Unhelpful

Note for those of you who’ve come here specifically to read this article: check the byline before bashing “Lum” on the web boards.

I am an adult.

Whether or not this is all it’s cracked up to be is an open question, but without a doubt, there are certain advantages. I could list you a hundred, but I’ll just list four that immediately come to mind (and they’re not even the top four):

* I have a “house”, not a “room”

* Driving is fun, especially when the car is yours. So is sex, especially when it’s not in a car.

* If, for whatever reason, I want to screw up my sleep schedule, my mother isn’t going to be upset (though she certainly wishes I’d call more - I really should, you know).

* I can order adult beverages in public restaurants. Sometimes they actually card me, though I’m sure it’s usually just flattery so I’ll leave a bigger tip.

Now, the point of this isn’t to display “superiority” to my juniors in any way. After all, they’re all going to be adults sometime, too, and the four points I’ve mentioned will apply to them just as much as they do to me, so bragging about chronology would absurd in the extreme. The point is that this is how it is, and that there are perks.

Cute is good … to a point.

I have three cats that are very cute. I find the very concept of Hello Kitty amusing (thanks Ely, you bastard), though probably because Japanese pop culture is so blatantly weird by American standards rather than for the innate cuteness of it. I have fond memories of Kimba the White Lion, which immediately followed Underdog on TV when I was four.

I am not four.

I love playing with and talking to children. I don’t talk down to them: I speak English, not baby talk. When my sister was little, it used to bug me to no end when one of my cousins would talk down to her. I’ve been told that I’ve missed my true calling by not becoming a teacher.

I am not a sex-crazed cute-fetishist leg-humping four-year-old poodle. I have never been one, and I don’t like associating with them.

They are, however, legion in our community. When did this happen and why? I’m not sure I want to know, though I am certain it predates the MRPG community by a longshot.

I don’t care what other adults (or, for that matter, teens) do privately for amusement. It’s none of my business, and it doesn’t affect me. When public forums degenerate from being places to discuss the game to being places to “virtually snuggle”, all intelligent discussion moves to other venues, and that does, to a certain degree. When significant numbers of the applicable dev teams decide not to leave when the intelligent discussion does, preferring to virtually flirt with virtual faries, use cutseyverbs on their most vapid fans, and otherwise engage in conversation in threads where 90% of the posts are “NT” rather than discuss real game issue on the channels where adults are still allowed to act like adults, that affects the whole community.

I played Ultima Online. I play Asheron’s Call. I have never logged into FurryMUCK, FurryMUD, or Furcadia. Why? Because FurryMUCK, cutseyplay, and TinySex don’t interest me, and I figured not playing games with others who do like that sort of thing was probably the best way to avoid it. That’s a “You don’t like this, don’t go where this is done” sort of thinking. Return the favor.

I too will never fuzzle ever.

Please comment in our “baby talk-free” forum. [dead link]