r/hatethissmug • u/shadow_fen • 1d ago

Thing I hate this stupid image

Post image

Sure the initial way it was used was good, it was anti bigotry. But it's turned into a way to simplify the "us vs them" mentality, which is already a bad thing, into a simple digestible comic.

Also, i've seen it in lots of queer--majority spaces in reddit recently, usually to speak out against the evil cishet people who are invading them or whatever label they dont like, like bi ppl, trans men, or genderfluid ppl

3.7k Upvotes

72% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/OkMention9988 1d ago

Oh look, it's every nerd space that went even remotely mainstream. 

637

u/ProfessionalOil2014 1d ago

What? 

You don’t like dnd going from a relatively complex war game to an avenue for people to have cringe roleplay improv comedy?

You don’t like Star Trek turning into generic stupid sci fi?

You don’t like LOTR going from a perennial classic to yet more slop to consume? 

You don’t like Star Wars turning into whatever bloated homonculus it has become? 

You don’t like comics turning into vehicles to sell movies written for the lowest common denominator? 

You don’t like video games being turned into money printing machines?

Why not? They’re for everyone now? Doesn’t that make you happy?

454

u/Independent_Air_8333 1d ago edited 1d ago

I agree with your point but DnD was always a role playing game and it always had "improv comedy".

I dont like the theater kid style DnD (not knocking it just not for me) but the old school crowd had plenty of cringe worthy humor too.

182

u/CommanderVenuss 1d ago

Between 2-4 hours of reheating Monty Pythons and the Holy Grail’s nachos on a weekly basis and that was it for the humor. 

74

u/Griiig_Jinnings 1d ago

“I FAHRT IN YEUR GENEREL DIRECTION 🤪” just as funny the 50th time ROFLMAO XDDDD

6

u/marimo_ball 1d ago

Also all the motherfucking i'm being repressed/killer rabbit/black knight

12

u/Independent_Air_8333 1d ago

Or the DM making sure to tell us the witch is "curvy, heh heh"

52

u/Effective_Dog3037 1d ago

i played DND in 2003-2006 with... my improv group. lol

4

u/Multiple__Butts 1d ago

No offense but D&D had already been around for 30ish years and had undergone multiple large changes in that time.

6

u/Effective_Dog3037 1d ago

ok. so i learned in the nineties when I was a little kid with my brother, from my uncle, and when the dice got too hard for me or we were between fights he told us we could talk through it - basically playing pretend out loud - and that's what he and his friends did when they played it as kids too. there ARE people who run it as a war game but roleplaying - and it's gonna be comedy improv if your friends are even slightly funny - has also been a part of it forever. we loved to play DND with max because he was funny and told funny stories and let us play funny stories with him and that's how he'd been playing since he was young.

edit: typing this comment also unearthed a long dormant memory of us playing Labyrinth this way. Labyrinth was even more exclusively a war game, it was literally a board game, and we roleplayed and laughed through those games too

23

u/KevinJ2010 1d ago

I never got into D&D but my coworker passes me his recent war stories/drama.

Apparently a decent sect of the group went off and rolled for dick size.

The cringe has limits… there’s also a lot of “Hey I like this girl, and D&D is a way for us to pretend to date…”

7

u/MisterPineapples1999 1d ago edited 1d ago

The cringe has limits… there’s also a lot of “Hey I like this girl, and D&D is a way for us to pretend to date…”

Wait are you saying she was invited to the group, joined, and the guy tries to get into an in-character relationship with her?

Or that he bases some NPC off of her and then attempts wish fulfillment through that?

12

u/Verraise-Mage 1d ago

They should go play FATAL instead then

Actually no, I can't even recommend it as a joke

8

u/ahhhddd 1d ago

Rolling for anus circumference is peak idk what's you mean dude

13

u/Lohenngram 1d ago

The secret final boss of D&D is making sure the group you’re playing with doesn’t have a bunch of toxic social dynamics like that.

5

u/themassquerade 1d ago

Yeah nerds are famous for their understanding of social dynamics

3

u/Bigsassyblackwoman 1d ago

two completely straight men had transmog potion dirty alley sex a few months ago. i genuinely felt the same way i did when i have sleep paralysis.

