Finger Licking Reply to RGR Interview

Day 4,558, 10:15 • Published in USA USA • by VoxHumana






EREPUBLIK Friends,

The bear has been poked.

And the bear is me.




I can understand why my sales pitch for subscriptions in my last article might have fallen on deaf ears. Some of you even cancelled your subscriptions to what I still promise you will be a worthy-to-be-subscribed journal of eLife. I can understand because the subject of that article was a figure of such singular contempt that many of you probably didn’t even read it.

I’m cool with that.



But something happened in the comments section of that article which stirred the deepest part of me. I mean it. The Deepest

Allow me to explain.






We are all alive, behind our avatars.

If EREPUBLIK is like other games, many of the people playing it are beautiful people inside and out. Gamers are awesome people with full lives. I love running into a grown man or woman only to find out that they spend a couple hours each day killing other grown men and women (or better yet, TEENS) in some apocalyptic battle royale.

Those kinds of people make good friends. I hope to bump into a few more around here.

And most of the friends I have, in the middle of all the happiness in their lives, are also familiar with pain.

Some people who play EREPUBLIK struggle with the feeling of not being alive enough in their "lives behind their avatars". Most of us, probably, ache in real life because real life is a weight we sometimes cannot bear.

Others of us might be struggling with delusions of grandeur behind our avatars. We ache because we know that who we really are doesn’t live up to who we wish were were and we lack the equipment to deal with that.

There are at least some EREPUBLIK players who come to these pages as a refuge from struggles with abuse - given or received. Some of us live in the same homes as our abusers. Some of us just keep getting beat up online.

Every. game. we. play.

Maybe the person to whom you just sent a link - a link to a silly article in a silly game - maybe that person just experienced some kind of deep loss in life. Loved ones die for real. We have to bear that weight and sometimes logging onto a silly game is just what we need for a few hours.

Thank Plato, we can.

But it still hurts.




And some of us, because our lives suck pretty bad, bully people online. There are all kinds of real people who play video games.




And all of it is evil in one way or another.

In other words, some of us are here to escape evil elsewhere and we seek refuge in the company of fellow travellers. Others are here to inflict evil because they have been infected by it elsewhere, and because doing so online protects them from the full consequences of their wicked actions. (Pity the ones who are blind to the difference!)

There are many more categories than these two. I’m not trying to fit you, reader, in to my boxes. But these are the two that poked the bear.

Now on to my point.



Did you notice that I just used a word with spiritual overtones? I called a thing “evil”.




Do not blame me for introducing real life spiritual overtones into a discussion about a character in a computer game.





He did that.





I didn’t expect it. Behind my avatar I am a person who deeply believes in Jesus Christ and confesses the orthodox creeds of the catholic church. None of which means a hill of beans to me when I log on as Krapis into a browser game that has a Greek Philosopher as a virtual deity.




I check my religion at the door. Completely.

I don’t play pac-man as if I am a Little Round Yellow Pie-Shaped Crusader for Christ.

Neither am I here to discuss the doctrine of simul iustus et peccator with you.

Believe me, I check my religion at the door.

So if you don’t care about discussing religion, I’m right here with you. I log on here to escape my real life, not relive it in some bizzare second helping of torture. Krapis is a citizen in the realm of the philosophical. He is not a soul.




But when RGR argued in his own defense in this theoretical universe, invoking a deity from the spiritual universe of reality?

“Christian”, he said.

He kind of poked the bear.





A two-week-and-one-day-old citizen cannot and will not argue the merits of the legitimate parts of Ronald Gipper Reagan’s game strategy in EREPUBLIK. I maintain that he is a ‘successful’ EREPUBLIK figure. He has obviously been beaten down from the top tiers of success by people who are playing the game better. Games are harsh when winners and losers are so clearly defined. But there is a form of winning that RGR has done, and that was what my interview recognized. If more of you flourished the level of activity he had, perhaps there would have been many more citizens playing on the day my citizen was born.

Mind you, I am not recommending that you adopt all of RGR’s mechanics.

In fact, the mechanic of invoking his real life “Christian conservative” identity in defense of his EREPUBLIK behavior (not to mention using it as a kind of coup fourré to defend his real life behavior) is the exact mechanic of his that, in a heartbeat, turned me off.

He completely lost me right then and there. Done. Finito.

He had me as at least someone willing to look on his bright side until he did that. His loss.




So if anyone is keeping a thread on the eusaforums called, “Game Mechanics That Don’t Help New Citizens Succeed in the New World”, please add “import your real life religion into the mix” to the list. I can only hope it’s already there.




Now imagine my dilemma.






This citizen, in a browser game I have been playing for a few days, has stretched out his arm, reached past my EREPUBLIK citizen’s philosophical existence, and attempted to lay grasp to my real life heart.




He will not.




RGR, this is the last sentence I will write to you directly, because I don’t want to have any conversation about such things in an internet browser game; you leave me alone and I leave you alone. (Editor’s Note: this was actually two sentences but I fixed it with a mighty semi-colon.)





There. I wish him well. I mean him no harm. I support his decision to isolate himself in a political party of 2.

I wash my hands of him. (Editor’s note: I love this subtle invocation of the real life Pontius Pilate figure in a game narrative that deals with someone who seems to regard himself as a kind of persecuted messianic figure.)




And lest he blame you, my readers, for turning me against him, no you did not. He did that. He and he alone, by playing the underhanded "religion" trick, convinced me that all of the complaints about him are most likely accurate.

He can blame himself for the place he is in.



Before I move on, let me suggest to my reader that if I were to engage this citizen in a discussion about the christian faith, he would not know what hit him. Please never judge real life christianity based on what you think RGR might have taught you about it. He has not portrayed anything even vaguely resembling what that real life thing is about.

And that is all I will say about that.





RGR has convinced me in short order that as good as he is at orchestrating an exciting gaming narrative, he bears just enough odor of evil that he should be left alone. We all have to learn at our own pace.




If he is still reading, I hope he will consider, as a gesture of philosophical brotherly love in a theoretical universe, that the person behind his avatar be gently encouraged to share his thoughts and feelings with people in real life who are skilled in handling those thoughts and feelings with healing and care.




As for me, I’m just going to keep on publishing.



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