You're viewing a single thread.
Easiest way to start hating your new hobby is visiting it's subreddit.
It's obvious for video games because you can assume anyone that wants to be active on a specific game sub is probably a try hard that talks about the meta, or max DPS builds, or other annoying stuff. But then you visit something like the carbon steel pan subreddit, or grilled cheese, and you're continually assaulted with this idea that there are only specific pans and oils that are correct, or that your grilled cheese isn't actually a grilled cheese because it was cooked too close to an open pack of salami.
Video game communities suck, and it makes playing them worse.
You play an FPS and everyone uses the meta gun at the time, then it gets nerfed and they use the new meta gun. Same with RTS and any other multiplayer game. Somehow StarCraft 1 pulled out a perfect rock paper scissors balance, but nothing else really has that so meta is what people do.
And because everyone is so busy grinding and min maxing, that's what the game developers design for now, and it sucks the fun out of games because you just grind hours to get some new items to have the best items in the game.
Occasionally game communities are good. The Chivalry 2 subreddit had a bot that would use GPT to answer questions and then on every post go on about how the polehammer is the best weapon in the game, which was so over the top it made fun of the whole meta idea. The Breath of the Wild communities doing crazy rube Goldberg machines are always fun. And I'll never not enjoy the weird hellscapes people create in the Sims.
then it gets nerfed and they use the new meta gun
OMG, this was what killed overwatch for me. I'm disabled and can't play games that require fast paced precise and concise actions. So Symetra was my jam. I tried other characters like torbjorn but the all had the same problem. Some 13 yo genji prick would hop circles over my head while my health ticked away and I shot sporadically around at the sky before I inevitably die. But not Sym. All I had to do was backpedal and keep that grasshopper mf'er in my general view. And pop. Pulling him into a doorway with 6 kill lasers was the best feeling the in the world. But that enabled me to be useful to the rest of the team. I occasionally did good enough that I ranked in the top of the match, but I was almost never carried.
And then they nerfed sym because, "nOt EnOuGh PrO pLaYeRs PiCk HeR!!¡!!" No more walking shield. No more turret web. No more over shield for the team. No more wide lock on gun. They turned her into just another precision shooting player. She had a Halloween bag of tricks and they swapped it for a tooth brush.
You play an FPS and everyone uses the meta gun at the time
This is why I miss arena shooters (Quake, Unreal Tournament, Halo, etc.) being in vogue. There are no loadouts, no inherent differences between players, you're all equal, and any weapons, ammo, grenades, powerups, vehicles, whatever, must be picked up from the map itself. This map doesn't have a lightning gun/rocket launcher/banshee? Well tough shit, you're going to have to do without.
These are games where you must fight with whatever comes to hand, no matter how much you dislike it, and that leaves almost no space for a meta. The closest thing that can exist is a general consensus of "for this situation, these are the weapons you want to have, and these are the weapons you really do not want to be in this situation with".
Isn't that largely just the case for competitive games?
Pet communities are horrible for this
Cute cat sneezes
Top comment: “This cat is gonna die Tomorrow from feline airborn disease, his left eye twitched 2.3ms longer than the norm which means…”
I just want occasional cat photos to roll into my feed, not to hear the virtues of a raw diet versus how crappy the one my vet told me to use!
Here is an actual thing that was sent to me
"If you don't wash your guineas with unscented coconut oil once a week you don't deserve to own them." Like fuck off man
I can just imagine the person writing that with a smug grin on their face, nodding slowly as they finish with a "you don't deserve to own them" and feeling all good about themselves.
Last time this happened to me was when I said I liked an experimental musician's youtube channel cause he has a lot of content about his process etc. Got reamed in the comments by a salty user cause the musician once featured a product in a video made by a brand that it's popular to hate, yet used by many musicians. One of the most reddit things ever.
The same subreddit heavily discouraged me, in classic reddit style, from getting a product once. I did anyway following my intuition. Then a year later it became the most recommended product for that purpose.