17 Jan 2012 No Comments
Of Gamers and Stereotypes
Stereotypes exist for a reason (because they tend to be true), and there’s always someone to argue it. For example, black people=fried chicken, watermelon and Kool-Aid (“OH YEAH!”).
An example that hits close to home for myself and most of the people I consider to be good friends in the gaming (both vg and RPG) community is the concept of vats of Mt. Dew/energy drinks, snack cakes/other junk food, pizza, lack of good hygiene, and lack of exercise directly (A.K.A., “not leaving mom’s basement”) leading to being overweight/obese. While this is a nationwide (almost global) thing, gamers of all types tend to get the most crap for it.
This became clearer as I checked out photos from a gathering at a game store and damn near every person in that store was pretty overweight/obese.
I think that as a community, we need to do something, like a grassroots effort. I’m not saying picket fast food places or anything, but maybe start suggesting things like LARPs to get people off their butts and moving, or “instead of the meat-eating-meatasaurus pizza, let’s throw some onions, peppers and mushrooms on there.” Baby steps.
It’s possible. Mike Richards has a blog called The Portly Paladin (http://theportlypaladin.wordpress.com/), where’s he’s fighting his own personal Battle of the Bulge and kicking ass.
Anyway, as I re-commence my personal battle against being overweight and over-eating, I just wanted to share a few thoughts.
Do you have any (constructive) thoughts or ideas on how we can, little-by-little, start to encourage change throughout our community?
