Positivity, Like Politeness, Costs Nothing

I can be guilty of negative thinking.  By this I mean that can be guilty of assuming the negative, either in quality or intent, with no real knowledge to back it up.  I recognise this about myself and it’s something that I do try to address.  I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.  I accept that when I dislike something it may well be more down to my tastes and expectations than an indictment of the thing being discussed. 

I also like this blog to be positive.  I love my hobby.  Oh, sure, I’ll have the occasional moan about cynical releases, the fixation many players seem to have on D&D, certain companies such as Steve Jackson Games (though I will give credit where it is due) and Asmodee (Shatterpoint looks good!), some pretty bad bundles and the like, but I’m generally pretty amiable.  My reviews are generally pretty positive because I tend to review and share things I like.  My most frequent posts are my Friday ones where I just share things that are cool! 

I sometimes think that the tabletop gaming community is a negative place.  Well, that’s not quite true.  I actually think there are a lot of positive people who are drowned out by a loud and sizeable minority. The community around Games Workshop seems to be particularly negative. This is documented by groups such as Rage of Sigmar:

That’s a lot of emotion invested into a game of toy soldiers. Then again, I suppose I post every day about my own toy soldiers, spend significant amounts of time painting them, and am always a little disappointed that I can’t fit quite enough games in. I just don’t see a need to take down someone else’s game. Dystopian Wars is big at club at the moment. I like the models, and I’ve painted some, but I’m just not all that interested in the game any more. I’m not going to stand around and chastise people for playing a game that doesn’t appeal to me. Why would I? What do I gain from that other than bringing more negativity into our local group and getting myself a reputation for being that guy?

And that’s not to say that one should not be allowed to criticise. I think that the scoring system in Warhammer 40,000 is not good. It’s bad. It puts me off playing. I also think there’s too much Power Armour in the game. But you know what, I really like the game. I’ve made it clear that I like 40K.

But we can be measured on what we allow to thrive. Take blogs like Spikey Bits, for example. Not only is this site a huge pit of negativity, bad writing, clickbait, ads, and slightly dubious miniature bundles, it’s actively bad for us. We’ve seen it in other media. If you are continually exposed to this negativity, you will adapt to it. The willingness from sites like this to misrepresent events, launch public attacks on creators, and attempts to find the negative in – or ascribe negative motivation to – anything and everything is troubling. You can criticise and express displeasure in more effective, less toxic ways.

We see this in wider society, of course. There are political blogs on all sides, particularly in my home country of Scotland, which focus on taking down an opponent rather then elevating one’s own argument. Heck, the chap who just took over as CEO of our ruling party recently described people who disagree with him on constitutional issues as “enemies”.

I think this is why I am finding myself culling a lot of my usual reads. I cut the number of Discord servers I use in half, from a little over 40 to a little over 20. I focus on blogs that celebrate and elevate, rather than denigrate and disparage. These blogs are regularly featured in my 5 on Friday posts, but some highlights include:

• Burn After Running
• Unpossible Journeys
• Woehammer
• Sprues & Brews
• Plastic Craic
• Hishgraphics
• The Players’ Aid
• Torg’s Blog
• DM Dave

There are loads more, but these came to mind in the moment.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this post, but some of the reporting, opinion pieces, and other content produced by our community makes me weary. Some of it makes me not want to associate with that community. It’s hard to remember in the moment that we who believe that we have an awesome hobby that should be celebrated are the majority. We shouldn’t let ourselves be drowned out by people who are determined to be unhappy.