(too mild a word, but) dislikes.

while playing rs i come across enough people who fall into the category of 'annoying and insufferable', two words (like surreal, for example) that i've found too much cause to use recently.

i never did find cause to hate them, though. i don't usually hate people. it doesn't quite seem possible.

only things i've actually ended up hating are ideas. subjects. disciplines. that sorta thing. (yes this is another rant, so you might like to bail now before the smoke gets thicker...)

in no particular order, these would be the things i despise, sometimes, some of them most times. (i'm not about to argue the usefulness of a subject, that's been drilled into me enough times. i may intellectually know it's useful, and has a point, but that doesn't mean i don't have the freedom to hate it.)

chemistry. particularly, atomic theory.

physics. why must you say precisely why this thing happens this way? it just is this way.

basically, branches of science dedicated to explaining the obvious, or predicting what doesn't need predicting.

locations aside, much of physical geography.

philosophy. i enjoy philo well enough, but when religion explains it all, and religion can't be brought in for religious purposes, all the theories and imperatives those poor guys spent years sweating over seem nothing more than glorified posturing. it's at those times that i don't think much of it, but it's more useful a tool than i could ever have imagined when faced with friends, people, who don't think much of religion, at all.

too many aspects of trigonometry.

statistics. accountancy. i don't know how accountants survive. even with excel those little numbers're enough to drive you over the edge.

basically, mathematical proofs that set out to prove the obvious, or topics (think, congruence, symmetry etc) that require you to prove the obvious.

scales. if they're meant to be important, why am i only forced to learn them the first time i take an exam? if i'd known that, i'd have told them they needn't have bothered. for a sheet of paper (fine, two sheets), it doesn't hardly seem worth it.

my mother tongue. (to go into specifics might entail being sued. it's possible. believe it or not.)

to those people who call "everybody's mother tongue" the most beautiful language because it's the language of their most treasured memories and innermost thoughts; amid answers like gaelic, french, chinese, greogrian, farsi, german...
you obviously haven't been forced to learn this language. it also stopped being the language of my innermost thoughts a long time ago.

to those who'd call me derrogatory names for a pro-western non-westerner...
i've got news for you. being anti-my-mother-tongue ≠ being anti-asian ≠ being pro-western.
heck, even anti-asian ≠ pro-western.
i'm fine with every other asian culture, i'm fine just about every other culture, and every other language. besides english and that bit of german, all the other languages/bits of languages that i know are asian. i'd sooner learn korean and farsi (beautiful script) than another western langauge. don't you dare generalise to the point that you'd pin that on me.

to those people who'll look scandalised at that revelation, and start spitting in outrage...
i learnt to read, speak, and write the language before i could make the conscious decision to condescend to learn it. i would have condescended to learn it anyway, not least of all so those as inflexible and wont to judge a person by their culture as you would shut up. after all, it's people like you who simply cannot be less blind who drive me to despise this language in the first place. so bugger off.

bearing in mind, again, that this is my considerably flawed opinion, incomplete in the sense that i dropped most (sadly not yet all) of these subjects as soon as i was able. and though i may know why i shouldn't have, and should not when i do get the chance, i'm not about to argue for the opposition. i also don't think much of those arguments at all.

bearing in mind, also, that i wouldn't have hated those things if they hadn't been forced on me. so let them exist, but don't force me to have any unnecessary, overt contact with them.

that's just superficial though, isn't it?

what would count as something i'd genuinely hate is evil.

hate's an ugly word. i was wondering whether it'd be right to hate evil, i googled it, and came across this. it's strange, really. the general message is hate isn't necessarily a bad thing. it's a matter of what you hate. that to hate someone that's gone beyond anything remotely decent or human; that would be the type of hate that ends wars.

i don't know.

it makes sense, and in a way, it doesn't. i'll stick by proverbs 8:13. "to fear the Lord is to hate evil".

and in the meanwhile, i'll try to figure it out.

mistaken identity.

i've had my skiller mistaken for a macro more times than i'd care to count.

i've tried...

1. talking excessively. actually starting conversations, believe it or not. i tend to keep to myself when playing, and since may, virtually never say a thing unless i've been talked to in a manner i can't ignore. that's why it's a nightmare when i start playing on my main, but forget that i'm playing on my main and not on my skiller...

2. starting off by raising stats no macro would ever raise. namely, the most boring, useless stats that i don't even actively train on my main (not that i actively train anything, really...) because i simply don't see the point of it. namely, firemaking and rcing. i got firemaking up to the hiscores sooner than i did any of the other skills. after that came runecrafting. hardly any bots seriously rc on f2p servers, after all, if it's nature runes they're after.

3. dressing tastefully. not that macros don't ever do that, but i tried dressing something radically different from the usual combinations.

4. showing off items a level 3 character shouldn't have. not showing off in the explicit sense of the word, seeing as i can't quite afford that many items. not wearing items worthy of of much attention, like trimmed robes or rares. wearing items that are quietly expensive, rather. common items that you wouldn't give a second thought to, but items that just don't belong on a level 3, as most would think. exemplified by coloured gloves, holy symbol/power ammy (prefer the holy symbol), fire staff...

5. not following a set routine. using lumby tele sometimes when mining near the lumby swamps, but walking to draynor other times. not following a set pattern when banking, or mining at certain rocks. changing clothes between bank runs. and so on.

i've tried all that, and still i get that "macro!", "macro?", "macro or friend?"...

well. at least that's a start...

live from world 139

edit: sigh. i take a cue from keywords. you get onto world 139 by clicking "deutsch" in the language sidebar. and if you speak german, you'll know where to go from there.

another foray into the german servers, another macro encounter.

weirdly enough, on a german server, i end up speaking chinese. it's surreal. i'm overusing that word, i might as well get used to the reality of it.

usually most of my proper conversations on world 139 start with "sprechen sie english?" to which most people answer to the affirmative. they're met with an altered enough rendition that the censor won't react to of "that's great. mind if we converse in english then? my german sucks."

it sucks enough that it takes two tries to secure the mysterious box's dematerialisation, but not enough that i get ko'ed by the sandwich lady.