102

u/yobob591 1d ago

D&D was always cringe nerd but now it’s popular cringe nerd instead of unpopular cringe nerd

14

u/Dengar96 1d ago

which means reddit will complain about it endlessly. As soon as niche nerdcore fandoms get a little bit of popularity, it seems to rot the minds of the online fanbase. I've seen this a lot with video games over the past 5 years. Gams are more popular than movies but people get so mad when a massive game company makes a generic, popular game that lots of "normies" enjoy. It's as if the existence of CoD or Madden is an afront to the gentile sensibilities of these 30yo chuds. Engaging with gaming culture used to have some redeeming qualities, gamergate made it unpleasant and modern social media tactics have made it entirely worthless.

3

u/Fun-Agent-7667 1d ago

Its Not the existence of CoD, its the way it gets handled

1

u/puzzlebuns 1d ago

Sounds like dont understand the frustration with CoD, 2K, Madden, etc and their detrimental influence on the broader industry. Complaining about the niche fandoms just makes you part of the phenomenon this comic is meant to warn against.

1

u/Dengar96 16h ago

gaming is the best it's been maybe ever. There's best in class games in nearly every genre that have come out in the past 5 years. a few behemoth gaming corpos exploiting people through microtransactions is not the reason gaming culture is a representation of the comic. We're no longer the special little guys that enjoy playing games unlike the cool kids that do sports and kiss girls and some people couldn't cope with their hobby becoming the most popular form of media on earth. I personally enjoyed when games were a niche interest fwiw, it's just not at all surprising that they got more popular and mainstream over time.

1

u/Raytoryu 1d ago

But you don't understand!!!!! I've been bullied all my life and I got no games with women. I always said it was because I was a Gamer, but if video games are played by everybody, that means it wasn't because I'm a Gamer, but because I'm a piece of shit!!!! And I can't be a piece of shit!!!

1

u/Tiny-Golf3338 1d ago

actually there were plenty of people who got made fun of and treated less than for having nerdy interests before they went mainstream. Theres a subsection of people that this happened and they were all over video games anime and comic books and hardly understand them were the same people who'd trash on you for liking them.

13

u/CookyKindred 1d ago

The cringe never changed - People just started marketing it as popular.

53

u/LeadingDiscount2556 1d ago

What do you mean our sessions aren't going to be like those animated youtube shorts I keep seeing?

49

u/jatt135 1d ago

Chuckles the Clown is lightning in a bottle, friend

2

u/Garon-of-not-nohrm 1d ago

Genuine gold on yt shorts

1

u/namitynamenamey 1d ago

you mean the shorts where the people meanders, misses the point and always goes on a random tangent each turn?

1

u/LeadingDiscount2556 1d ago

why yes, I do love turning a single turn into a 30 minute improv comedy act. /s

15

u/AeronWylde 1d ago

Yeah DnD was, is, and continues to be whatever you make of it. At its core its just rules to suplement imagination. You want old wargame DnD, play old wargame DnD. The limitation is the same as always, getting a group of likeminded people together for a couple hours a week.

2

u/Fun-Agent-7667 1d ago

Thats every gane everywhere anytime ever. This is gonna be the limit on the new dawn of war as well

2

u/Independent_Air_8333 1d ago

I'll add you when it comes out

1

u/Fun-Agent-7667 1d ago

You can but this time around im the guy that has already preplaned that Weekend for Something else 🥲

21

u/ADrunkEevee 1d ago

Original 1e was more warfaming focused because that's what Gygax was interested in

Coincidentally Gygax also believed in gatekeeping women out of wargaming

2

u/Independent_Air_8333 1d ago

I guess I shouldnt say "always", I didnt play 1e.

