Indianapolis Monthly Hates Nerds
Topic: Indianapolis In the News
Posted: Wed, Aug 23, 2006 
Well that's what I think at least. Recently, good old Indianapolis Monthly jumped on the band wagon and covered GenCon - the yearly games and gaming convention that fills up hotel after hotel in Indy and draws hundreds upon thousands of people to our city.
Evidently, Indianapolis Monthly really doesn't care.
Of the Gen Conners roaming the halls of the convention center, at least nine out of 10 are males, and a good number of them are heavyset and pimply. They show up in their threadbare XL T-shirts with romantic mating calls like “Wenches Want Me” and “Girls are no substitute for PlayStation” stretched across their bulging torsos. And now, in my mind they all appear to be waddling up and down the hallways.
Dear lord. To read Tony Rehagen's depiction of the event, you'd think that GenCon crowd offers nothing but the most over used and insulting stereotype of "gamers" that the world has ever known. Almost every description of a person is a condescending judgement of character. Every reflection is a question of the subjects sanity or grasp on reality. Tony comes at the event like a bad Saturday Night Live skit - expecting the jokes to write themselves because - hey - these are nerds we're talking about. It's ok to make fun of people who are different... different than Tony at least.
Am I mad? You're damn right I'm mad. Almost everyone I know is a gamer. I grew up with dice in my hand and I can tell you that no one I know fits the basement dwelling, socially deprived, and hygenically challenged picture that IM paints of "my people".
Forget it Indianapolis Monthly - you're on notice! The gloves are off! If GenCon (an event which brings just as much money and corporate attention to Indy as the Brickyard or the 500) is only there to be ridiculed, then I want Tony to do the same for other Indy events. I want an indepth symposium on the glory of the toothless wonders of the State Fair (you need teeth to castrate some of those animals, right? Or do they not do that any more?). I want a beer gut measurement record from turn three of the Speedway. I want a gallery of mullets vs stained American flag t-shirts at the Rib Fest. You're off the hook with me for the football fans, Tony. I'll let you go with a warning on that one.
I think IM could do better than to devote column space to a possibly libelous story that lambasts and insults not just the people who make a yearly trip to our city for this incredibly popular event, but the people who live here as well.
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Comments
1. Aug 23, 06 02:38 PM | Michelle said:
Right on. I couldn't agree more.
2. Aug 23, 06 07:18 PM | John Beeler said:
I managed to sneak into the Convention Center and wandered around GenCon, curious to see the kind of people frequented the festival. I was surprised to see that most people looked, well, normal. They were fans, to be sure, but to suggest that 9 out of 10 participants were males, or that they were all overweight and pimply is a gross exageration.
Tony's writing isn't bad, but the narrative suffers from the typical first-person "outsider-looking-in" story; reporter doesn't understand group, tries to fit in by participating, doesn't, and then makes some interesting conclusion about said group.
The best of this journalism genre manages to say something unpredictable. Take Matt Taibbi's recent work in the Rolling Stone, one of which characterizes our military in Iraq as a fist-swinging bully. "The Army thinks it can do anything. The Army looks at Iraq like a drooling six-foot-six-inch bully would, staring at home plate with an arm full of ninety-nine-mph heaters. To that kid, the game is never over. They almost all think like that over here," he writes. But then Tabbi concludes with a surprising "God forbid they should ever stop thinking like that."
The radio show _This American Life_ is another paragon of this kind of journalism. They demonstrate it so well because they realize that their subjects are more than just one-dimensional stereotypes. In one show, dedicated entirely to describing a summer camp of evangelical teens, the narrator almost "gets saved." Had Troy done that story instead, we would have to endure an entire hour of trite mockery. Taibbi, other writers like Malcolm Gladwell and the staff at This American Life, realize that people are more complex than we think they are.
But Troy's nerds are exactly what we expect. They're simplistic. They're fat and they live alone. Surprise.
But who are they playing games with, if they never emerge from their basements? Even World of Warcraft doesn't make such an easy target, unless like Tony you only see socialization as two people talking to each other within 5 feet of each other.
I hope Tony's next story is a little more revealing, surprising, and less patronizing.
This is a two year old picture of Tony, but it looks like he would have fit into his GenCon stereotype just fine:
http://semissourian.rustcom.net/photos/10/21/65/1021652-T.jpg
3. Aug 24, 06 07:17 AM | Rachel Wolfe said:
I went to GenCon, all four days, and had event tickets -- so I was not just an attendee, I was a gamer. I found that article terribly insulting, and what struck me about it was that they sent someone who is clearly not a gamer of any stripe to cover a niche-market event. Poor choice in writers, IMHO.
I thought GenCon was fun! I went with two friends, and we played a couple of great games (Cthulhu RPG, Life-Sized Kill Dr. Lucky), a couple of good ones (Fury of Dracula, Arkham Horror Dunwich Horror Expansion), and a couple of poor ones (Planescape RPG, RoboRally in Japan). The people-watching is fun, especially for the costumes -- some of them are really detailed and well-done. (Others, not so much -- but that's part of the fun, too.)
I'm sorry this writer took such a narrow view of the convention -- he focused on LARPing and RPGs, to the exclusion of wargaming, strategy boardgaming, etc. -- he missed a LOT. And his choice of words to describe the attendees was particularly insulting, such as "GenConners are full-grown adults..." or "Many suffer from some combination of medical affliction" -- what a dick.
And where were all these hookups he talks about?? I must have missed the gay sex portion of the exhibition hall. I think the writer's test subject was not quite as representative of the attendees as he'd like to think -- but he clearly wouldn't know enough about gaming or GenCon to realize it.
If I thought it would make any difference, I would suggest that this writer try a few different types of game, and then go back next year and look at GenCon with a wider worldview. But I don't particularly care to play against him, myself.
4. Aug 24, 06 07:30 PM | Norm said:
So ... Indianapolis Monthly has writers? I must have missed that while weeding through all the advertisements.
5. Aug 25, 06 07:16 AM | Steph Mineart said:
I know a number of people who went to GenCon this year, and none of them fit the stereotype that Tony threw out there; in fact several of them are married and have little kids.
6. Aug 25, 06 07:36 AM | Michael Packer said:
I was pointed to the article by a friend, but someone is now suggesting that it was written last year. :( It's hard to tell since IM does not date stamp the content on their website.
lrn2digitallypublishIM
7. Aug 25, 06 07:47 AM | Rachel Wolfe said:
The article was written about the 2005 GenCon, but just appeared in a recent issue (July or August 2006, not sure) of IM...
8. Aug 26, 06 05:09 PM | Renea said:
This just gives me one more reason not to buy Carmel Monthly...I’m sorry “Indianapolis Monthly”. I've lived in a few major Cities and IM is one of the worst lifestyle publications I’ve seen. Save the opinions for the Nuvo writers.