this guy in question, anyway, looks like almost every other crafting guild macroer you'll meet. level 8, in default clothes, a chinese name that means 'i'm not civilised'.

the difference is he actually speaks. another player's trying to sell something, i gather, and is more persistant about it than most. to his german the borg returns answers in the range of fundamentals like "yes", "what?", and culminating in "nonononono". to which the player unceremoniously departs.

seems too fun an opportunity to pass.

me, out of characterly: sprechen sie deutsch?
macro: what?
me: do you speak german?
macro: *insults collectively specific areas of my mother's anatomy in chinese* (if it wasn't for this i might've seriously doubted his macro-ness. was only on my skiller account, after all.)
me: ni shi hua ren ma? (are you chinese?)
macro: *says 'what the-' in chinese. this i actually had to google to find out it's meaning. last count, i've learnt 2 new insults and 1 new vulgarity...*

after that we have a pleasant conversation during which he breaks the personal details rule several times over. it's interspersed with basic english when i can't quite get what he's trying to say. after the more genial inquiries "ni duo da? (how old are you?), "ni shi na de ren? (what's your nationality)", "ni shi nan de ma? (are you a guy?), i find he's from zhejiang.

i don't know why he bothered, and come to think of it, (beyond mining being the only skill he's maxed out and him being online whatever time i log in) i wouldn't otherwise have had much cause to think of him as anything more than another person, that as anything more than a mundane conversation.

in the meantime, i might as well properly figure out what "qq" is (a "lian xi fang fa (means of communication/interaction)" he tells me), or even start an account on what seems to be china's equivalent of msn. all the better to take him up on that offer the next time he asks.

maybe even exchange views about macroing, if not actively persuade him otherwise; or at the very least, make a new friend.

a friend i'm sure will prove more scintillating than the level 29 player who came up to me that same day, putting 14k up in the trade window, declining, and after he'd had his fill of boasting what he obviously thought was his comparative wealth, inserted that choice uncensored four-letter insult. i mean, fine, insult me, but at least try to do it in style.

just, an annoyance.

there aren't very many things i explicitly love. there aren't very many things i hate either. confronted with most things, i register apathy.

not altogether the best of attitudes, or ways of life, but i've become quite good at convincing people i'm passionate about things i don't quite give much of a damn about.

one thing i am passionate about is figure skating. it's not that i don't love it, but sometimes everything gets so annoying. the one rink i go to has a monopoly, charges exorbitant prices, far as i'm concerned, and all in all burns a hole in my pocket. not even counting lessons, mind you. that whole quandary again, i know i'm meant to save money, i know i need money for other things, i know it's obscene to spend this much on something that's just, recreation.

it's just annoying. and it annoys me that it does.

end rant, such as it is.

accounting.

was looking through my bank account (something that took all of 30 seconds), and while it's not quite the best load of stuff you ever will see (more likely to take the prize in the opposite category, actually), it's got it's own fair share of sentimentality.

how it's organised, and such. how do you organise your banked items? every screenshot of a bank account i see doesn't seem in the least bit messy. after this one incident, there came this period when i got somewhat neurotic about my bank account. neurotic because i'd insist on spending five minutes clicking and clicking and clicking, in the days when i hadn't yet discovered the purpose of the insert button (not so long ago, really. something like two months. whoops.) and in moving something from place 30 to place 1, would have to go through all that 30 to 29. 29 to 28. 28 to...

habit never quite died. or perhaps it's just been tidy enough ever since that first sweep, thorough as it was. enough talking, anyway. on to the screenshot. the cut, pasted, edited, circled, low-quality screenshot.

sheesh. the quality's worse than i thought. but then again, i've only got this much space in my thumbdrive.

the bank account's become more of a closet, really. i just can't bear to throw those random event clothes out. zombie outfit was my first, by far. camo and leaderhosen took their time in coming, and it does seem such a pity, really. especially since i've traded them for default clothes, seeing as any hat makes you look bald, instead.

the screenshot's there, and there's organisation explained. the insert's things i carry on my person pretty much all the time. out of necessity more than anything. sentimental things (they're pixels, but sentiment kinda defies logic too, doesn't it?) you just don't bring everywhere with you.

on properly to sentimental things; they're the ones ringed in red. (the swap button too, yes. countless wasted clicks...) story behind every item, you might say, but the sentimental things have longer stories than most... (don't worry, i'm not about the go into all that. would bore me almost as much as it'll bore you.)

• the earth staff - my first staff. (replaced by the fire staff/skull sceptre, but whatever.)
• toy horise - from the days of 'ooh there's a toy horsie. wonder what it does...' and '150gp?? no thanks.' and 'w00t 150 gp to splurge... what shall i splurge it on...'
• tiara mould - my first tiara mould. a tiara mould costs 100gp?? *eyes bug out* now i just have to bank this... *clutches tiara mould tight and shuffles off to the nearest bank. walking in the wrong direction, of course.*
• chisel - my first chisel. wub.

things circled white would be things made and bought to be given away. a mith axe for anyone who genuinely needs help (those who genuinely need help usually appreciate a mith axe, anyway. to the rest, really, what makes you think i can afford anything else?)

a power ammy's a gift that's not too tacky, like the mith axe, and not exactly amazingly expensive, either. sure, it cuts you back 8k or so (never was a good enough merchant to find people selling it for any less) but it's worth it. in that the people are worth it. no, everyone's worth more than that. um. the encouragement (hopefully) it gives the person is worth it. or. i don't know what i'm saying, it's just worth it. the first example that comes to mind... it was varrock main bank, a crowded enough world. i wasn't about to open my mouth. but everyone else was intent on all that flashing, so...

player a: i was hacked i need free stuff.
player a: i was hacked i need free stuff.
player a: i was hacked gimme free stuff.
player b: i was hacked too, but you don't see me going around begging.

maybe it doesn't seem altogether spectacular a thing, but it was, to me. people just let it go on, around them, and it just fades into something like background noise. that attitude just seemed encouraging, somehow. even though the phrasing might've been a little antagonistic.

that's what power ammys are for.

