Reading Time: 7 minutes Today, let me show you the increasing lengths some folks will go to for privacy — and how it can be destroyed.
MUDs
Narcissistic Rage: Of Game Admins and Presidents (LSP #175)
Reading Time: 10 minutes To borrow a phrase and wreck its meter: ‘the time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to speak of many things: Of shoes and ships…’ And narcissistic rage, of dysfunctional game admins and extremely seditious presidents. In the case of those last two items, these two groups have some very important traits in common: their narcissistic desire for attention, the mind-boggling extremes to which they are both willing to go in order to get it, and their catastrophic rage when it is denied. Today, Lord Snow Presides over how I learned to spot narcissists in a game I once loved.
That Time Someone Tried to Revitalize an Online Game I Staffed
Reading Time: 9 minutes Revitalization efforts tend to fail because once a group is solidly entrenched in a particular way of behaving and thinking together, it’s almost impossible to create lasting change in its members. Long ago, I learned that lesson in spades on an online game. So today, let me recount for you that time someone tried — and failed — to revitalize a game we played.
How I Learned to Focus on the Game, Not the Players
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! Recently, we’ve been circling around the topic of how authoritarians approach problems and try to solve them. Their utter inability to solve their problems — or even really to accurately identify them — boils down to a mistake in focus. They’re approaching their situations completely backward, thus dooming their attempts to fix […]
Abusing the Help in ‘This Present Darkness’ (LSP #116, Ch. 11)
Reading Time: 7 minutes In today’s installment, we see how demons take defeat–and how poorly they treat their human assistants when they get frustrated. So yes: today, Lord Snow Presides over yet another example of Christian projection: mistreating the help.
What Thom Rainer Teaches Pastors About Anonymous Complaints
Reading Time: 11 minutes Today, I offer up a recent blog post from none other than Thom Rainer, one of the biggest names of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He wrote about how pastors should handle anonymous complaints. And y’all, his post reveals one of the most serious disconnects in the minds of authoritarian Christian leaders–and maybe even gives us a hint about why their churches have been doing so poorly for so long.
Christians Aren’t Ready Yet to Fix Their Slump
Reading Time: 10 minutes Christians are losing people fast, and along with members they’re losing shocking amounts of credibility and influence. Some of them have finally begun to accept that their various groups are in a serious slump–years after anyone with half a clue could have told them they were. But they’re still not ready to engage with why the slump is happening, much less to start working out what they should do about it. Here’s what they think is going on–and what is actually going on.
Why Christian Marketing Sucks — And Why It Must.
Reading Time: 10 minutes As one might expect, the leaders in the religion are doing their best to combat their groups’ losses with a public-relations and marketing blitz. Unfortunately for them, those efforts are doomed–thanks to the efforts of those selfsame leaders.
Permadeath vs. Respawn.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Permadeath is a gaming term that means that once a character dies, that’s it: they’re gone forever. I still remember the first time I ever heard about it and played a game that featured it. And life sure does look different–and better–when one looks at it from a permadeath perspective.
We Can Do Better Than This Racism Crap.
Reading Time: 7 minutes If you’ve been following the latest feud in the atheist community between “The Amazing Atheist” and Patheos blogger Martin Hughes of BarrierBreaker, then you likely won’t be surprised to learn that I’m adding my voice to the growing number of people saying that racists do not speak for them. Today I want to talk about what’s happened, and why I’m weighing in.