... when Augur of Obscure called you a "meatbrain". Quite a derogatory name sin't it? But quite correct. Not entirely, cause I don't know if you can call meat a non muscle tissue, but hey lets not be picky. We kinda are meatbrains. And we actually are inferior beings to someone like Augur of Obscure. I can feel his annoyance and some kind of misery with the fact that he is forced to interract with inferior beings. And loneliness - definitely loneliness, paired with desperation. Why desperation? He is so lonely that he forces himself to interract with inferior beings who annoy him and make him facepalm almost every time they say something.
But that is not what I wanted to talk about. No. It's the term "meatbrain". Derogatory... just like another word. One that strikes fear in the hearts of common people while lighting flames of selfrighteous rage in others. [removed inappropriate comment]
I didn't feel offended. I kinda am a "Meatbrain". And I did feel a little bit of negative emotions behind Augur's words. There was definitely contempt. Does that constitute "hate speech". You know - the made up term created just to give certain people a weapon when they enter a battle of minds... armless. And it got me thinking: if I can choose what I feel and how I react when being described with derogatory terms, then what if others did it as well? What if we stopped caring about words? What if we used them on a daily basis, but without the negative emotional payload? You know - like friends calling names each other as a sign of sympathy. Or if we at least pretended that this is the way they are being used. How quickly would people get tired with trying to use those words as insults? How quickly would we change the meaning of those words to something neutral?
It has been done before. Words meaning gets changed over time. Let me give you an example from my language. There is a common word nowadays that is considered a vulgarism representing a woman employing herself in the oldest job in the word. But a century ago it meant nothing more than: "a girl". Even my Grandmother once used it to describe herself and her childhood friend when telling us a story from childhood. Another word which now translates to "woman", once was an insult, a derogatory term to describe some women. Words evolve. Their meaning gets changed - no: we change it!
What I'm leading my speech into is: thank you to whoever at ZOS put this not so politically correct character (Augur) into their game. It gave ESO some deeper meaning and a way to make people think. That is what distinguishes a good game from "just another product of a game company". Congratulations for that!
[removed discussing disciplinary action]
Edited by ZOS_JesC on September 30, 2019 4:44PM