i don't know if it makes a difference, but that brings me to events like today's. sometimes these things that touch you, they happen when you least expect it.

i've already ranted my share in an earlier post (so much earlier that it's slightly strange, reading it now), but now that i've progressed onto addy, it just gets worse. there're so few addy rocks around that some people just can't seem to bear to avoid competing for ores. (that's just the downside though. world hopping's more successful than ever with these ores.) usually i just leave it be, not least of all because my smithing's lagging a good 11 levels behind mining, and i only mine addy for the joy of it. (like wow, i mined addy? wow. kinda feeling.)

today's no different. there are two addy rocks that've timely respawned. a guy in full sara takes one, i take the other. he's done with it, and he moves on to my rock. as i shove off i tell myself i should've been desentised to this long ago, and head towards the mining guild.

i start mining the two rocks nearest the door. by this time, i've focused on the article response i'm meant to be doing, and that little incident has, as all of them are wont to do, become a non-issue.

until the blue text of "free add yon the grounf" interrupts those lines of black. he's standing right outside the door.

i take some time to figure out what he did say. and

i don't know what to say. i don't say anything.

he logs.

i add him to my friends list, and he's commenced world hopping. i still don't know what to say.

i wonder if it would be right to pm him. tell him thank you, thank you kindly.

by the time i've decided, he really has logged.

i don't pick the addy up, but thank you. thank you kindly.

the week ahead.

one last post before i try to keep away from this blog for a week.

try being the operative word.

you would've thought i'd have learnt by now that writing something off the top of your in response to anything at all gets you nothing but trouble, and the need for a longer, more organised and well thought-out reply.

i haven't, but i'm about to. just a few minutes then i've got to leave. no time to reply coherently now, so it's exile to blogging off the top of my head again. back on topic.

the week ahead...

monday's the day you most feel like dying. dead tired because you slept at 2.24 sunday night kind of dying.
tuesday's the day of most stress. skipping-lunch-and-dinner-cos-you're-rushing kind of stress.
wednesday's the day of scary timetabling. insane timetabling. scarily insane. insanely scary.
thursday's the longest day. the day that's stretched like taffy that's already been stretched like taffy that's already been stretched like taffy across earlier weeks.
friday's the day of unexpected length and unpleasant surprises. friday's traditionally the day of exams and dental appointments, last sightings and lost books.

saturday's almost worse, but by saturday i'll probably be back to rant about it.

have a good week ahead, y'all.

a regular day on pm, 92 point 5.

started playing again, after i got back last night, and because that just happens to be peak hour for america, on average i end up holding five conversations simultaneously. of course, none of them are friends. my real friends know by now when to leave well alone.

people are just so different. i don't believe it. i don't know what to believe. last night's five was a case in point.

(and this is excluding the normal, quite unanswerable pms like "!! guthix brings you balance!!", "wanna buy full zammy?", "u sed u wanted to be my gf!", "tell everyone to join zezima's chat!" etc.)

1. at fally bank, a guy's hankering after a single law rune. presumably for varrock tele or something, and i oblige. i give it to him free, and that part, maybe it was a mistake. "1 more. 1 more. 1 more." spams the chat screen. i leave the bank. he promptly 1-more'd me through pm. we discuss the merits of plain hard work, and the satisfaction it gives you.

once he's dealt with, i make the mistake of giving another guy mith ores. "more. weps and armour." he weps-and-armour's me via pm when i leave. i don't know where he got the idea that someone who hasn't consciously trained anything remotely melee-related for six months should be lugging mith and addy weapons and armour done to the mining pits. regardless. we discuss the merits of plain hard work, and the satisfaction it gives you.

it's vicious in its predictability.

2. a guy's been lobbying "f2p should get more quests and items!" again in fally. "follow me if you think f2p should get more quests and items!" it's not an extremely crowded world, all things considered, he doesn't attract very much attention, and thereafter resorts to (horror of horrors) pming innocent bystanders. we debate the fairness of jagex's decisions.

i don't see why people won't just play, and be grateful that they get so much for absolutely nothing. he's apparently been playing since rsc came out. it's rather futile, and we both realise it. we promptly move on to other things.

pking's hardly more edifying.

3. someone pms me from out of the blue (not that that's altogether unexpected) and asks what a whetstone is. i point out the search function, and promptly click search for him.

apparently it's a place where you sharpen rusty swords.

4. someone i'm positive has been hounding me ever since she discovered the fact of my existence strikes again. it's the same type of question every time. she starts off this time with "can u like, tell jagex to put me a mod!" as a prelude to whether it's "good" to help someone with a quest, whether it's "good" to report someone attempting to account trade, whether it's "good"... her definition of "good" being whether it'll get her mod status fast enough.

i'm still leery after the last encounter with the guy who initiated the let's toggle the pm settings! game. but this time i just can't help but tell her my views, incorporating all that about position, how to properly earn respect, right and wrong... she simmers. the moment i even mention "ignore list" she goes ballistic.

"ur mean! you're reported!!"

and to think, just the other day she was so surprised when i told her about the number of people who've reported me. was trying to say that reports don't mean a thing unless they're valid. i remind her of as much.

a silence, then she goes back to it again. "who r the people wit gold crowns?" only a matter of time before she gets back to the same form of asking.

i feel like screaming. (and if i did, one room over they'd be speculating tomorrow who presumably spent the night here.) i just log. it's easier to shoot yourself in the mouth than reason with people, it seems, sometimes.

i log in later to be faced with "yh do i always have to say hi y cant u do it]" i wonder if it's too cruel to tell her i delete her from my friends list everytime we're done conversing in hopes that we'll never have to again. initiate a conversation with her? is she crazy?

i stick with "i'm sorry, sometimes i need to clear my friends list when it gets too full, and..." then promptly initiate a conversation with her next i log in.

give me strength.

