My favorite part about the Gorums.
Someone writes something about a topic. Maybe the opinion is controversial, maybe it's not. The funny thing about the Gorums is that people have to read into the statement and infer something about the psychological state of the speaker, instead of taking the comments at face value.
So if someone writes something about the profound joy in slavery, they must be psychologically deluded that comes from some deep traumatic incident in their former love life. Or if someone wants to write about the thrill of dominating a woman, the people must respond that such a sensation only occurs because of some deep seated mommy issues that manifest themselves into gruesome rape fantasies.
It's so utterly bizarre. For instance, I posted two parody pieces on the Gorums- and the automatic reaction is to parse and dissect the meanings behind the parody pieces: what was my motivation for writing them and what am I trying to critique about the larger community? People can't just accept funny things at face value. No, no- they have to dissect and infer all this crap that might or might not be there.
The funny thing, to me anyway, is how terrible they are in the psychological analysis though. Most psychological analysis requires an analytical approach: define the action, attribute to its source, determine what the motivation behind that action is, decide whether the outcome of that action is good or not, connect the outcome of the action with its motivation, and finally explore numerous solutions that provide the best motivation with the best outcome. But it's important to note that each step is seperate from the one previous. You must first define the action and THEN decide whether it's good or bad. You cannot define an action as good or bad.
Someone writes something about a topic. Maybe the opinion is controversial, maybe it's not. The funny thing about the Gorums is that people have to read into the statement and infer something about the psychological state of the speaker, instead of taking the comments at face value.
So if someone writes something about the profound joy in slavery, they must be psychologically deluded that comes from some deep traumatic incident in their former love life. Or if someone wants to write about the thrill of dominating a woman, the people must respond that such a sensation only occurs because of some deep seated mommy issues that manifest themselves into gruesome rape fantasies.
It's so utterly bizarre. For instance, I posted two parody pieces on the Gorums- and the automatic reaction is to parse and dissect the meanings behind the parody pieces: what was my motivation for writing them and what am I trying to critique about the larger community? People can't just accept funny things at face value. No, no- they have to dissect and infer all this crap that might or might not be there.
The funny thing, to me anyway, is how terrible they are in the psychological analysis though. Most psychological analysis requires an analytical approach: define the action, attribute to its source, determine what the motivation behind that action is, decide whether the outcome of that action is good or not, connect the outcome of the action with its motivation, and finally explore numerous solutions that provide the best motivation with the best outcome. But it's important to note that each step is seperate from the one previous. You must first define the action and THEN decide whether it's good or bad. You cannot define an action as good or bad.
So...you notice a person is binge eating a lot. That is the action. It is neither good nor bad. Binge eating can be a good thing for someone who is on the verge of starvation and desperately needs calories. Binge eating is a bad thing when a normally healthy person uses it as a device to eventually purge and lose weight. This is why action and motivation are diagnosed as two separate actions. The context changes the meaning.
However, on the Gorums, the prudent diagnosis is to define the action with its motivation: "people that are femlaws are retarded monkeys who have never read a book and ruin Gor." Essentially, being an armchair psychologist on the Gorums means to assume a million and ten things about the statement being analyzed (of which, none are true) and then to slap a meaningless label on the assumptions in order to validate their criticism. To wit, the label femlaw is created as a means to insult people who choose a different play style than others.
It's one thing to be an armchair psychologist and try to break down a series of decisions into its component parts and then analyze the decisionmaking. It's quite another thing to mash all the parts together and slap a label on the whole process. The former is a method that leads towards understanding. The second is just childish and gossip mongering.
I think this is why a lot of people on the Gorums are fundamentally unhappy when they roleplay (well, they either say or imply that they are- it's equally as plausible they're lying just to gain sympathy). They have accumulated this base of knowledge thanks to the groupthink mentality that is perpetrated on the boards (i.e., the more knowledge you acquire, the better rper you become- which isn't true, but it's the myth they like to believe). And then when they try to apply that groupthink into their roleplay lives, they are surprised to discover that no one thinks like them. It's the equivalent of the D&D dorks in elementary school deciding amongst themselves what it means to be cool (creating a high level character, naturally) and then being surprised when they get beat up constantly for showing off their "coolness."
I think this is why a lot of people on the Gorums are fundamentally unhappy when they roleplay (well, they either say or imply that they are- it's equally as plausible they're lying just to gain sympathy). They have accumulated this base of knowledge thanks to the groupthink mentality that is perpetrated on the boards (i.e., the more knowledge you acquire, the better rper you become- which isn't true, but it's the myth they like to believe). And then when they try to apply that groupthink into their roleplay lives, they are surprised to discover that no one thinks like them. It's the equivalent of the D&D dorks in elementary school deciding amongst themselves what it means to be cool (creating a high level character, naturally) and then being surprised when they get beat up constantly for showing off their "coolness."
Of course, on the Gorums, it's common knowledge that THEY'RE the cool kids and everyone else is a retard. And you can't dissuade them otherwise because they have a PhD in arm chair psychology at Gorums Grad School.
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