When I was a kid in the 1980s my Mom and Grandparents would often tell me certain things would "rot my brain." Typically this adage was stated in relation to some sort of entertainment medium such as; TV (MTV comes to mind), video games and certain kinds of newer music.
When did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
It's somewhat ironic that so many of the people who were worried about TV rotting your brain in the 80s are now addicted to Facebook, which rots your brain way more than anything we had in the 80s or 90s. Yes, it probably didn't do much to help you actually learn anything unless you went out of your way to find it, but at least they didn't air total nonsense like JFK coming back from the dead to run for President again with Tupac as his VP or whatever other garbage you can find on Facebook these days.
Yeah, TV news and Facebook, radicalizing a generation of retirees, where many of them just scroll FB all day, or leave ___ News on at full volume. Not to pick on a particular news channel (I don't think the problem is confined to them (and let's keep the thread unlocked)); but a 2012 study found out that ___ News watchers were more poorly informed than people who didn't watch any news at all.
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 19, 2022, 03:11:20 PM
total nonsense like JFK coming back from the dead to run for President again with Tupac as his VP or whatever other garbage you can find on Facebook these days.
This is a thing? More importantly, why?
Quote from: SectorZ on January 20, 2022, 05:59:35 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 19, 2022, 03:11:20 PM
total nonsense like JFK coming back from the dead to run for President again with Tupac as his VP or whatever other garbage you can find on Facebook these days.
This is a thing? More importantly, why?
I haven't the foggiest idea how they got the idea. Apparently there was a good chunk of people congregated on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza for a long period of time because they were expecting the second coming of JFK to occur there. This congregation has only dwindled in recent weeks because, oh yeah, it can actually get cold in Dallas in January.
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 20, 2022, 09:28:19 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on January 20, 2022, 05:59:35 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 19, 2022, 03:11:20 PM
total nonsense like JFK coming back from the dead to run for President again with Tupac as his VP or whatever other garbage you can find on Facebook these days.
This is a thing? More importantly, why?
I haven't the foggiest idea how they got the idea. Apparently there was a good chunk of people congregated on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza for a long period of time because they were expecting the second coming of JFK to occur there. This congregation has only dwindled in recent weeks because, oh yeah, it can actually get cold in Dallas in January.
It's weirder than that:
https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-supporters-gather-jfk-assassination-065733052.html
Quote from: SectorZ on January 20, 2022, 05:59:35 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 19, 2022, 03:11:20 PM
total nonsense like JFK coming back from the dead to run for President again with Tupac as his VP or whatever other garbage you can find on Facebook these days.
This is a thing? More importantly, why?
Seriously? I mean, he'd be about 104 if he was alive today.
Quote from: kkt on January 21, 2022, 02:30:37 AM
Quote from: SectorZ on January 20, 2022, 05:59:35 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 19, 2022, 03:11:20 PM
total nonsense like JFK coming back from the dead to run for President again with Tupac as his VP or whatever other garbage you can find on Facebook these days.
This is a thing? More importantly, why?
Seriously? I mean, he'd be about 104 if he was alive today.
I think it's his son JFK jr that they are talking about.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 20, 2022, 09:42:47 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 20, 2022, 09:28:19 PM
Quote from: SectorZ on January 20, 2022, 05:59:35 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 19, 2022, 03:11:20 PM
total nonsense like JFK coming back from the dead to run for President again with Tupac as his VP or whatever other garbage you can find on Facebook these days.
This is a thing? More importantly, why?
I haven't the foggiest idea how they got the idea. Apparently there was a good chunk of people congregated on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza for a long period of time because they were expecting the second coming of JFK to occur there. This congregation has only dwindled in recent weeks because, oh yeah, it can actually get cold in Dallas in January.
It's weirder than that:
https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-supporters-gather-jfk-assassination-065733052.html
I'm shocked to learn that neither JFK nor JFK Jr. appeared...
Brain rot: I do seem to remember as a kid being told that too much TV would rot my brain. However we didn't even get a TV until I was about 10.
I remember the moral panic over violence in video games. That seemed like a flavor of the 'brain rot' thing old people used to whine about.
I know my parents were on that bandwagon for a while in the 90s.
Moral panic. Each generation does it to the next one.