5. it seems someone really is listening. a person with a vaguely familiar username pms me. somehow we get onto the topic of family. we bond over standing around attracting randoms and talking about deaths of loved ones. he starts off, and in between i mention my friend.

we cover how unfair the world seems, how cruel things can be, grief, regret, time, meaning, religion, missing someone.

saying this almost seems like intruding on privacy. we talk about where we live.

it becomes a mundane conversation, and that's precisely what keeps me when faced with pms from the other four. it's coversations like these that remind me why i don't choose to keep private chat on friends.

four in five of every other person you talk to you won't particularly want to continue the conversation with, but that doesn't mean the latter kind of person doesn't exist.

warning: this takes too long to get to the point.

EDIT: what i'm ranting about are help sites. to be precise, most of the content in "advice sites". more detailed explanation by mushroom queen in categories of fan sites. (thanks vaskor for the link!) perhaps that explains things somewhat, seeing as i suck at categorising and organising things, any things. nother paper just came back with a new batch of "unclear...", "disorganised points", "what do you mean here?", "unclear!", "more clarity needed"... grrr.

still thinking about help sites. help sites help people, that's a fact. it's whether they deserve that help or not that bothers me.

you could say, everyone deserves every kind of help they can get on their way down a common road. and it's the job of those who've gone before them to help pave the way. those that've gone before them are self-sacrificial, accessories ultimately to this common goal they're all looking towards.

by that logic, help sites are perfectly necessary.

it still seems that logic applies more to, say, great scientific discoveries, things that you spend a lifetime on, because you know it's worth the spending. if help's provided, it's provided not because you hope to reach the end, but because you hope to be part of that journey to reach the end.

if not the end, then a meaningful journey.

runescape's a part of the world. runescape's a model of the world, in as realistic a way as it is possible. it stands to reason that what applies in the real world applies there. and vice versa.

the fact remains that rs is not the real world. and to help you live you character's life in as great a way as it is possible - it's not exactly worth spending time on. but to save people time by giving them your own, regardless of the context...

it's a service. not that that makes it any more worthwhile.

it's not reasonable to expect people to start from the beginning all over again, without any knowledge of what's already known. it's not reasonable to force people to rediscover for themselves what others have, just because it's worth the discovering.

sometimes they say, life's a journey of self-discovery.

to play rs is a journey of discovering, by yourself.

and why is that?

because take that element of independence away, and you're left with little else.

in this sense, runescape's too small a model of the real world for help sites.

why help sites, then? is it purely alturistic motives? to help people. to share with people knowledge. to pool experience. so we all come out on top.

i went into this post with my belief that help sites were unnecessary very much shaken. midway through, i'm back to where i started. yet i deign to contradict myself, by doing exactly what i claim not to.

i'm trying to figure out why. why do such a thing?

to tell the world perhaps, how smart you are, that you've found out this certain thing about rs that no one else has (or that you think no one else has, and considering the small enough size of rs, usually isn't all that remarkable at all) and it just has to be shared. for credit's sake, or for the sake of the telling, or simply yeah, to help.

wtf.

never mind. on to the actual point of this post. i've set up shop in the barbarian outpost. pizza-making and blogging ftw. it's rather quiet, really, and rather amusing when people do pop in. on my level 3 skiller, i'm rather untouchable.

some people're beumused to the point of condescension.

"hello little girl... you shouldn't be here."

the conversation following is peppered with lmao's and lol's.

i end up dispensing pizzas to whoever comes round, and with that 2 levels per trip. a fair bit of fun, really. in the time it takes to respawn i play around with the print screen button.

water, fresh air, company... what more could you ask for?

chat channels.

i don't have much use for clan chat, seeing as i haven't exactly yet found any clan i'm not leery enough of to join. which would be a clan not too big that i can't get to know every person, a clan who doesn't consider joining them marrying the lot of them, in that they can actually be civil about letting people leave, and a clan not about to turn on me the moment we reach the wildy for hate-related reasons.

so my only use for clan chat would be to talk with friends, because it's much easier to spend a few seconds creating a chat channel and thereafter merely typing '/' before each sentence, rather than going through that whole ordeal of needing to click on the names, and apologise with sorry wp everytime you mix up random names with the strange questions asked. both of which are varied and numerous enough to confuse.

then there're the channels hosted by jmods, for various purposes. i don't suppose this is confidential, since some channels are, after all, open to the public. those being the channels i'll mention. some of them are completely empty. freakily. some are full enough, but no one talks, and anyone who tries to start a conversation's met with silence. of the worded sort.

then zezima enters one of them. and boom. it wakes up. i don't know how, but some people somehow manage to find their way in, and there you go.

i realise i'm not saying half of what i wanted to say because i don't know if it's sayable. short post then.

other than those i'm specifically directed to, i just don't come across any others. i've been warned of channels that try to remain rule-free, by virtue of trying to remain genuine player- and mod-free. a pity about that one, i've been trying to search out those like it. with 'the channel you tried to join does not exist' results.

well that's it. enforced (hopefully) month-long hiatus from rs. i'll probably only last till next weekend.

procrastinating: blogically, topically...

the spate of frequent blog posts ends in a day.

i'm a born procrastinator. revise that, i'm not being altogether fair. to parents and genes and such. i'm worse of a procrastinator than i should be, and ever should have been. was 11 last time i remember turning in all my work on time.

anyway. it's nearly 1am on a saturday night and i've got a paper due tuesday. a quiz on monday. an exam on tuesday. that doesn't count for much, but still matters because the teachers are great. plus the other loose ends you pick up and promise to amend but never get around to doing. i'm still trying to persuade myself to S-T-A-R-T ALREADY.

so much for that theory.

i'm going to ramble because the things i do want to blog about, i've got all the points, but it's going to end up a jumbled mess like my last post about macros. as in, i'll forget about it when i forget what i was going to say, and fall asleep with the laptop on, then wake up at the wrong time, go back to what i was doing, and add in the actual point of the whole rant in an edit.

that's what happens for all my exceptionally long and rambling posts. that doesn't matter so much as the fact that the same's true of the assignments i fall asleep doing.

point is, i've been planning to try, at least, to come up with something for rs haven. not as easy as it looks. i'm still trying to decide on what topic. and this time, i realise i'll have to organise it properly. and type it out in word, so those random capitalisations don't escape me. when i think about it though, which would be times like in the bus and such, i realise another thing. whatever i say just wouldn't quite fit.

i can't go out and give a sweeping statement like 'help sites do more harm than good' which was what i came up with in my last comment. 'down with stats' is what i would've said next, but that doesn't work either. it's not logical, i just like to think that way. not everything need be logical. but all that's another few posts for another few days.

trying to stay on track is ever so hard. please don't read this if you even got this far, it's not worth your time. that's why i blog. thoughts aren't worth the paper they're written on, but it seems worth the electricity. so i try not to think about the electricity.

whatever i end up saying, i don't blog for people to hear me. i blog because it's easier to type than write. because if i wasn't under the impression that people read this, i wouldn't have the self-control to do it. because i don't believe a diary's worth anything unless people're going to read it, and i want some stranger poking into my life as much as i want my friends and family digging a diary out. or a blog, for that matter.

