Misconceptions/Ignorance

[Lugbzurg]

Got another one...

"Videogames are isolating"
...among other things. When I hear someone break out this garbage, I bring up how reading books or watching films is just as lonesome and whatnot, if not more so.

 

[thomas.owns]

White guys can't jump.

 

[SadakoMoose]

As a Type 1 Diabetic, I face all sorts of people who seem to think I am 'allergic to sugar' and wonder why I am not as big as a house. People seem to believe Type 1 diabetes is gained from the overindulgence of too much sugar, Where it is actually an auto-immune disease, a fluke basically. I was just curious what kinds of misconceptions the general public have about the escapist community's lives and how you deal with it. I'm also open to answer any questions you have about me and what daily life involves.

captcha: political PARTAYYYY

Oh hey, another one!
Cool to finally meet another Type 1 on the escapist forums!
What pump do you own?

But yeah, I used to get a lot of that, in school especially.
Actually, some people even referred to it as a "phase" I was going through.
Holy crap, right?

Still, my diabetes hasn't slowed me down all that much. I'm even gettin' ready to start training as a pro wrestler.
Weirdly enough, my pro wrestling fandom is the thing that I get the most ignorance about.

Some examples:
"Oh you mean that WWF stuff?"
"Isn't that where Vince McMahon and Leprechaun blew up a bus or something?"
"Oh, it's just a soap opera for guys (you know because only men enjoy wrestling and we're all too self conscious to watch regular soaps, apparently.)"
"Bah, it's all fake and homo-erotic! Anybody can do it! You're not a real athlete! It's not sports 'cause I can't bet on it! You're just an actor."

People can get REALLY REALLY mean and dismissive about pro wrestling, you know?
Otherwise intelligent people acting Classist, Homophobic, and saying genuinely dismissive and mean-spirited things...

 

[Gordon Freemonty]

As a Type 1 Diabetic, I face all sorts of people who seem to think I am 'allergic to sugar' and wonder why I am not as big as a house. People seem to believe Type 1 diabetes is gained from the overindulgence of too much sugar, Where it is actually an auto-immune disease, a fluke basically. I was just curious what kinds of misconceptions the general public have about the escapist community's lives and how you deal with it. I'm also open to answer any questions you have about me and what daily life involves.

captcha: political PARTAYYYY

Oh hey, another one!
Cool to finally meet another Type 1 on the escapist forums!
What pump do you own?

Likewise!

I would LOVE a pump but im still stuck on MDI unfortunately... NHS doesnt just throw them out to everyone I'm afraid... However i have a pump clinic in May which I am desperately looking forward too. Fingers crossed I get one...

 

[Xanthious]

As a black man I hate it when people think I have an enormously large . . . . oh wait never mind . . .maybe there is some truth there.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Eyewitness accounts, especially during stress related events like being attacked or mugged, are actually really untrustworthy due to the witness being under stress and not analyzing even the basic details.

"Your Diabetic...?

My diabetic?

 

[Waaghpowa]

When I tell people I play Street Fighter competitively, they give me funny looks. To them, "it's just mashing buttons". They can't take it seriously.

Case in point: This match between FGC veterans Daigo Umehara and Alex Valle at SoCal Regionals 2012.


I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone look at this match and dismiss it. "Oh, they're just spamming fireballs. Why don't they do combos? I could beat these guys." Nothing could be further from the truth. I can't even begin to describe the layers of strategy going on here.

I'm not big on fighting games, but by the looks of it, the Haduken spam is to pressure your opponent into either:
A) Defending
B) Make an aggressive advance which leaves them open to counter attack
Am I close?

The fact that im british i immediatley like tea.

The fact that i do and i make a fine brew is neither here nor there

I like tea and I'm like Chinese, my guess is that people wont mistake you for Chinese though

 

[Ungenericteen]

Mine is rather odd I have dyslexia and dysgraphia the former make people think see numbers backwards and that one is entirely understandable but the latter is an inability to write legibly and apparently this means I can not read why this is I have no idea but several times i have stated "Nope I just can not write, I read very quickly in fact. Have to read fast so i can remember what i need without writing it down" and yet still the response of something along the lines of how I am illustrate comes despite my best efforts to state otherwise.