Many of our parents (or those of us who are parents) didn't have access to TV / video games / computers / Internet from the moment they got home from school. Their parents probably wanted to restrict how TV was bad for them, and the previous generation probably was told they listened to the radio too much. Or that reading too much will make you weak...and so forth. With retirement or careers that allow for more "down time", there's a lot more idle time wasted on the junk we see on the internet...but are we focusing on a small percentage of retirees? Some have nothing to do (and have limited funds), others have plenty to do and want to things that get them accomplishing goals.
But I do get mentally languid on days where I'm on the internet or computer too much, instead of getting more work done. I rarely watch much TV, let alone more than one movie every other weekend, and have limited interest in video games in the last 15 years; I find them all uncreative activities with nothing to really show for after I've consumed them. There's plenty of studies that show that wrapping yourself up in too many daily hours into any passive activity isn't terribly good for you, so hopefully you're making some good money by doing it. Everyone is going to be a little different in that regard, but most people will not accept that they spend too much time on any one (or more) activity because we always justify that "someone else is worse" or "if I spent more time on X, I'll be happier/more fulfilled." And that's a trap we set up for ourselves...especially for an activity that's seemingly never-ending or just ends anticlimactically with only a temporary satisfaction to show for it.
I also came from a household where we only were allowed about one hour of TV per day, not including watching the news as a family. On rainy days/weekends, we were allowed a little more. So between homework, chores, physical activity, creative activities, reading, and other curious endeavors there wasn't a lot of need (or time) to do a lot of so-called "brain rotting" activity. Going back 25-40 years ago, there wasn't much of any way for a teenager to monetize technological endeavors other than software programming; nobody was making a living off video gaming. The internet was mostly supported by donated time and funds because there wasn't much money to be made off of it in the early days.
tl;dr If you want to do or be someone different, and you're spending too much time on something which is holding you back, that's what's rotting you. If not, then carry on...
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 19, 2022, 02:47:56 PM
When did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
I wasn't told about brain rot by my parents, but they did tell me "if you do (or eat) [insert something random], you get smarter".
Quote from: triplemultiplex on January 21, 2022, 09:37:46 AM
I remember the moral panic over violence in video games. That seemed like a flavor of the 'brain rot' thing old people used to whine about.
I know my parents were on that bandwagon for a while in the 90s.
I remember people getting spun up about Doom, Mortal Kombat and for some reason Night Trap. The first two I could some extent see why a parent wouldn't want their kid playing but the third was so campy I don't know how anyone could have taken it serious.
I'm going to get some candy. I'd rather rot my teeth than rot my brain.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 21, 2022, 10:19:54 AM
Quote from: triplemultiplex on January 21, 2022, 09:37:46 AM
I remember the moral panic over violence in video games. That seemed like a flavor of the 'brain rot' thing old people used to whine about.
I know my parents were on that bandwagon for a while in the 90s.
I remember people getting spun up about Doom, Mortal Kombat and for some reason Night Trap. The first two I could some extent see why a parent wouldn't want their kid playing but the third was so campy I don't know how anyone could have taken it serious.
Mortal Kombat WAS far more graphic than any video game that came before it, and campy or not, Night Trap was what's now known as "gorn," IIRC.
Quote from: abefroman329 on January 21, 2022, 12:44:01 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 21, 2022, 10:19:54 AM
Quote from: triplemultiplex on January 21, 2022, 09:37:46 AM
I remember the moral panic over violence in video games. That seemed like a flavor of the 'brain rot' thing old people used to whine about.
I know my parents were on that bandwagon for a while in the 90s.
I remember people getting spun up about Doom, Mortal Kombat and for some reason Night Trap. The first two I could some extent see why a parent wouldn't want their kid playing but the third was so campy I don't know how anyone could have taken it serious.
Mortal Kombat WAS far more graphic than any video game that came before it, and campy or not, Night Trap was what's now known as "gorn," IIRC.
There was some exceptions like the light gun game Chiller which probably had more grotesque violence. My point with Night Trap that obviously nobody complaining about it actually played the game. The acting the was probably intentionally camp and some of the deaths were kind of over the top hilarious. With Doom the negative attention kind of lingered on for numerous years given the association with Columbine High School.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 21, 2022, 10:19:54 AM
Quote from: triplemultiplex on January 21, 2022, 09:37:46 AM
I remember the moral panic over violence in video games. That seemed like a flavor of the 'brain rot' thing old people used to whine about.