BACK TO THE POINT. can't believe how easy it is to sidetrack. considered writing about why people play. as in, the it's an escape from reality, it builds up your people skills and tolerance level aspect of it. not the it's a browser based game and it's free aspect, which's been covered in other articles with excellent stats and info. the thing is, it becomes altogether too personal. i tried looking for the post i wrote about why i play, and it seems to have disappeared, but i ended up telling random people much more about myself than i should have.

people don't read personal, or people looking to read articles don't read personal.

when i email people or message them i end up looking one of three things. myself, whatever that is. a suck up. or a total asshole. i'd say arrogant asshole, but i suppose arrogant's incorporated into that word.

which doesn't suck as much as it feels like it should, but does pose a number of problems, because either way i don't give a damn. latter two categories fit under the first, after all.

i think i'm being too honest. or at least, saying what i shouldn't be saying. there are some things i wish i could say on rs. to people, that is. it's got nothing to do with the censor, i don't usually swear too much. this case being more unique than anything else. it's not so much the it isn't very nice to tarnish the name of all mods thing that gets to me either. it's the fact that i just can't tell people i don't want anything to do with them simply because it wouldn't be right to.

i almost hate my blog sometimes, because it's the only place i can be so brutally honest. everywhere i find myself, even if it's only in rs, i manage to convince myself not to. sometimes i fail, but it never comes out as bad as it does on my blogs.

then again, i should clear out of blogger NOW. and get to work. proper work, without blogger open on the side. or rs, either.

this is terrible.

oh, and ignore this post please.

modship vs politics. nother rant.

I’m having a hell of a time trying to convince people that position isn’t everything.

Just royally pissed someone off. He seems to think that position and names rank more highly than being a decent human being who knows how to act in polite company. We play with toggling pm settings, a game of you log in, I log out. I ease into it, don't attempt to talk to him when he dares to stay with pm on. Finally I get a chance to apologise, seeing as that's what I have to do. I don't consider apologies bad things, I don't consider apologising beneath me. I won't not apologise because of my pride, not even when I'm not in the wrong.

I will not apologise, on the other hand, if I feel I'm in the right. "Not in the wrong" and "in the right" are two distinct things, mind you.

I apologise, and that clinches it. He apologises too. He feels compelled to. I admire him for being willing enough to disagree vehemently enough with me, it must've been difficult to overcome that initial compulsion not to.

I almost feel like telling them, you have a next to nill chance of becoming a mod unless you are a genuine person concerned enough about other people, rather than simply, other players, to help them for the sake of helping them, with the idea of becoming a mod least on your mind.

I'm sorry for bringing this up again, but I thought solid examples might've been in order. I also need to rant.

Don’ts.

• Don’t go round intentionally playing Santa Claus. Giving away items is not going to help much, not if you’re going to be condescending, and not if you’re doing it for your own ends, just to clear some space in your bank. I have almost as much respect for this brand of players, who toot their horn doing this just waiting to be caught in the act as I do for people who beg.
• Don’t condescend to people, no matter what your opinion of their maturity is.
• Don’t gloat when you’ve killed someone in the wildy. Don’t even say “lol”. Schadenfreude isn’t going to get you anywhere at all.
• Don’t discriminate against a player because of their level, their combat type, command of the English language, or anything at all. Never discriminate.
• Never beg. Even if it’s only 5gp you need, never beg.

Now for do’s.

• Give people advice and help.
• Give items you want to give away to people who deserve it. Those won’t be the people asking for items, who patently do not deserve anything of that sort.
• Most importantly, be completely genuine. That covers it all. You cannot hope to be a mod if everything you do is structured around your wish to be a mod. The idea of becoming a mod must be least on your mind. That, imho, would be ideal. Perhaps not the reality, but the ideal.

Realise this. Being a mod is not anything like politics.

In politics, how much you desire the position matters, somewhat. If the only way to change the world is through politics, I’d rather go out and find a new one. It’s good to hear some people’ve found other ways already. I’m not bureaucratic and fake enough to become a politician, nor do I have enough masks. It’s possible to tell yourself you’ll be different amongst people who act as you would never want to. It’s not possible to succeed if you don’t speak their language.

The language in the game would be cash, items, stats. The surest way to a player’s heart would be to give that person good items. That’s the language of rs. Not to use it would involve so much more work. In politics, it’s not possible to succeed if you don’t speak their language. I refuse to speak their language, just as I refuse to speak it in rs.

Argue that codeswitching is the key, and I’ll tell you this. Those are masks. To codeswitch is to change masks.

The other option is to let that become part of your character. That’s something I’ll try never to do.

That’s precisely why you cannot approach becoming a mod the way you would an election. That’s also why you can afford to be human, all the time.

