Peregrine said:
You're hiding from the real world within a game. Anonymity doesn't let me brag about the real world. It gives you losers the courage to think you're my equal.
Even if everything you've said (even the things that have contradicted each other) are 100% gospel, why the fuck do you think anyone cares? The beauty of virtual worlds is they don't discriminate based on what your real-world standing is. Anyone in-game could be 13 or 73. Male or female. A lawyer, a welder, a crazy homeless guy who spends all his panhandling money in internet cafes.
But you're right. I am hiding behind my FFXI characters. Sadly, I can't call forth great fire beasts to rain destruction on large turtle creatures, nor can I take my fists and punch them through animated skeletons returned from the grave with who I am in real life. I can't make furniture, arrows, and flutes appear out of thin air. And for that, I am sorry.
Peregrine, you remind me a lot of an old friend I grew up with, Rob. Rob lived next door to me. He had a good head on his shoulders, was pretty good at team sports. Like me, the teachers said he was 'gifted.' Special, if you will. My parents took that to mean I needed to be challenged. Those challenges got me through all the schooling, scholarships, education I needed and now I'm using that to build a bankroll so I can go back to school and study what I really want to do with my life.
Rob, on the other hand, had a set of parents who took 'gifted' to mean 'world champion everything.' They coddled him. Told him how he was always right. How nobody should ever try to question him, because they obviously didn't know what they were talking about. He got in trouble with the teachers constantly. He'd run screaming out of the classroom if he got a B or lower. He'd cry about how it wasn't his fault when he made mistakes, how the person he was copying his answers from should have just hidden their sheet better. When he was named second string halfback on the varsity football team, he threw his helmet through the coach's office window and quit. He turned down full scholarships to Northern Illinois, U of I-Urbana/Champaign, and Colorado State because those schools were beneath him. He wanted Ivy League. He ended up getting into Northwestern after having to pay for almost 90% of it in loans.
He's currently in his fifth (might be sixth, I believe he took a year off to 'find himself',) has a sub-3.0/5 GPA and has been on and off academic probation for the last three years. He's been through countless failed relationships (and two abortions,) a falling-out or two with his family, and many more other real life problems. But the one thing that's never changed:
It's never. His. Fault. He's always right, and it's just the world/everyone else/the teachers/the students/'the man'/whatever group of people he feels are responsible for his failures that are keeping him from his gifts. I think the only thing he's got left in his life is playing the role of the snotty martyr. He lives off of his past and his possible successes:
"Remember when I got a 1560 on the SAT?"
"I can't believe you didn't go to Northwestern. Did you think it'd be too hard for ya?"
Him at basketball/football games: "It's alright, it's ok, you're gonna work for us someday!"
"Man, when I get outta here, I'm gonna be making $200k a year starting. STARTING. You'll never make that with your cartoon voices, Cubs."
He's
always got it all figured out, when just a few steps away everyone else knows he doesn't have a fucking clue. And it's impossible, totally impossible, to ever change his mind.
I'd stop talking to him and trying if he wasn't a childhood friend. But that doesn't stop me from being sorry for him.
Damn, that was long. Moving on.
Nevermind that within the game I have around 15 million in assets
15 million, for someone deep into endgame, is lower-middle class. Even selling off my extraneous shit I'd estimate I have double that, and I don't have TH2 to fall back on. Shit, Skaw has a single piece of gear that costs 4x your assets. I wouldn't brag about being a 75 - no, wait, still 74, sorry - THF that holds 15 million in assets.
barring whatever 80 cloth is worth these days,
About what 53 Cloth is worth. Maybe a little more due to Rainbow. Especially considering you've been at 80 for as long as I can remember your sig. You say you make so much gil in your spare time - shit or get off the pot about a craft where 95% of it's cost/value is getting it to 99-100.
run a dynamis shell, and host events for people of this forum on a weekly basis.
Great! Congrats. Nobody said either of these things were bad. I'm happy this is how you wish to 'contribute' to the server.
What do you all do? lol farm and grub internet gil. GG, losers.
Maybe these things wouldn't be so hard if you didn't rely on insulting anyone with a differing opinion.
Probably no more worth something in the game than you are in real life, which is ironic. What do you do for quetza that makes you think you're worth more than I am in the game?
Because that's about as funny as you claiming you're equal to me in life.
And what makes you think what you do 'for the server' makes you worth anything? What if someone told you they spent their gil on the gear you find totally worthless because it makes them happy and it makes their static happy? Are they not proving their worth not only to the server, but to other people in-game who respect them for their choices?
I understand that people don't always play this game by the rules I set for myself when I log on. I can see where they're coming from and I respect that. Why can't you? Why
won't you? Everything's black and white to you. If you do X then you're Y. If P says Z is A, then Z is A. Even if Z is B, it's A because P says it is. If J says Z is B, J is wrong because P says so. And P is better than J, even if J doesn't think so, doesn't care, or it isn't true in the first place.
Seriously. Not one single poster in this thread makes a difference in quetza. You all just don't matter. You're not capable of being somebodies.
Except you? I mean, if Peregrine doesn't think I'm worth it, it has to be true.
Here's something for you to chew on:
I AM A SOMEBODY TO MYSELF. I didn't install this game so I could become the raddest dude in all of Jeuno and have random people send me /tells and want to marry me and jump my Taru bones. I installed this game because I like Final Fantasy and I want to have fun. And I do that. Because I do that, it makes me a somebody.
I don't like the 'internet popularity.' It's cute, and it's neat that people see me and do crazy emotes my way because I'm 'TEH CUBZORRZZZZZZZ' or whatever the fuck people want to call me. I get /tells out of the blue from people I've never seen or heard of thanking me for my Woodworking, Cooking, Fishing, Alchemy guides. I get PMs on Alla from people cross-servers thanking me for them. Thanking me for my SMN guides, for my MNK FAQ, for the many long, detailed posts I've written and the videos I've made.
I don't reply to them. Or if I do, it's a simple thank you. I don't do these things because I want to be some sort of Internet celebrity. I don't do them so I can be someone, so I can validate my character or my intelligence. I don't do them for any of those reasons.
I do them because I enjoy giving back in my own way. I don't want to lead a Dynamis shell. A Sky/HNM shell. I don't want to babysit 40+ people all week, I don't want to have to deal with people hating me because of what someone else did off my watch. They don't interest me.
So please, Peregrine, tell me how much of a nobody I am. Tell me how I don't matter, how you outclass me at everything you've ever done (even the things that you haven't done yet, or never plan to do.) Tell me exactly how you met Tyler Durden at a very strange time in your life.
Because I matter to me. And that gives me everything I could ever want. Ever need. Ever strive to be. And nobody will ever. Ever.
EVER take that away. Because they can't. YOU can't.