Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Alternate Identities

I have a question for you. Who do you tell about your blogging and/or gaming? And when do you tell them?

I recently told my wife Avril about this blog. I'm excited to share this site with her but still nervous about it. Weird. So if I mysteriously stop posting, you'll know my better half dropped the hammer. Just joking. I guess it's one thing to share my thoughts more or less anonymously with random people on the Internet and another thing to share with someone I know in real life.

I could see telling close real life gamer friends and family about my blog... some day. I'm only a few months old, so maybe at the one year anniversary I'll have a big coming out party. Wait. I didn't mean it like that.

Now, when it comes to talking face-to-face, I don't make it a secret that I play video games. I have no issues telling people I like games. But...if I'm talking to non-gamers about it, I won't drone on about raiding in World of Warcraft or finally finishing the mail delivery quests in Lord of the Rings Online or my killer black control deck in Magic: The Gathering. When I'm talking with some of my hardcore gamer co-workers, the floodgates open.

I'd like to think this is normal behavior. Not some sign of deeper psychological issues.

2 comments:

Paul said...

I think that's common.

People I work with know I'm a gamer and enjoy games. I don't go into detail or really get into what I'm playing unless someone is interested. Oddly enough, I have a number of people coming to me to ask about buying PCs or which consoles are decent (beats, me, I've only got a PS2 and a Wii).

I do have a number of gaming friends who all know about my blog, but don't necessarily view it often. Some are reading it and not commenting. What ever floats their boat. Oddly enough, my long standing gamer buddy (my wife is jealous of this guy because we've been playing online games for about 10 years now) doesn't read it unless I point him to specific entries. He then proceeds to ridicule me and ask why the heck I bother. I then turn the discussion into something more deep and likely to irritate him such as responding with, "Luke > Vader".

The wife knows about it, I think. I know I've mentioned it to her but I 'm not sure she was listening. Her eyes glaze over when I start talking about anything computer or game related. To be honest, I don't want her reading it because I might end up ranting about her one day or her mom... and she hears enough of that already. :)

My family (who mostly lives on the other side of the country) doesn't really know about it and, surprisingly, my guild members don't really know about it either. I think I'd be more inclined to let my guildies know about the site than my family members even though my mom and dad both like gamers. My dad is a super min/maxer who created a spreadsheet to maximize and plot out his advancement path through skills and attributes in TES: Oblivion (hey, he was between jobs). My mom plays along and seems to have fun too.

I guess I haven't really told my guildies about it simply because I didn't want to get into debates with them over things I might post. I like keeping things drama free.

For me it's a place to ramble about stuff and rant about things. I don't really care if no one reads it, in fact, I suspect I'll make some entries I hope no one reads. It's bound to happen... I'll be overtired and undercaffinated or pop on and make an entry after having too much beer at lunch (is there really such a thing?).

brackish said...

I tend to tell a bunch of people because I want as many people reading as possible and want the feedback. I like to hear criticism and tbh, don't mind the wife reading it either. She posts comments from time to time with her alias "wife" and they are usually pretty funny. She never tells me she is doing it, I just log on and there she is in the log. I always hope its not about my laundry.

Also, how old your blog is has nothing to do with how "good" it is. You could post every day for the next two years and be absolutely full of crap. I'm not saying you are obviously.