I know my parents were on that bandwagon for a while in the 90s.
I remember people getting spun up about Doom, Mortal Kombat and for some reason Night Trap. The first two I could some extent see why a parent wouldn't want their kid playing but the third was so campy I don't know how anyone could have taken it serious.
Don't forget the huge moral panic over
Dungeons & Dragons. Anyone playing D&D was going straight to Hell for fraternizing with demons, or whatever the hell they thought was wrong with it.
Meanwhile, in actual D&D, one time I rolled to see if my gnome sorcerer could use the Fire Bolt spell to make a baked potato. (I rolled a 20 out of 20 so the DM ruled that I torched the potato to a crisp. The gnome was incredibly distraught.) It's just a story-telling game that uses some dice to see if you succeed in what you attempt or not. The story is whatever you want it to be.
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 01:17:18 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 21, 2022, 10:19:54 AM
Quote from: triplemultiplex on January 21, 2022, 09:37:46 AM
I remember the moral panic over violence in video games. That seemed like a flavor of the 'brain rot' thing old people used to whine about.
I know my parents were on that bandwagon for a while in the 90s.
I remember people getting spun up about Doom, Mortal Kombat and for some reason Night Trap. The first two I could some extent see why a parent wouldn't want their kid playing but the third was so campy I don't know how anyone could have taken it serious.
Don't forget the huge moral panic over Dungeons & Dragons. Anyone playing D&D was going straight to Hell for fraternizing with demons, or whatever the hell they thought was wrong with it.
Meanwhile, in actual D&D, one time I rolled to see if my gnome sorcerer could use the Fire Bolt spell to make a baked potato. (I rolled a 20 out of 20 so the DM ruled that I torched the potato to a crisp. The gnome was incredibly distraught.) It's just a story-telling game that uses some dice to see if you succeed in what you attempt or not. The story is whatever you want it to be.
Oh jeez, you could write a book on the things Christians think constitute Satan-worship/false idolatry (see, e.g., Harry Potter).
Harry Potter is an interesting case because it started out being rejected by those who objected to the witchcraft/wizardry aspects of it. Then it gained general mass acceptance. Now it's being rejected by its own fan base because J.K. Rowling's personal values run counter to those most of the fan base holds.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 19, 2022, 02:47:56 PMWhen did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
I don't think we stopped talking about "brain rotting" because ash and trash miraculously left our media environment--it manifestly has not, Facebook being a prime example--but rather because the pop understanding of cognition has changed so that decomposition or putrefaction is no longer an appropriate metaphor. We are now more likely to speak of critical thinking skills that are left unrehearsed, so that they atrophy, or people becoming so invested in belief systems that they become impervious to different perspectives.
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 03:16:19 PM
Harry Potter is an interesting case because it started out being rejected by those who objected to the witchcraft/wizardry aspects of it. Then it gained general mass acceptance. Now it's being rejected by its own fan base because J.K. Rowling's personal values run counter to those most of the fan base holds.
Rowling can't win.
Quote from: kkt on January 21, 2022, 03:18:45 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 03:16:19 PM
Harry Potter is an interesting case because it started out being rejected by those who objected to the witchcraft/wizardry aspects of it. Then it gained general mass acceptance. Now it's being rejected by its own fan base because J.K. Rowling's personal values run counter to those most of the fan base holds.
Rowling can't win.
I mean, she could if she would just shut her mouth and her pocketbook rather than doing her best Dan Cathy impression, but she apparently can't stop herself.
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 03:23:25 PM
Quote from: kkt on January 21, 2022, 03:18:45 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 03:16:19 PM
Harry Potter is an interesting case because it started out being rejected by those who objected to the witchcraft/wizardry aspects of it. Then it gained general mass acceptance. Now it's being rejected by its own fan base because J.K. Rowling's personal values run counter to those most of the fan base holds.
Rowling can't win.
I mean, she could if she would just shut her mouth and her pocketbook rather than doing her best Dan Cathy impression, but she apparently can't stop herself.