I have dysgraphia and mild dsylexia, when I dropped an art class in grade school a class mate said "you just need to try more, I have dsylexia and I can read" dysgraphia affects the nerves of my fingers making me unable to write a straight line without aid.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I get the 'gamer' label at work, so people assume I'm lazy at home, drink mountain dew all the time, stay indoors all the time, and get over involved with 'fake' experiences. This is mostly not true, although I do stay indoors unless I have a reason to go out, I won't just go out for the sake of it. I do however clean the kitchen and keep my room tidy, I only drink MD at work because I need the energy, and I often lean more towards fun games rather than 'deep' games.

The other misconception I get is that as an English person I either drink tea with my little finger poking forward (I don't even drink tea at all) or more specifically because I'm from South East London I strut around calling people 'bruv' and stealing whatever isn't nailed down.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I like tea and I'm like Chinese, my guess is that people wont mistake you for Chinese though

That has always confused me how British people get associated with drinking tea more than Chinese people do, I assume the Chinese have been drinking it longer than Britain has been established?

I guess the Chinese have to put up with enough stereotypes as it is.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

naa the other guy, anti smoking people are douches

Why? Smoking is bad for everyones health assuming they are in proximity to the smoker.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't care what you do in your own privacy, but when it affects other people it becomes a problem

 

[Waaghpowa]

I like tea and I'm like Chinese, my guess is that people wont mistake you for Chinese though

That has always confused me how British people get associated with drinking tea more than Chinese people do, I assume the Chinese have been drinking it longer than Britain has been established?

I guess the Chinese have to put up with enough stereotypes as it is.

Tea was unknown to the British till roughly the 16th century. Before that it was almost entirely Asian, mostly China I believe as far as it being a beverage.

Edit:I just remembered a common misconception. The Italians DID NOT invent noodles, that was the Chinese.

 

[launchpadmcqwak]

naa the other guy, anti smoking people are douches

Why? Smoking is bad for everyones health assuming they are in proximity to the smoker.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't care what you do in your own privacy, but when it affects other people it becomes a problem

you can smoke a pack a day for years and not die, so i doubt a bit of second hand smoke is going to give your kid cancer

 

[Waaghpowa]

naa the other guy, anti smoking people are douches

Why? Smoking is bad for everyones health assuming they are in proximity to the smoker.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't care what you do in your own privacy, but when it affects other people it becomes a problem

you can smoke a pack a day for years and not die, so i doubt a bit of second hand smoke is going to give your kid cancer

This is true considering my grandmother smoked more than a pack a day till she was nearly 90 and died from something totally unrelated to her smoking.

 

[bullet_sandw1ch]

Anything involving black holes. Sci-Fi have made them out as planet munching monsters that go around the universe eating stuff up. Also that they're some sort of rip in space-time.
If our sun was to turn into a black hole (It wouldn't, but follow me on this...) we would orbit in the same way we do now. We'd all die from the cold of space, but we'd still orbit it. It wouldn't suck in the solar system because IT HAS THE SAME MASS AS THE SUN. Gravity is caused by mass, and you can't create mass, so a black hole is only as heavy and powerful in terms of gravity as the star (Or core of the star...) it came from! And they aren't rips in space or whatever badly written TV shows have you believe. The event horizon, the black part you see (Or don't see, whatever way you look at it...) is just the radius at which the gravity is so strong light can't escape. It isn't a surface, but it definitely isn't some sort of inter-dimensional rift.
Also, that they 'eat up' time. No, time (Like energy and matter...) can't be destroyed or cast into some sort of void, it's just that according to the laws of general relativity the singularity at the center of the black hole has a gravity so strong that time essentially stops at that point. If you were somehow magically unaffected by gravity and you were somehow magically inside a singularity, if you somehow magically managed to GET OUT of the singularity, you'd be an infinite number of years into the future. Considering the universe itself is finite, you can understand the impossibility of exiting a singularity or even the radius at which light can't get out of a black hole.

partially incorrect (i think, sorry if im being an ass hat). a black hole is like a gravity well, i think that earth to mercury would be pulled in. also, the sun is too small to be a black hole, it would just become very cold, and die (a neutron star).

