Elitism is a horrific disease and makes me really frikking angry every time I come across it. In this case, it was in a reasonably trivial area regarding a certain game (Settlers of Catan in fact) that he posited was a "terrible game" for no aparent reason other than that it was popular with the "great unwashed".
I hate this argument. Since when did popular equal bad?
His argument develops into the position that if something appeals to lots of people it must be dumb, since most people are idiots - quite an insulting point of view if you consider yourself one of "most people".
In my bad old days I would have taken him for a spin in the logic train, and probably ended up spoiling the whole night for five people, but since I stopped drinking I'm a lot more balanced an individual, so we avoided that horrid outcome.
Come to think of it though this happens all the time - bands lose fans when they get famous because they have "sold out", artists work is accused of being "populist" etc etc etc.
The reason behind this is quite simple, people who make accusations of popular=bad are those who also believe that unpopular=good. The reasoning is quite simple, these are individuals who spend a lot of their time on the wrong side of popularity, not necessarily because they're not nice people but probably because they have shyness problems or lack certain social skills.
I really don't want to pick on this guy since I am sure he's nice enough, but it's very comforting to believe that you are part of an elite group - the only ones that realise everyone else is wrong and believe the worst thing that can happen is that everyone starts liking what they like, since then they are not "special" any more. This happens with bands as well - ever find a song or an artist you thought was specially your own, and started shouting from the rooftops that they are brilliant, only to find you are just one of a million voices saying the same thing? I know I have.
To broaden the example, there are two really "zeitgeisty" games out there at the moment, Agricola and Race For The Galaxy. The popularity of these games draws out people who want to appear different and special in synonymising their "likes and dislikes" with "good and bad" in the same way people would use good and right interchangably.
The irritating thing is, that by almost no measure are these games bad. If you think they are bad, then thats all your opinion is - that YOU DON'T LIKE THEM. It's a natural human response to the world to generalise but in this case generalising your opinion to be that of everyone else is just annoying.
For a musical example, many people don't like Coldplay. I know many who liked them until they "sold out" and made more stadium rock albums from their second one on. Problem is - they're not BAD. I'm not a huge fan, I can take them or leave them (Fix You is a great song, Talk is not, for example) but they are not a bad band. I've seen far too many pub rock bands doing Greenday covers to call Coldplay "Bad".
So do me a favour and temper your word use next time you use "good " or "bad" and think about what you really mean. Maybe we can get these words back to their original meaning.
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