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?board=9.0
Yeah.
Also, she made her personal feelings known in the books themselves (however obliquely), so it's really a matter of the fandom overlooking them until she made them crystal-clear.
Quote from: Mr. Matté on January 21, 2022, 12:38:32 PM
I'm going to get some candy. I'd rather rot my teeth than rot my brain.
Bonus points to everyone who recognizes that quote.
Quote from: abefroman329 on January 21, 2022, 03:04:22 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 01:17:18 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 21, 2022, 10:19:54 AM
Quote from: triplemultiplex on January 21, 2022, 09:37:46 AM
I remember the moral panic over violence in video games. That seemed like a flavor of the 'brain rot' thing old people used to whine about.
I know my parents were on that bandwagon for a while in the 90s.
I remember people getting spun up about Doom, Mortal Kombat and for some reason Night Trap. The first two I could some extent see why a parent wouldn't want their kid playing but the third was so campy I don't know how anyone could have taken it serious.
Don't forget the huge moral panic over Dungeons & Dragons. Anyone playing D&D was going straight to Hell for fraternizing with demons, or whatever the hell they thought was wrong with it.
Meanwhile, in actual D&D, one time I rolled to see if my gnome sorcerer could use the Fire Bolt spell to make a baked potato. (I rolled a 20 out of 20 so the DM ruled that I torched the potato to a crisp. The gnome was incredibly distraught.) It's just a story-telling game that uses some dice to see if you succeed in what you attempt or not. The story is whatever you want it to be.
Oh jeez, you could write a book on the things Christians think constitute Satan-worship/false idolatry (see, e.g., Harry Potter).
The D&D thing was an interesting case observing as an outsider as it was happening. It ended up with anti-D&D shit like this being produced:
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 03:16:19 PM
Harry Potter is an interesting case because it started out being rejected by those who objected to the witchcraft/wizardry aspects of it. Then it gained general mass acceptance. Now it's being rejected by its own fan base because J.K. Rowling's personal values run counter to those most of the fan base holds.
Evanna Lynch (she plays Luna Lovegood in the movies) also got backlash when she made a half-hearted attempt to stick up for J.K. a couple of years ago (she was the only cast member to do so). It didn't go over well, and she ended up deleting her Twitter account because of it. Most of the fan base seems to have forgiven Evanna now, though.
It's pretty common knowledge that Evanna and J.K. have always been close, so I'm not sure why people were shocked when she went to bat for J.K.
Quote from: LM117 on January 21, 2022, 07:55:09 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on January 21, 2022, 03:16:19 PM
Harry Potter is an interesting case because it started out being rejected by those who objected to the witchcraft/wizardry aspects of it. Then it gained general mass acceptance. Now it's being rejected by its own fan base because J.K. Rowling's personal values run counter to those most of the fan base holds.
Evanna Lynch (she plays Luna Lovegood in the movies) also got backlash when she made a half-hearted attempt to stick up for J.K. a couple of years ago (she was the only cast member to do so). It didn't go over well, and she ended up deleting her Twitter account because of it. Most of the fan base seems to have forgiven Evanna now, though.
It's pretty common knowledge that Evanna and J.K. have always been close, so I'm not sure why people were shocked when she went to bat for J.K.
More recently, some random extra from the last scene of the last movie stuck up for JK, which was unintentionally hilarious.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 19, 2022, 02:47:56 PM
When I was a kid in the 1980s my Mom and Grandparents would often tell me certain things would "rot my brain." Typically this adage was stated in relation to some sort of entertainment medium such as; TV (MTV comes to mind), video games and certain kinds of newer music.
When did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
The simpsons :colorful:
Quote from: snowc on January 22, 2022, 05:13:02 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 19, 2022, 02:47:56 PM
When I was a kid in the 1980s my Mom and Grandparents would often tell me certain things would "rot my brain." Typically this adage was stated in relation to some sort of entertainment medium such as; TV (MTV comes to mind), video games and certain kinds of newer music.