 

[bullet_sandw1ch]

[/quote]naa the other guy, anti smoking people are douches[/quote]
not entirely true. i dont appreciate smokers, but im not a hardcore nicotine hater. i just dont think my lungs should be at risk just cause some guy wants to light it up in my house. thats partly why i got my parents to stop smoking: so all of our health would improve. also, people that smell like second hand smoke (me a few months ago) are treated like a social plague, hated by people because they have the interpretation that i was a bad person because i smelled like smoke, yet i didnt smoke.

 

[DANEgerous]

Mine is rather odd I have dyslexia and dysgraphia the former make people think see numbers backwards and that one is entirely understandable but the latter is an inability to write legibly and apparently this means I can not read why this is I have no idea but several times i have stated "Nope I just can not write, I read very quickly in fact. Have to read fast so i can remember what i need without writing it down" and yet still the response of something along the lines of how I am illustrate comes despite my best efforts to state otherwise.

I have dysgraphia and mild dsylexia, when I dropped an art class in grade school a class mate said "you just need to try more, I have dsylexia and I can read" dysgraphia affects the nerves of my fingers making me unable to write a straight line without aid.

I must say I know precisely what you mean I was for some reason put in a remedial reading class and was given a very very small book an told i had a whole week get a one page paper written on it, I look back with an expression that said "Are you fucking serious" which was clearly apparent because I was asked if i needed more time and i was clearly mad at this absurd time frame. So i turned in the paper that day because i felt so damn insulted.

This for some reason mean i am artistic which I suppose in a literary sense I can be true no i was told "draw your house" i told them I can not draw and just got "try anyway" so i drew my shitty house and was like "Look how bad this is! can I get out of this class now?" only to be denied and this made me ask why the fuck not? i already did my assignment for the week clearly i should be able to go, I do not need this" but no all of a sudden this was an art class! because my attitude was bad, long story short i just left an went to see my friend in drama or "home room" as we called it my first year i took with me 5 books (5 weeks of work) goggled the plot like and finished them all in a day and spent the reat of my time doing stuff like putting SNES Emulators on our school server, hanging out and even ordering pizza.

And so ends my random chapter of "how school taught me authority is fucking bullshit"

 

[CardinalPiggles]

naa the other guy, anti smoking people are douches

Why? Smoking is bad for everyones health assuming they are in proximity to the smoker.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't care what you do in your own privacy, but when it affects other people it becomes a problem

you can smoke a pack a day for years and not die, so i doubt a bit of second hand smoke is going to give your kid cancer

And if 'my kid' has lung problems? Asthma? Is it fair for you to blow smoke around him/her.

I have a minor chest infection right now, and the second to last thing I want right now is to be breathing in second hand smoke.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

That ADHD is obviously a thing made up pharmaceutical corporations to sell placebos to ignorant parents. :|

It's hard enough dealing with my intense short term memory problems and the fact that I have to take what essential amounts to crank. Now people think it's hilarious to use it as a term for impatient, stupid people. I love the internet.

 

[Queen Michael]

naa the other guy, anti smoking people are douches

Why? Smoking is bad for everyones health assuming they are in proximity to the smoker.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't care what you do in your own privacy, but when it affects other people it becomes a problem

you can smoke a pack a day for years and not die, so i doubt a bit of second hand smoke is going to give your kid cancer

Depends on how big "a bit" is... Thousands of people are hospitalized each year because of second-hand smoke.
I shouldn't have to inhale cigarette smoke against my will. Simple as that.