Normal is not necessarily healthy and sane

English is a funny language. Sometimes it uses the same word to mean one thing and also its near opposite, like ‘sanction’. ‘Nice’ once meant unrestrained immorality and cruelty, but modern usage now mistakes it as a synonym for ‘good’, but of course, good is not nice. And don’t get me started on ‘gays’, who, it turns out, are some of the most miserable and careworn people on earth.

So it is with the word ‘normal’. It is used so often in conjunction with words like ‘healthy’ and ‘sane’ that it has acquired that connotation. But of course, ‘normal’ just means according to norms, the average state of things. In a healthy society, normal would be healthy. But we live in a sick society, and so it is very likely that ‘normal’ actually entails all kinds of dysfunctions, weaknesses, and neurotic behavior.

While there’s still a fair amount of residual autist/aspie outsider resentment loaded into the label of ‘Normie’, that favorite pejorative of the geek fringe, the label represents far more than social envy. It turns out that the Normie Invasion of our hobbies is an invasion not by highly competent, cool, and popular people, but extremely dysfunctional ones.

If you watched my recent video about why (modern) D&D is in the late stage of the fad cycle, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

Yes, today, the normal condition of man in the west is to be a loathsome bugman. He is weak both mentally and physically, insipid, incurious, and afflicted with the attention span of a gnat. He is deracinated; indeed, he is filled with hate for his creator, his ancestors, and his benefactors. He is desperate for attention and approval yet contemptuous of his fellows, desirous of servitude to popular whim, and above all obsessed with mindless consumption of product.

A strong institution can survive a certain amount of these people, but no cultural ship, however robust, can be continually swamped by them and remain afloat. This is why we must gatekeep, or, if I may keep with the analogy and make the point crystal clear, we must sink their approaching lifeboats.

Tabletop gamers, particularly the sort who play elf games, have long had a reputation of being socially awkward weirdos. Weezer even made a song about it.

We all know the accusation is not entirely without foundation, and veteran gamers usually come well-equipped with tales of the smelly outcast who stores his urine in Mountain Dew bottles. But in my 30 years of experience, this trope is vastly overstated. On the contrary, the average tabletop gamer has (until recently) seemed to possess above average intelligence, conversational ability, career success, and social aptitude. Indeed, success in the hobby requires too much social and intellectual development for the mutant to ever be fulfilled by it.

When we blow holes in their lifeboats in defense of our hobby, we are also doing them a great mercy, for a few may even learn how to swim or cobble together a raft of their own. There is no third way. The only other alternative is for them to drag us down into the social abyss with them.