Digitally Disillusioned

A recurring theme for me in the last few weeks has been the notion of tolerance, specifically in tolerating those around me that indulge in pursuits to what I perceive to be an unreasonable degree. It is utterly coincidental that I do this during the NHL playoffs when Canada, as a whole, becomes obsessed with hockey. So while I’ll pay lip service to that (look I just did!) I’ll for the most part leave what many may see as the most obvious, or at least timely, example of obsession alone.

Instead I want to be very nerdy and start here.

For those who arrive here from other avenues let me prepend commentary by saying that I am a forum moderator of the Penny Arcade Games and Technology forum. I enjoy the work, the people, the games and the subculture. However being a prominent internet community of a subculture means we attract people immersed in related subcultures, and we have our fair share of anime fans. The link above is a discussion of anime and video game toys.

$100 US toys, in some cases.

I’ve captured a few images from that forum thread so this will make sense once that thread expires. What it clearly demonstrates is people who have a deep and sincere love for these toys. They adore the collection and display of them. The covet them, trade them, talk about them, and show them off. These are not credited to their original creators - sorry bout that.

Now I actually have a small collection of such figures. I have a few Warcraft figures, a Gandalf the Grey from Lord of the Rings, and both good and evil Ash from Army of Darkness. There was a time in my life when I actively worked to increase this collection, but that culminated and ended with the purchase of a ridiculous Matrix: Reloaded acti..well…its kind of a playset really, if one was to play with these things. Which one doesn’t.

I purchased the above set for something like 95% off the retail price, something like $5. I took it home, opened it, and realized I had a giant and tacky piece of plastic that captured pretty much nothing that made the Matrix films interesting and exciting, and there was no possible place I could display such a thing without being utterly embarrassed to own it. Something like this fetishises elements of a story, when it is the story that is the thing that attracts us, or, well, should attract us. But I’ve jumped right to the end of my story.

My collection started as an idle fascination, small little idols I found amusing in some way that I put next to the computer monitor. They reminded me of things I liked, thinks I enjoyed. They were private relics of my personality. But as I indulged in the occasional purchase, others dived in head first and a whole industry soon exploded on to the scene. Pulled into the stream via the sheer force of momentum I soon found that I was the proud owner of a whole bookshelf of such things. This is about the time the aforementioned Matrix toy landed on my desk.

Looking back, the introspection that followed was driven entirely out of the need to economize space. The shelf was full, and my new (very large) addition required that I find new space to dedicate to the collection. At this point my wife questioned why I was purchasing these in the first place. Jen doesn’t nag me about my purchases as long as she can tell I’ve thought them through, but she is the first to notice when I’m acting on impulse and has little tolerance when that affects our budget, or in this case when I was thinking about migrating more boardgames into the living room.

And what I found was that there was no reason for any of this.

These toys were nothing but plastic, in some cases ludicrously expensive plastic. They captured none of the vitality or magic that made me love each of these characters in the first place, and instead did three specific things.

• made me spend money
• took up space
• made my office look like a child’s bedroom (this one is subjective, duh)

It’s not that I stopped liking them, its that I understood that liking something wasn’t enough. Having things based on liking alone is a quick recipe for disaster financially, emotionally, and deeply cripples the personality. I’ve seen it in all sorts of places - people idolize things. Athletes, cars, actors, and in this case anime and video game characters.

My thoughts here are very closely related to my motivations behind my Saving Board Games from the Gamers articles earlier in the month. I questioned and criticized people who I felt were unreasonably fascinated with the gaming scene, most especially the people filling the role of journalist in the fandom (especially problematic due to a lack of appropriate critical regard).

The problem is in where this gets me. Because basically this gets me nowhere.

Alfred Kinsey is attributed to have said “A nymphomaniac is someone who has more sex than you”, and it seems here that all I am doing is looking down on people who enjoy a thing more than I do. I end up feeling put off due to an impression that they are excessive, impulsive, lack “critical regard”, or are in need of a dose of personal introspection. The net result of this is that I alienate myself from participants in my chosen subculture, which creates needless social tension and makes me unhappy.
I do not mean to create animosity, but allow me to be open and specific. Some of the people in that thread are fucking insane. They are collecting the most ridiculous and worthless toys and displaying them lavishly on decrepit and abused furniture presumably they don’t replace because they just spent a fortune on toys. Indulgence is one thing, advertising pride in an obsession is another. It is the same for the lunatics who have 500, 1000, or 1500 board games. Whatever on earth could drive you to amass such a pointless collection, and why are you proud of your non-achievement?

Sigh.

It’s not that I don’t have a point, it’s that I don’t understand what my feelings are about, or how I can overcome them. We all have our unique fixations and fantasies, hopes and desires, and the only thing we really need from each other is tolerance. A lot of the time I am very tolerant. So why my difficulty here?