That’s why you must.

encounters of the borg kind.

edit: my oh my oh my. i just came across this post about chinese gold farmers, courtesy of vaskor (thank you so much. that's an amazing resource) and it does lend a whole deeper dimension to things. what i talked about further down is nothing compared to what those people in that post face. they've got so much more reason to macro, to real world trade than i would have, at home.

hmm. got two of them, really, if you'd like to put it that way.

a definition might be a good way to start off, even though i'm not quite competent as far as defining things go. a borg is for the most part a macro, but supervised by human beings. so it will respond sometimes to randoms or whatever comes its way, and will, as it follows, talk.

which it did. finally, i hear.

mind you, they really have a dirty mouth on them.

another definition, but not so much definition as putting things in context. in chinese culture, which i see enough of in the local chinese community, some things are particularly important. or more so than in, say, western culture, for example. what matters most, i guess, would be face. not losing face, and allowing another not to is what governs more actions that it should. then there's respect for your elders.

incorporate those two, first, into the big wide world of insults, and it'll stand to reason that insults aimed at your mother have a considerably wider scope, they'd even insult your ancestors. of course, there's never a shortage of lewd comments, either.

so to cut straight to the point. received insults from a borg the other day. i refrain from saying macro since no macro programmer's stupid enough to have a macro spouting this kind of language. there'd be a minor war in the way of foreign language insults over at the yews, and a gigantic backlash against, well, whoever falls into the right category. racial discrimination isn't dead. a fair share of it's directed at the chinese. (thanks alot jagex, for stating actual countries on your news update. next time remember not to mention that 'all macros are east asian, for example chinese and korean' = 'all east asian, for example, chinese and korean players are macros'.)

not that it's not unheard of, i've heard about things like this often enough that i've actually been wanting to come across a macro that was actually a borg, instead. let's just say there were things about female anatomy and fornication with respect to my ancestors.

besides tossing you a medley that would have itself called emotions (namely, urge to laugh at an inanimate object, suitable outrage, confusion resulting from too-quick elimation of what to say in response...), it does remind you - macros aren't just macros. they're run by human beings.

which brings me to my second encounter.

it's just a matter of time before the keywords "macro", "bot" and/or "autoer" come up in talk by any major body of water. willows and fish, after all, are about the most sought-after commodities, whether it's in the the bot or legitimate trade.

what's rare though, at least on f2p servers, is to find someone actually defending them. or rather, the people behind the bots. i've heard stories about failed green dragon bot pking trips because of mage pures or other players standing there guarding the borgs.

why, i realised at the back of my mind. it's like how to say the capital of indonesia in chinese. you don't consciously think about it, but when you need to dig it up, it's there. thing was, i never did need to dig that up. until that particular conversation.

that bots, real world trading, macroing, autoers - that all of that's baaad is common knowledge. it's like one a fundamental truth of the rs universe. you don't think about it because you don't need to.

what you don't think about is why. what you don't think about is the people.

i wonder what they think of us?

the argument goes like this. for all intents and purposes, the real world traders are just doing their jobs. they're just trying to make a living in some backwater of a less-developed country, and they're just making the most of opportunities they have. it's their livelihood. why is jagex taking it away from them?

that, in less words, was what was parroted off to me.

oh, and to clear things up. i am not trying to say that this is true. i am not saying that all macros are chinese, a large enough proportion are and i'm dealing with that fact. it's a fact, yes. i am not being racist. i am chinese. or i'm more than half chinese, anyway, and on my birth cert my race is chinese.

we rant on about them, we say we hate macros. we go around all self-righteous, criticising people we've never met and probably never will have cause to. it's rather pathetic, really. if you think about it, there are more important things to rant on about. what's going on in the rest of the world, for example. what's going on that could've led to the people who do macro do what they do. live doing what they do.

they have good cause to hate us, and i do suppose they do. mods, most of all.

ah suck.

perhaps they think, when they see the average player, going about their chosen tasks ignoring the macros, or standing there obviously reporting them, or prancing about showing off rares and equipment they know is worthless because they have plenty of - perhaps they despise us for trying to destroy their jobs. perhaps it goes deeper than that.

when they look at the average player, do they see only a rich white kid, a kid who funds them?

is it the way you feel when you give tuition, and get to see how other people live? is it the way you feel when you bus tables at a restauraunt and see, really, what kind of people keep you in school?

it's not so much hatred. you can't bring yourself to hate them. and you hate that feeling, too.

i'm not saying this is true, i'm just speculating. we were a colony once, and the white man's superiority thing still persists slightly. it manifests in cussing more than you normally would at caucasian drivers who cut into your lane. things like that. stereotypes persist. a caucasian will get a taxi faster than a local, because the driver assumes he tips more.

it's not tangible, but it doesn't make it any less real.

strangely enough though, you still can't hate people for things like that. you admire them, in a way you don't want to. you tell yourself you resent them, but you don't, really, and these things just never come to mind.

that's what it's like here. i don't think about all that when i talk to the random person on rs for the simple reason that it's not imaginable. i don't want to try either, and when i do, well, it's just another person. it's not that i can't be friends with any person i meet, i do and i can. when you get to know a person, you also know that person's human. no different from anyone else.

in real life it's not so easy, the first time you see the person you do see things you shouldn't. you assume things you shouldn't. the great thing about rs is that what you see is the person's character. the face doesn't matter, and when you do think about what you would have said had you met the person in real life instead, you'll realise it doesn't make a difference. you don't need to consciously stow away your stereotypes, which are terrible things. putting people on a pedestal never works very well, and with all the begging, scamming, cybering, and general nastiness that goes on in rs... give me macroing any day.

that's just my opinion, by the way. feel free to disagree. and again, bearing in mind how sensitive people are, i am not being racist.

seeing as this is how enough of us think here, i wonder if the people behind the macros think the same thing. whether that's at the back of their minds, the same way it is at the back of ours as you go about your life.

i sincerely hope not.

then again, the chinese are highly pragmatic. perhaps all the hate is about mods and maybe players, is purely economic.

it's a sad, sad day when money's the cause for hating.

but it's an even sadder day when it's about race, and perceived image most of all.

so let's not think anymore, and just hope.

edit: can't believe i forgot this. before you go all outraged on me, i'm not saying macroing is right. go on youtube and you'll see the number of videos uploaded about jmods. people stand there for hours playing and editing videos just so they can catch a glimpse of a golden crown.

i don't know whether to feel sorry for them or feel guilty.

whenever jmods come ingame, it's MOD hulme. MOD hohbien. MOD conor. MOD emilee. MOD simon c. MOD tobias. MOD tobes... i've seen conor and mat the most, and even then i can't just ignore that fact. even when they're joking around, that MOD doesn't go away. sometimes it's hard to imagine they could actually be real people.

real people with real jobs with real families and real lives.

you could say, jagex is their livelihood.

and macros are destroying that. macroing and real world trading is stealing. after all, it's jagex's resouces.

just because you choose to steal rather than to work a proper job doesn't make stealing right.

people who macro have a choice.

i cannot respect them for the simple fact that they cannot respect others enough to think about them. the jmods have homes to go to and whose upkeep their jobs pay for. real world traders are merely riding on what they did create.

i could be macroing now, y'know. i could have chosen to do that, or fall in with people who do that, rather than play the game.

there's always a choice.

when you choose to steal from people and take away what's rightfully theirs', as those who macro do... you can't try to shy away from the consequences.

forums author unconscious dishonesty.

written in microsoft word. hence the proper punctuation...

