# Is gaming your gateway?



## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 7, 2013)

> Who is in your gaming circles? Are they friends or people you only game with? Do they overlap into other circles in your life like business or family?




The great philosopher, Dave Chappele, once observed: if you smoke weed, at some point, you will have friends with whom you have nothing in common but smoking weed.

(But that's true of anything you do a lot of.*)

My gaming group consists of people I went to high-school with to people who joined the group as friends of friends.  Some of these guys are friends, some are just guys I game with.

In one of my previous game groups, I'm pretty sure one guy was a racist.  We still somehow managed to put that aside once a week for a few years.









* by that, I mean if you do X, you will eventually have friends with whom X is your only thing in common, not weed.


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## Janx (Aug 7, 2013)

I'm still friends with people I've know since 2nd grade.  We started gaming together, and have kept relationships up (often around gaming) for 30 years.

Gaming's not all we do, but it is certainly a glue to keeping the crew together (bear in mind, I have lived the last 17 years over 1500 miles away from them).

Most of my current friends are in my new gaming group.

So gaming is the glue in most cases, but it's more of the compatibility test.  If you game, you are wierd enough to hang out with us.

My newest friends, I met through the jazz band I did a stint with.  They don't specifically game, but they are gaming compatible.  Like me, they're not into sports and the usual mainstream interests.  Which is why we click pretty well.

I think the key element is a common interest or situation brings people together which set sup the opportunity for them to become friends.  Gaming works.  Doing a group hobby (jazz band) works.  It breaks the ice.

I certainly don't expect to talk to or befriend anybody I am randomly standing next to in a crowd or line at the grocery store.  The key element requires interaction with the other candidate person to raise their status to friend.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 8, 2013)

It hasn't been a gateway for my little anecdotal existence.  I've always had a compartmentalization of friends due to a few diverse interests and the competing, silly, human tribalism that comes with those factions; jocks and nerds.  There was a little bit of overlap between the two groups with the few athletes who would "come out of the closet" once another one would first.  Its terribly amusing.  I think many folks might be shocked at the robust percentage of tough-guy jocks who actually have nerdy little boys who want to play elf-games (and secretly do while "in the closet") buried (and closely guarded) deep in their psyche...but alas, the fiercely flailing male ego, entrenched in machismo athletic culture during their adolescent period, often holds sway.  Due to that silly fragility, I always had to keep my mates segregated and just sort of live a weird outsider life in both circles.


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## Janx (Aug 8, 2013)

Manbearcat said:


> It hasn't been a gateway for my little anecdotal existence.  I've always had a compartmentalization of friends due to a few diverse interests and the competing, silly, human tribalism that comes with those factions; jocks and nerds.




Really?

While some folks may suffer from over-abundance of Jerkosterone, I've never met any guys who act as you describe.

As youth, we even had the HS quarterback playing D&D in class.


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## Manbearcat (Aug 8, 2013)

Janx said:


> Really?
> 
> While some folks may suffer from over-abundance of Jerkosterone, I've never met any guys who act as you describe.
> 
> As youth, we even had the HS quarterback playing D&D in class.




Its not even so much "jerkosterone".  Most/all of the guys I'm describing were my good friends and plenty are lifelong friends.  Its just the silly xenophobic tribalistic/pop culture stigmas that play out in adolescence generally and in male social ritualism specifically.  I've always straddled the line of nerd/jock so I was able to see the artillery from both sides of the trenches.  The amusing thing about it was how much the nerds wanted to be the jocks (and participate in athletics and all that comes with it) and how much jocks wanted to be open nerds (and play elf games, collect comic books, etc) rather than closet ones.


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## Mark CMG (Aug 9, 2013)

Rel said:


> (. . .) except you don’t get to keep any of the loot.





And they bought that, eh? 


Not surprisingly, gaming is a huge part of my life (as well as a portion of my business life) and, as such, many of the folks I know and befriend are gamers.  Though I hasten to add that I have several distinct circles of friends and acquaintances that have very little overlap.  For instance, none of my family are gamers nor the extended friends and relatives that occupy that circle.  I know of many gamers who have immediate family (spouses or siblings) who are gamers as well as whole families with several generations who are gamers.


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## megamania (Aug 11, 2013)

Sadly, not for me.    Few of my friends enjoy gaming.  The groups I've had in the past either did drugs or turned their backs on me as i was not a well-to-do person. Eh.  Such is life.


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## Jhaelen (Aug 12, 2013)

I think, these days all of my friends are gamers. Some of them started out as friends, and others became friends after we started meeting regularly to game.


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