When did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
The simpsons :colorful:
Your posts :colorful:
Quote from: snowc on January 22, 2022, 05:13:02 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 19, 2022, 02:47:56 PM
When I was a kid in the 1980s my Mom and Grandparents would often tell me certain things would "rot my brain." Typically this adage was stated in relation to some sort of entertainment medium such as; TV (MTV comes to mind), video games and certain kinds of newer music.
When did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
The simpsons :colorful:
That emoji sucks
Oddly, there's a broom emoji but no vacuum emoji.
FWIW when The Simpsons were on the Tracy Ullman Show they did have "Brain Rotting" attributes according to my Mom. I don't recall if that ever carried over when The Simpsons was spun off into it's own television program. I'm more or less convinced "brain rotting" was something people simply did not talk about during the 1990s.
Inferences by to some forum users on this page indicate the new source of childhood brain rot is TikTok, discuss:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=31429.msg2857121;topicseen#msg2857121
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on July 21, 2023, 09:27:24 PM
Inferences by to some forum users on this page indicate the new source of childhood brain rot is TikTok, discuss:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=31429.msg2857121;topicseen#msg2857121
As an aside, I don't think the current fad of handing a phone to a 2-5 year old for long periods of time is going to help their future attention spans. A lot more parents just seem to toss a device at a kid to keep it quiet.
Now, it could just be they need a few minutes of silence to take on a task but there's loads of time I see the kiddo pitch a huge fit when that same phone/tablet is taken away. But there's something not quite right with constantly serving their immediate desires instead of actually bonding with children and engaging them in many of the same activities that adults perform. It's not a great idea to have their desires constantly entertained, instead they gain more patience and problem-solving abilities in the long run.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on July 21, 2023, 09:27:24 PM
Inferences by to some forum users on this page indicate the new source of childhood brain rot is TikTok, discuss:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=31429.msg2857121;topicseen#msg2857121
I'm worried about TikTok mainly because it falls under Chinese laws regarding the data of many people who don't understand the entire situation behind that (CCP can make TikTok's parent company hand over all of the information on you at any time, if memory serves).
More importantly, although it draws a lot of people, it's addictive... granted, I'm no better, but most of the people I know who use TikTok use it for hours at a time of short form videos, even my brother, who turned 23 earlier this month. It's like they found out how ADHD works, and exploit it for continued ad revenue.
TikTok, however, brain rots middle schoolers and higher. I find "brain rot" in the traditional sense to be coming from iPad parents, where children demand instant entertainment and never develop the skill of quietly being bored (something we spend like 60% of our lives doing), all because it's easier to throw junior behind a tablet than to spend time with him/her/them. It's almost frustrating... you wanted to have a baby, why not give it the attention it deserves, instead of making a Steve Jobs device do all the work?
Apologies if I sound like a boomer here, this is probably the subject I have the most conservative opinion about. Brain rotting doesn't come from televisions or iPads, it comes from parents attempting to use them as a substitute. They aren't a viable substitute unless you get to cartoonishly bad parenting (think Peter and Lois Griffin in later seasons of Family Guy).
Also unrelated, but funnily enough "brainrot" (one word) is a term I've seen and used with other neurodivergent people expressing my current hyperfixation. For example, "I had Marky (character used as forum avatar right now) brainrot, so I impulse spent $20 for art of him (true story)."
$20 is dirt cheap for a commission. (Hell, $20 wouldn't even pay for me to open up Krita...)
I won't use TikTok because it is Chinese spyware. I am not going to let any governmental agency see any info on me, no matter how mandane the info is.
Quote from: Big John on July 22, 2023, 07:39:57 AM
I am not going to let any governmental agency see any info on me
So you don't have a driver's license or SSN? Don't own property? Don't file income taxes? Don't record your family's births, marriages or deaths?
My grandmother once told me that if you made funny faces at people, your face would freeze that way.
But teachers and principals were really big on talking about stuff like music and Dungeons & Dragons being brain-rotting.
Also, I remember people in the mid-'80s criticizing MTV while they tolerated radio stations that played much of the same music. They thought music only became brain-rotting if you added video to it.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 22, 2023, 09:33:12 AM
Also, I remember people in the mid-'80s criticizing MTV while they tolerated radio stations that played much of the same music. They thought music only became brain-rotting if you added video to it.