I’ve figured out another reason why I blog. Posting on forums gives more publicity to your opinions than is imaginable. Your posts on forums though, are fair game. Forums hardly allow you enough credit in that the moment you introduce a new perspective or idea into the discussion, the next post, or a post another few posts down immediately plays on that original remark, the poster in effect taking the idea for their own. Introducing it into future topics, as well.

It may just be that I’m selfish, or not inclined to do that. I typically credit the author, poster, or site, or at the very least, if I can’t mention names, steer credit away from myself. By adding things like, ‘as has been mentioned multiple times earlier’, or ‘as others have pointed out’. It just doesn’t seem honest to do otherwise.

When I find that annoying, therefore, it’s not because I’m upset that credit hasn’t gone to me. I'm more of a silent visitor, I don't post very much because I tend to get carried away posting, as I do on my blog. Neither do i have ideas actually worth the taking, what I do is read and find myself re-reading the same originally unique points, posted by different people.

It just gets rather depressing because you realise – many people are not honest, and not inclined to be. It’s not quite as bad as not returning items to someone who died in front of you. It’s that it isn’t a conscious decision to take someone else’s thoughts for your own; it’s something that comes so naturally it’s not even thought about. That’s a terrible thing.

It’s when I come across this particular brand of dishonesty all the time on forums, just by reading threads and posts by others that I retreat into my blog for a week or so, and promptly head back for more disappointment during the weekend.

Why? Because otherwise, I wouldn’t be heard.

After all, it’s a fair price to pay for the pleasure of being heard. In the meantime, I’ll see it as that I managed to persuade someone to hold the same opinion as I. I’ll see it as a victory in being able to convince. A fair proportion of people taking the same courses as me are about as intent as I am on a graduate degree in law. I’d imagine most of them want to practice. I haven’t decided yet myself, which is rather a terrible thing, and terrible timing, but I’ll choose to view this, in the meantime, as practice for practice. In case I ever do need to convince anyone that way.

I’m only able to convince well, however, if I believe in what I’m saying. That’s exactly why I’m unsure about practicing law. How can you fight for what you don’t believe is true? How can you fight for what you don’t believe is right? How can you let someone who trusts you enough to pay you down by not putting in your best, at the same time?

But I digress.

I would, in any case, rather people practiced dishonesty by posting where I can see it, rather than anonymously reading my blog, and going away relaying again whatever I did say. Sometimes, I’m thankful that so little people actually read my blog. It’s occasionally frustrating, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It would be plain stupid to inform every person I saw in effect plagarising of their inherent dishonesty. It would start a flame war. It would eventually have me banned from the forums.

Some battles are won, after all, by retreating.

undeserving mods.

consider this a full series.

previous posts include why and how to be(come) a mod.

i just came across a forum topic about mods. there were screenshots and complaints, basically about mods who acted in a fully unmodly manner.

consider this akin in format to a public service message.

you can report mods for behaviour you deem not befitting a mod. in other words, if a mod's breaking a rule, or acting as s/he shouldn't, don't be afraid to report. (do bear in mind though, that there's such a thing as "misuse of customer support" so please don't just report mods in a fit of schadenfreude.)

if i acted in a way i shouldn't have, i would want to know. if i didn't deserve an honour jagex bestowed on me, i'd want jagex to know.

and i'd want to accept the consequences, as i'm sure most would.

so if it's richly deserved, consider it a favour you're doing.

(ranting on forums isn't going to help at all, just make matters worse for everyone else. but as always, people have their reasons.)

so my point in saying all this, was just to broadcast that fact, if this counts as a broadcast at all. frankly, it's immensely disappointing to here people say things like "what the hell is up with the latest runescape mods".

i wouldn't want to be the cause of anything like that, and i doubt anyone else would.

do bear in mind this, though. mods are human. mods are people. people with genuine emotions. people who make mistakes. people who have the capacity to anger, just as they have the capacity for kindness. for hope.

for every other emotion you yourself have.

expect that, if nothing else. expect from mods what you would expect from any other person. because really, why are should that make them any different? expect what you will, but please

don't expect perfection.

how d'you become a mod and all.

please read my previous post first if you haven't.

or you might also want to read another rant about the same subject. (i know. it just bothers me, y'know. slightly different subject matter, anyhow.)

this is inspired by a fellow player mod steve. we are mutual strangers, but respect isn't a commodity necessarily bought by familiarity.

i had meant to cover this in my previous post, but for obvious reasons that wasn't possible. really it's only because my previous post seemed long enough to be a stand alone post as it was. here, anyway, is my take on the issue.

similarly, i cannot and will not disclose any information i should not. in other words, i'm not going to be telling you anything outside of what you'll be able to find in the knowledge base, anyway. so if you're looking to become a mod, please read my previous post . if you're back again after reading it, you're not going to find out anything you shouldn't. so if that's what you're here for, bail now.

the best advice i can give you is: you don't need to consciously want it. don't focus your entire gameplay and attitude on that want.

just be yourself. if you aren't genuinely like that, please don't try to fake it. you'll need to fake so much if you do become a mod, that way, and that's practically impossible. sometimes i need to be less genuine than i feel, but i do it, and did it, not because i wanted to be a mod, but because i'd have done it anyway. in doing that, i was being myself. i'd have done it because i'd have know, and i know, it was the right thing to do. do what you would have done anyway. that's a part of being yourself.

