married or not, they were happy with each other and a wedding (or lack thereof) would not have changed that. They only got married because my mum's dad would have been really uncomfortable with them living together without marriage

[bookworm2692]

Also, you know paulsoaresjr? He and his wife have a minecraft series (man, woman, minecraft) where they play together (the first season was with Paul teaching "MinecraftMum" how to play. They also play with their three kids on a server in a series called "Punchwood Island". So yeah, neither Paul nor MinecraftMum play full time, but they both play together sometimes (actually, MCM only plays when Paul or the kids play with her). Yeah. Does that make sense? Sorry for the rambles

[damnreddit]

I feel like women doing LPs are always going to have a raw deal. There's two stereotypical ways that the average teenage boy can relate to an entertainer on the Tubes -- want to be them, or want to fuck them. Teenage boys do not want to be women, you know? A female LPer is just never going to attract that kind of devoted audience purely off of people who are impressed by what she does and wish they could do it too. Even if the admiration is there I feel it will be kept at a distance. So what's left? Pretty much just sex. And then she'll be blamed for playing up her sex appeal. Damned if she does and ignored if she doesn't.

I would love to see a woman (or five) on Mindcrack and don't think it would be likely to screw up the dynamic of the server. There are plenty of smart-ass, capable women in the world, and at least some of them must have Minecraft LPs. If Guude meets someone suitable at a con, or one of the others knows someone he'd like to promote, or someone from the fanserver is interested, I think they should just do it. It should be someone with a thick skin though. Almost by definition, whoever it is would have a small channel, and I would expect a fair amount of "why does she deserve this shot when X, Y, Z does not/she only got on because she's female" bullshit to go down.

Etho and Minecon: Doc said on yesterday's Mindcrack that Etho's not going because he doesn't like crowds. The server as a whole seems to be very respectful of what he wants in terms of things like this and don't give him grief about it like they might with someone else. As to why? I really have no idea.

Lack of religion and marriage: I feel like marriage means something in society that's independent of religion and spirituality. There are obviously plenty of people who feel like the two things are not separable, among both atheists and believers, but I've never felt that way myself. For me, if I want to make a commitment to spend the rest of my life with someone, then I want to be married. Don't tell me I'm not because it didn't happen in a church.

[mindcrack_love]

Ladies making videos playing games: I definitely feel that. I'm female and I'd love to LP but I have no idea what the reaction will be once I start releasing videos. I guess it kind of helps that the genre I really want to play and display is targeted to a more patient and mature audience than the general teenage one. Seriously, if you have the patience to play something like Dungeon Crawl or ADOM (or hell, Dungeons of Dredmor on Going Rogue permadeath) without tearing your hair in frustration, you probably have enough maturity to get "chick on the Internet does not equal sex object". Plus one of the most respected members of the roguelike community is openly genderqueer and one of the most visible companies in the genre has an awesome anti-bigotry policywhich helps. Still, the only LPers I know in roguelikes are all male and as far as I know all cismale at that. I DON'T GET IT, UNIVERSE.

Speaking of genderqueerness, are there *any* out non-binary LPers out there? That's something I'd be interested in seeing/hearing. I know it takes a metric fuckton ([Bdubs]Get outta here with that foreign talk![/Bdubs]) of courage to do in the generally-bigoted gaming Internet, but still, has anyone taken the plunge?

Non-males on Mindcrack: yup, they'd have to have the world's thickest skin, but apparently that's what it takes to be someone who isn't male on the Internet nowadays, sadly. Would love to see what kind of person it'd be for Guude to pick them, though!

Etho: Everyone is so protective of him! I wonder if there's times he resents it, thinks he can handle the crazed Internet masses by himself because dangit, he's an adult and he can do it and he doesn't need Doc and Guude and whoever else to shield him.

Non-religous marriage: That makes sense to me! One of the closest people to me who is an atheist just says "you all accept my long term relationship as what it is, no piece of paper required" which is also a valid opinion and I get it, but thanks for the other side. :) For me, I plan to marry because I want the spiritual affirmation of things I'm already feeling, but I know that's not for everyone! Thanks for the insight.

[crystalllized]

Girls: All the guys on the Mindcrack server strike me as incredibly respectful of women, and I get the feeling Guude would not tolerate them if they weren't. Their subscribers, however, are not respectful of anything, not even the other guys on the server. As a female, I am aware of the kind of hate girls can get on the Internet, but there are plenty of people who are respectful, and I don't think Guude would even allow the hate to stop him from adding a girl if he thought she was the right fit for the server. HermitCraft recently welcomed Aureylian, and even after joining that server she still has just over 5k subscribers! I've seen more than a few comments about ZombieCleo - she is the only remaining member of TTR not on Mindcrack or HermitCraft (though it would balance better if she joined HermitCraft, so the team is split halfsies) and even not being on a server she's close to 7k. If there's any female who probably 'deserves' to join the server, it's her. But it's also Guude's server and we know he's good friends with Eepblah, so who knows? I could definitely see him adding a girl and then spending three episodes ranting about respect for women.

Etho: I think maybe the other guys are concerned that with Etho's huge amount of subscribers, many of whom are so volatile, that he might get overwhelmed and do things he doesn't want, so they want to help make sure he doesn't get forced into anything. It's nice of them, but I could see Etho getting annoyed at the protection after a while. Etho doesn't need protection - he's one of the cleverest people on the server and he can definitely take care of himself. I'd love to see him prank all the guys for trying to look out for him, maybe letting tons of mobs into their houses? "Don't protect me if you can't even protect yourselves! Haha!"

Religion: no idea. I'm the kind of person who describes themselves as 'spiritual but not religious' and getting married, for me, would be more about the commitment and the promise and saying, yes, I want to be with this person forever and not break up, and I want everyone to know about that commitment. Also, the legal benefits would be awesome for having children and making a life together. I don't really see marriage as a spiritual thing at all for me.

[isi]

Augh, so much interesting discussion on so many interesting topics! I wish I could respond to it all, but I've had a bad day and I don't think I'm up to it. But I'll try to give a quick summary of my thoughts:

Girls: I'd love there to be female players on the server! I just hate that it's such a sticky subject, because it means people still make distinctions between gender, as if that has anything to do with how good a player is or how entertaining they are to watch. But I think on some level, probably not even a conscious one, that is true with how many viewers perceive LPers, and they'll be more critical of a female LPer simply because she's female and therefore "different." So, I feel for whoever turns out to be the first girl on the server, but I hate that I have to.

Religion: I guess I never really thought much about it. Everyone knows Pakratt's openly Christian, but that doesn't really affect his playstyle or anything that I've noticed. There was that one time he ranted about the state of the "Christian rock" music genre, but otherwise I don't notice him talk about it much.

Minecon: I wanted to come up with a crack theory for you, but I'm just not up to it right now.

[mindcrack_love]

Pakratt's spawn build is also an ichthys, just so you know. :P

[isi]

Well yes, there's that too.

[bookworm2692]

To tell you the truth, I didn't realise that some of them were religious, and others weren't. I didn't even think "is so and so religious?" It doesn't matter to me