I was in a poor family where cable TV was considered a luxury which they could not afford. So no MTV, but from what I heard about it I would not have watched it anyway. Then there was/is a local radio station with a cult-like following that apparently had a very similar play list. I tried listening to that station and didn't care for what they were playing and I grew to hate it.
I still think people exaggerate the importance of the information that the Chinese can cull from TikTok at this point. I find it rare that people post real personal information on there, if not nonexistent. The closest one gets is someone telling a personal experience, but with location details and the like being kept vague.
iPad parents exist because society has deteriorated to the point where demands on the parents, such as working more hours, double-incoming, and then all the ridiculous additional things parents must do to be considered good parents nowadays have just sucked all their energy.
There's really nothing to be done except watch us decline into Soylent Green at this point...unless the younger generations turn us around...which they never do.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 19, 2022, 02:47:56 PM
When I was a kid in the 1980s my Mom and Grandparents would often tell me certain things would "rot my brain." Typically this adage was stated in relation to some sort of entertainment medium such as; TV (MTV comes to mind), video games and certain kinds of newer music.
When did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
I was at least 90th percentile in amount of MTV watched from ages 8-13 and am also well above that percentile in IQ so there's that.
Quote from: NWI_Irish96 on July 22, 2023, 01:38:08 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 19, 2022, 02:47:56 PM
When I was a kid in the 1980s my Mom and Grandparents would often tell me certain things would "rot my brain." Typically this adage was stated in relation to some sort of entertainment medium such as; TV (MTV comes to mind), video games and certain kinds of newer music.
When did people stop telling kids things about their brains rotting? I don't recall ever being told about brain rot during the 1990s, was this just something people just moved on from? Were you ever told your brain would rot? If so, what was the supposed cause of the brain rotting and were you ever afraid it would actually happen akin to real world spongiform encephalopathy?
I was at least 90th percentile in amount of MTV watched from ages 8-13 and am also well above that percentile in IQ so there's that.
Heh. You had your IQ tested? When I was a kid in the 1980s, IQ tests had become passe.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 22, 2023, 09:25:08 AM
But teachers and principals were really big on talking about stuff like music and Dungeons & Dragons being brain-rotting.
I think I've learned more marketable skills from needing to do something to prepare a D&D session than I did from school.
Quote from: Scott5114 on July 22, 2023, 06:46:07 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on July 22, 2023, 09:25:08 AM
But teachers and principals were really big on talking about stuff like music and Dungeons & Dragons being brain-rotting.
I think I've learned more marketable skills from needing to do something to prepare a D&D session than I did from school.
Dungeons & Dragons was only something I heard of in the 1980s. For the life of me I don't reca anyone ever actually playing it or openly admitting they did. It didn't occur to that the original Final Fantasy on NES (which I got when it was new) was a rip off of D&D until the 2000s.
I'm more worried about what Google knows about me than the Chinese, to be honest.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on July 22, 2023, 06:53:20 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on July 22, 2023, 06:46:07 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on July 22, 2023, 09:25:08 AM
But teachers and principals were really big on talking about stuff like music and Dungeons & Dragons being brain-rotting.
I think I've learned more marketable skills from needing to do something to prepare a D&D session than I did from school.
Dungeons & Dragons was only something I heard of in the 1980s. For the life of me I don't reca anyone ever actually playing it or openly admitting they did. It didn't occur to that the original Final Fantasy on NES (which I got when it was new) was a rip off of D&D until the 2000s.
The D&D that was available in the 1980s was a total mess compared to what exists now. The rules were so voluminous and fiddly that even I have trouble comprehending them. It was definitely something only a true supernerd would appreciate. But of course, nobody had ever really created a dice-based roleplaying game before 1st edition D&D, so nobody knew what they were doing. These days the rules are a lot more streamlined, to the point that it's viable as an activity regular folks might enjoy.
As an example: in 5th edition (released 2014), every potential target has a statistic called "armor class" (AC). If the knight you're wanting to attack has an AC of 15, you have to roll 15 or better for the attack to do any damage.
In 1st edition (current in the 1980s) you had to deal with whatever the hell this thing was supposed to mean.
(https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-94d70a12ab8be9e03d580a79de889662.webp)
No matter how many times I read the explanation of how the THAC0 table worked, it still runs out of my head like it's a sieve. (Also, if you can build the mental capacity to understand the stupid thing, I'd say that's the
opposite of brain rot!)
