Sing to me, Muse, of the Rage of the Blogosphere!
[Broken JPGs too fill me with RAAAAAAGE! So instead of the original image, here is Kharn, a pretty fun guy to be around, courtesy 1d4chan]
We seem to spend a lot of our time RAAAAAAGING about relatively minor things. I know that I certainly do. Be they tiny issues of game balance, minor events in the lives of fictional characters, or fucking Code Geass R2, the things that seem to bring my blood to a boil most often are almost totally irrelevant on any significant sort of scale. And I won't say that I don't feel like I passionately hate some of these things. But, certainly, my hate could be better spent, couldn't it? There exist a myriad of real problems that I could put that mental and emotional energy into raging about, and maybe helping to alleviate or solve.
The problem is certainly one of proximity and self-involvement, as it always is when I consider why I'm wasting my time on something when I could be doing good in the world. But, I should hope that I have more important things going on, even in my own life, that overshadow the irritation I feel about frickin' Warriors and how overpowered they are.
Maybe it's safe to hate trivial things. I cannot change most of them, in the end, so my rage can stew eternally without ever requiring me to take real action that might inconvenience me beyond writing an angry missive to Blizzard about the dire state of Starcraft II because of b0rken Void Rays.
Maybe I don't really hate them. I dislike them, and I play-act hating them so that I can blow-off my irritation. I've certainly felt deeper, more primal, less coherent rage than what I feel about even the most brutal of literary betrayals that I have experienced. Still, this seems a matter of scale, not of kind. I just hate some things more passionately than I hate Rogues. But, in terms of raw time spent raging about something, regardless of intensity, Rogues may take the cake, or at least come close.
Maybe I just need to RAAAGE about something sometimes, and these trivial things are convenient. When I have a more pressing matter, I focus on that, but when I don't, that excess RAAAGE has to go somewhere, and it goes into little things that don't really matter. But this seems wrong. I don't think I have a RAAAGE quota that I need to exhaust per day. That's as silly as putting an incoherent ending on a great series, thus ruining it FOREVER.
In the end, I don't really know. There's probably actual intelligent literature about the psychology of anger somewhere. Maybe Mr. Flask knows something about it? It'd explain how he's so good at getting Jesse's goat.
-Stormshrug
P.S.: I think Flask left something in this post for you, Jesse.
Note: Jesse doesn't read any of our blogs ;_;
ReplyDeleteAlso, Void Rays are far from b0rken. Also, I'll see if I can dig something up in some of my textbooks re: raaaage. But also^3, I agree with you, although I don't feel my trivial raaaaggee would be better spent on "higher ideals" or more real problems or however you want to phrase it.
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ReplyDeleteI sometimes get the feeling that there is a rage quota that must be fulfilled. I know that I get antsy quite often. If there is a rage quota, there probably isn't a simple explanation for how it works, but I'm sure that any biologist worth his proteins would point to hormones first. As far as what triggers their release and function, it could be anything.
ReplyDeleteA good thing about trivial rages is that you know they're trivial, so you can be mad about them until you get tuckered out, and then move on to the next thing. Getting mad at something big and important can be a life-long event, especially if you're mad enough about it. There are things to do in life other than fix things that you're mad about, like making new things for other people to be mad about.
Also, it's fun to augment the RAAAAGE. It can lead to hilarious situations and improvisation. I'm pretty sure you all know that I never actually was mad at Aaron about the water bottle, I was merely disappoint because he never bothered to come up with a system so that he could remember to keep it with him and quench his thirst with something that wasn't diet Coke.
Jesse, I find your screen name unBEARable. I'm just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteI figure the thing about trivial things (like the overpoweredness of warriors, or the ridiculousness of not having Spawn Larvae on autocast) is that you spend, like, all your leisure time staring these facts in the face, so it's easy to get annoyed.
Also, I did have a system for the water bottle! Step 1: Bring water bottle to the Tower. Step 2: Leave it in Jesse's room. Step 3: Grab it each time I want to have some water near Jesse's room.
Also came with the side-benefit of helping Jesse fulfill his rage quota, so everybody wins! He should be thanking me.