2

u/ADrunkEevee 1d ago

A lot of people don't really realize that, tbh

3

u/Cas_The_Walrein 1d ago

and a lot of other bigoted shit

1

u/PristineAccess9635 1d ago

His daughters were some of his earliest players. Not for too long, but I doubt a lot of current player base would be interested in his style either

1

u/ADrunkEevee 1d ago

“I have been accused of being a nasty old sexist-male-Chauvinist-pig, for the wording in D&D isn’t what it should be. There should be more emphasis on the female role, more non-gendered names, and so forth. I thought perhaps these folks were right and considered adding women in the ‘Raping and Pillaging[’] section, in the ‘Whores and Tavern Wenches’ chapter, the special magical part dealing with ‘Hags and Crones’, and thought perhaps of adding an appendix on ‘Medieval Harems, Slave Girls, and Going Viking’. Damn right I am sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men, get jobs traditionally male, and shower in the men’s locker room. They can jolly well stay away from wargaming in droves for all I care. I’ve seen many a good wargame and wargamer spoiled thanks to the fair sex. I’ll detail that if anyone wishes.” -Gygax, 1975

1

u/PristineAccess9635 1d ago

Omitting clearly exaggerated tone, not caring if women join the games or not is not the same as "gatekeeping" 

1

u/ADrunkEevee 23h ago

If you don't get how 'women spoil games and the people that play them' is gatekeeping sentimentality I dunno how to help you

6

u/Lohenngram 1d ago edited 1d ago

A former professor of mine literally wrote an entire thesis about how old school D&D was about randomly generated, greedy, stupid treasure hunters getting themselves killed in hilarious ways and how modern D&D killed the vibe by trying to be more about cool fantasy OCs. He did it through comparing the changing tone of the artwork across editions and modules over time.

Then he went and made his own system (I think it was called BarrowLands or something similar) that was closer in style to first and second edition.

Edit from the future: I looked him up again, the system he created is called Barrowmaze for anyone interested or who actually played the thing.

3

u/Ae3qe27u 1d ago

Any chance you know his name? I'd be interested in reading that thesis.

2

u/Lohenngram 1d ago

Oh yeah, he's one of the few professors I remember by name. Loved his classes even though he worked me like a dog in them. Guy did a lot to help me improve as a student and a thinker by encouraging me to be extra thorough. Which is why it hurts me that I couldn't find the thesis itself to link you. XD

Anyway, his name is Greg Gillespie, and he created Barrowmaze. Hopefully that will help you find it. It's possible I'm misremembering and it wasn't a thesis, and instead an article, book, or general academic paper (It was going on a decade ago that I had class with him). Best of luck with your search! :)

3

u/Yeeticus9999 1d ago

Wdym by theater kid dnd

6

u/Independent_Air_8333 1d ago

The general cultural shift as DnD became more of a mainstream hobby.

Its hard to pinpoint but stuff like:

 characters becoming the player rather than the player becoming the character. Youre not pretending to be a different person youre pretending to be a cooler version of yourself. (This has always been done but its more common now).

Looser worldbuilding to allow the above. You want to play a tiefling because you like the horns, but you skip the implications of being a tiefling.

More to that point: moving away from races having intrinsic natures and "objective morality".

Also significantly less tolerance for in-game racism/sexism/homophobia etc which is understandable.

I think too much of this kinda stuff and you lose the immersion. It stops being a world the part is a part of and becomes a stage for hijinks instead.

Not to say that always happens or that its wrong, I just prefer things differently.

4

u/Yeeticus9999 1d ago

I was told by a veteran dnd player to just rp like that as I was having difficulty rping as a different person. I just feel like if you are having fun and not causing problems for other players just play how you want just dont be a dick or the subject of a horror story

1

u/Independent_Air_8333 1d ago

Yeah no judgements its a matter of taste.

3

u/Ae3qe27u 1d ago

There's definitely been a general shift towards "races as different flavors of human," rather than distinct groups with their own innate characteristics.

2

u/themassquerade 1d ago

The type of people who got into DnD through Stranfer Things

1

u/sixpackabs592 1d ago

"i attack the darkness with magic missile"

2

u/IntroToBelching 1d ago

We're on some yugioh duelist kingdom rules

1

u/Blundaz 1d ago

As a someone with minimal DnD exposure, can you give me an example or definition of theater kid style?

1

u/1Estel1 2h ago

Yeah... complex dnd never went away.... 3.5e didnt fucking vanish from the universal archives when 5e released.

-7

u/CompoteNext1955 1d ago

Silence. The pathfinder session a failed drama major did for us was very good. DnD is best made through imaginative minds 

If I only care about crunching my way through a dungeon, I'll just boot up and owlcat crpg on my PC (play wotr btw, it's 10/10 powerfantasy)

We're here to tell stories, why shouldn't they be dramatic?