My friends and I played D&D throughout the 80s. Other role playing games caught on in the early 1990s. But yeah, it seems D&D disappeared for a while and then had a recent rennaissance over the last decade or so.
Quote from: Rothman on July 22, 2023, 09:33:54 PM
My friends and I played D&D throughout the 80s. Other role playing games caught on in the early 1990s. But yeah, it seems D&D disappeared for a while and then had a recent rennaissance over the last decade or so.
D&D sort of became the Kleenex of TTRPGs from what I can tell in the past few years... the issue is that Wizards of the Coast (parent company who I'm pretty sure is owned by Hasbro) is doing a pretty good job of making it run aground. I mainly play it sometimes because it's what the most people run.
There's other systems I'd rather play, like Pathfinder, or Gamma World, or some of the White Wolf games. 5e has a lower barrier to entry but gets stale, is a little bit of a power fantasy, and has other idiosyncrasies I'm not a huge fan of. Plus they released unbalanced source materials in their latest module by giving out free feats... it's like they didn't even proofread.
D&D 5e is what you run if if you want enough rules to feel like you're playing a game but not so many that it distracts from the story playing out.
The first RPG I played was Pathfinder 1e (because D&D 5e wasn't out yet) and my main memories of it was the story grinding to a halt while people dug up all the various bonuses they're entitled to, and being told I couldn't do whatever it was I wanted to do because I wouldn't have enough actions. That meant that as soon as we went into initiative I'd mentally check out of the session; the rest of the night was just going to be a bunch of tedious math. (Didn't help I was playing a bard and I didn't have much I could actually do in combat.) The first time I played 5e (as a druid), I was like, "holy shit, combat can actually be fun?"
Quote from: Scott5114 on July 23, 2023, 05:52:29 PM
D&D 5e is what you run if if you want enough rules to feel like you're playing a game but not so many that it distracts from the story playing out.
The first RPG I played was Pathfinder 1e (because D&D 5e wasn't out yet) and my main memories of it was the story grinding to a halt while people dug up all the various bonuses they're entitled to, and being told I couldn't do whatever it was I wanted to do because I wouldn't have enough actions. That meant that as soon as we went into initiative I'd mentally check out of the session; the rest of the night was just going to be a bunch of tedious math. (Didn't help I was playing a bard and I didn't have much I could actually do in combat.) The first time I played 5e (as a druid), I was like, "holy shit, combat can actually be fun?"
Maybe this is a DM issue, but I find it's hugely party and situation dependent on how 5e combat plays out. Yeah, sometimes you're a fighter and you can mow down like 20 people in a turn, and it's quite enjoyable. I played a wizard for about a year, and found myself sitting around for a solid 40 minutes to an hour (often browsing this forum because it was an online game) while everyone else had their fun due to action economy. Sure I'd deal 70 damage on one turn, but like... it's a lot of looking pretty.
Pathfinder 2e is a little bit more flexible in that regard, because you get 3 actions and can choose what to do with them, but dashing is goofy.
I will say though, I've slapped together enough characters in 5e to where I can probably do it in my sleep, which I find to be an upside. The quick builds are good for getting something going in like 4 minutes.
Since I homebrew monsters with some regularity, I've found that how quick a fight goes in 5e tends to be more a function of how the enemies are statted out than anything else. Challenge rating, used indirectly to balance an encounter, is simply the average of an offensive CR and a defensive CR. This means you can make a creature stronger either by letting it spam Fireball (3) over and over, or by cranking its HP and AC up really high. I've found that high-defense fights tend to be the long, plodding ones, since most turns are either the PC missing, or when they do hit, taking off something like 5% of the enemy's HP. It's even worse if your players are all tanked up too and/or the enemies have no reason to target the squishy casters in particular. As a result, I try to tune for lower-defense enemies, then balancing it out by either giving them more of them to fight (which makes action economy more important), or if it makes sense to the story, triggering multiple encounters per adventuring day (which makes resource management more important and short rests become relevant).
The nice thing about being a wizard is you have lots of utility spells you can sometimes use to avoid combat altogether.