Today's thoughts

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- 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]

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.

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- 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.)