i'll look at this issue from my perspective because it's the best, if not only way i'll be able. this is what i did and what i believe. it'll probably not work for you, we're all different, but it's always worth knowing.

it's not all about being rule-conscious, but about doing what's right. sticking by the rules helps though. i did not go all out ananlysing the rules, i read them once through, and skimmed through those i knew enough of. thereafter, i went about doing what i thought was right. or, to be precise, what is right according to my religion, which would be Christianity. it's for this reason that i don't like philosophy. religion pretty much explains it all. on the other hand, just common sense morality might work. in that i don't mean logic, i mean conscience.

it's a hard thing to describe, that concept just floating there. what's right. so reading through the rules, and seeing if they align with what you believe helps too. if they do, then more's the better. if they don't, tough luck. you'll have to stick it, it's jagex's game. for my part, i pretty much agreed with every rule. what i didn't agree with was what should be against the rules that was not, and that didn't make much of a difference. i just acted as i would have, anyhow.

it's about how you act. ingame behaviour. reports matter (only) to some extent. how you act, after all, who you are, and how you go about doing things are reflected in what you report. going crazy with the report button might work, but please understand it isn't all there is to being a mod. of course, do report rulebreaking as you see it.

i guess that's all.

steve mentioned something about tests, of a sort. i've been wracking my brains, and some things do come to mind. on the other hand, these are everyday things. it's something that's just done, all the time, and that's why i don't think it matters, at all.

what matters, ultimately, is not whether you become a mod. it's whether you do what is expected of a mod, and more.

it's how you go about your life. how you live it.

that, after all, is what really counts.

why do you want to be a mod?

that's arguably the most important question of all.

i meet people everyday, and all they ask is "how do you become a mod?" or "is this against the rules?"

i give them the answers, but if they probe further, all i have to say is why.

why do you think it's against the rules?

why do you want to become a mod?

that usually shuts them up. otherwise, i've so far only received two valid responses (imo "the crown is cool" doesn't apply).

that leaves "i deserve it." or "i want to make rs a better place."

i further probe the former till the arrogant little twit realises the answers he has that are true are answers he cannot give me. those who fit into this category typically don't even think about the latter reply. as to the latter, my next question, then, goes back to how.

that shuts them up too, eventually.

how do temporary mutes make rs a better place? why can't you make rs a better place anyway, or do you think that's only the responsibility of mods? how do you think...

writing all this down makes it seem like a job interview, or even a test. but that isn't my intention at all. all i want to do is let them know themselves. let them know why they want what they claim to want. let them judge, for themselves, of themselves.

writing all this down makes me seem cruel. excuses, excuses, you might say, but i say i have a right to them. i don't say all this to "shut them up", to shame them. right after, i move on to another topic. it's their choice if they want to continue talking, and i don't intentionally try to crush them, nor do i. i've become quite the expert at changing the subject now, and it's easy when the person you're talking to wants something mundane to converse about just so they can think, at the same time.

because all most people want is the perceived popularity and prestige that comes with what they want most of all, that little crown by the side of their name.

saddest of all, i think, might be a boy i met, who hasn't spoken three sentences to me since i declined his trade of an emerald ring and expressed my views in a way such as would soften the impact of my opinion on online dating. apparently that didn't work very well, and it's one of the things i've most regretted. it's also one of the things i'd probably do all over again.

my point, anyway, being what he told me. "i want to be a mod so people will listen to me."

i want so much to make people understand. if you have the potential to become a mod, or if you should be one, people will listen to you anyway. people will respect you precisely because you deserve their respect and attention as much, or more so than any mod's.

i've only met a few who don't want to be mods, and that's because they dread the attention, and the time they'll have to sacrifice combating said attention.

it's strange, really. i'm still trying to figure out the lure of it. is it like wanting to become a prefect in school? except many, many people didn't want prefectship, myself included. the desire to prove yourself, desire for popularity, that aside, is there anything left?

the "i want to make rs a better place" works. the problem is, how? by muting people? when it's less necessary i try not to mute because i want to change the person. i want to persuade the person not to, i want to hear what they have to say. sometimes i succeed, other times, i don't.

either way, i don't regret my decisions.

i go about playing in, you might say, the same way i always did. sometimes i remember that my account was modded, and i'm surprised all over again. then i forget it, let it retreat into the background.

before, i did want to be a mod. had you asked me, though, i'd have given you the second response. you'd have been able to shut me up, to make me think, because frankly, i wouldn't have known why.

now i do.

what did you think? i'm not about to tell you. that'll be too easy. it's personal, but aspects of it may well be universal, and not without cause.

what do you think?

think, because the answer's worth it.

more, moresly, monotonous.

to be a librarian is to have the most boring job in the world, i'd wager. no offense to librarians, of course. it's nothing personal.

to catalogue, shelf read, wrap, process, stamp, watermark, label, repair, shelf books... i'd count it the most boring job not because it's repetitive, which it is, and which many jobs also happen to be, but because it's repetition of the intellectual sort. even if you stand around handing out fliers about hairdressing and tuition, your mind doesn't need to be on the action of your facial muscles and hands. but fliers happen to be the most unnecessary means of paper wastage that i know of, so it's off to the library for me.

when i did community work at the library i couldn't bear to stay for more than two hours. average was one and half. why is it that your stereotypical librarian is portrayed as an intellectual with horn-rimmed glasses? by now i wouldn't wonder if the job's frozen their minds.

in fact it's almost like rs.

you do it for the sake of doing it, what's great is you actually get to do worthwhile things on the side. like blogging. to purely play would constitute torture. people take the monotony out of it, yet sometimes you'd almost prefer monotony to human company. it's the human company that ensures you aren't operating now like a machine. there's the intellectual shackles of it.

there was a forum topic i came across, it went something like this. rs: a game or a test of patience?

neither would be my answer. monotony mixed in with the stench (fine, aroma) of humanity can't be labelled a game. but who ever said monotony couldn't be fun?

because strangely enough, that's what it seems to be.