Casual vs. Hardcore vs. Elitist: An Allegory

Wow! What a great post! I second adding humilitist to our shared lexicon. You could change every mention of gold making to any pursuit such as gaming, hearthstone, pvp, and it would still ring true. I'm posting this to Facebook. Thanks for all the help Jim. I've made 26000 gold in six days just by applying the principles I've learned here and on your youtube channel.

Lee Murdock

Thank you Lee.

Your thoughtful essay implicitly identifies one of the core challenges in the gold-making/-maker world.

I'm no economist, but I have made a key assumption: there is a finite sum of gold to be made on a realm at any given time (I know, I know, I flunked Econ 101, OK?).

If the whole purpose of gold-making is to acquire gold and this artificial assumption is true, then if someone *earns* gold via the AH then someone else *doesn't* make gold. Applying your definitions then an elitist would think that's great---I am making gold and, frankly Scarlett, I don't give a damn if anyone else does. Someone has to make gold, and it ought to be just me. That's the free market spirit at work…

On the other hand the "humilist" thinks there's room for more here at the trough, saying: I am gold-capped on a bazillion toons across tons of servers, make 30k a day per toon, deal in TCG items at 550k a pop, and consider Avogadro's Number to be a fair approximation of my total inventory. So what's 3k less a day to me if it means some newcomer to the gold-making community gets to earn that 3k to sustain her interest, sell to the players who won't pay stupidly inflated prices for gems or enchants they need (rather than vanity items like xmog or pets), and, God forbid, might actually have fun?

Whether someone is a casual or hardcore gold-maker is moot. I suppose by general consensus I'm a "casual" gold maker. When I get the urge and there is a void in a particular market I'll toss some gems or leather up for sale, or maybe some Epic drop that will go cha-ching and pad my modest checking account. But when someone puts up a wall to shut out competition and can sustain that for a month or two--that shows not only an elitist worldview but a ruthless one as well, and that is an utterly toxic combination.

I'd like to make 2-3k a day to afford the repair mount without worrying how long it will take vendoring trash greys to pay off the 20k investment. But when the elitists shut down the market to the point where my daily posting fees exceed my daily gross income, my incentive to participate in the market rapidly approaches zero. They win, and everyone else loses---buyers, other sellers--when it goes from a free market to a command economy dictated by an elite few.

Maybe some "humilist" will blog about surviving in such a hostile market place beyond searching among tens of thousands of items for a micro-niche market or how to program some esoteric function in TSM.

Or maybe I'm just expecting something for nothing, and I'll be told to get out of the kitchen or learn to hang with the big dogs. Then again, why would anyone want to be a big dog if they are all elitists?

I've been turning the idea of responding to this post over in my mind since I read it the other night. To tell the truth I'm still not sure if it's going to be a net positive to reply, but if there's one thing I like to do it's talk about my opinions, so here comes some word vomit. (I'm going to go a bit out of order and discuss your realm of many idea after the elitism ideas.)

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On elitism:

I've taken issue with this post beacuse, at best it's a hypocritical red herring and at worst it's all that combined with an erroneous passage of judgement based on perceived facts of an event of which you have no knowledge.

I'll get the "at worst" section out of the way first since it will be short and to the point. You've stated this is not about any particular person but also that this is insipired by my blog post. I am willing to believe this is fully hypothetical because of this fact: If you did have my situation with Brongly in mind upon writing this then you completely misrepresented the facts of the case given that I did not mock him, I did not invite other people to mock him, I did not invite him to read the post, and I did not mock him after he had seen the post.

Now, because all of that is so different from your hypothetical I find it easy to believe that your scenario is based on just what you said, a hypothetical realm for discussing ideas. So let's move on to the "at best" scenario; that is, that this post is a hypocritical argument based upon a red herring.

First off, for those who aren't familiar with red herrings (you should be, logical fallacies are fascinating!) a red herring is a form of informal logical fallacy in which something is brought up to distract or mislead from the actual topic at hand; esssentially someone discussing an irrelevant or moot point on an issue.

As I've already established I am willing to stipulate that the "elitism" situation you are discussing here is hypothetical in which case it is irrelevant. I assert that elitism as you've defined it here is largely nonexistent in the gold community and where it does exist the elitist is often shunned and ceases to be part of the community very quickly. If you can provide a real-world example of this elitism being common among gold-makers I would like to see it.

In fact, while we'll discuss your realm of one/many idea a bit further down, I think it's important to point out that all of your negative views of your own status as a non-gold capped blogger came from within. Even if someone did say you don't have as much gold as them that only mattered to you and only because you felt diminished by it; whether or not they pass judgement on you gold-making only matters if you agree with them that it is an important factor and thus you are as guilty of the thought process of more gold = more relevance as they are.

That said, I won't say this scenario of elitists refusing to help people learn or mocking people for not having as much gold as them doesn't exist but my inability to picture the situations in your hypothetical taking place makes it difficult for me to see this post as more than a red herring.

So what of the allegation of hypocrisy? In your post you've laid out that you follow the alternative route, which you called "humilitist" and state the defining characteristic of a humilitist is someone who goes out of their way to help others understand and enjoy a pursuit while the opposite, an elitist, goes otu of their way to deride and ridicule anyone they find inferior while in front of an audience to break the inferior individual's spirit.

And so, amusingly, you are being elitist about not being an elitist; passing judgement on others for behaving in a manner you see as inferior to your own behavior and attitude and you call the hypothetical elitists out right here, in your realm of many, in front of an audience while asserting that you are doing it right and they are in the wrong. You are performing the exact action of an elitist by your own definition.

Furthermore, as I stated earlier, I have thought about this all of yesterday and I can't think of a person who fits the hypothetical version of an "elitist." Afterall, if they were not willing to help others we likely wouldn't even meet them. Even people I think are complete douchebag tools still help people. They may not like or help me but that doesn't make them an asshole in a lofty tower.

And while we're at it, let's discuss returns. A lot of posters post on the Consortium only; so they don't have a blog with ads. Those people are truly altruistic; they are helping others with no return to themselves, except possibly enjoyment in the discussion and learning opportunities for themselves. Compare that to a blogger like you or, to a lesser extent myself, who makes money from helping others. (I'm up to 13 cents this month. Awwwwwwyeah.) I won't ever say that monetizing is a bad thing or that people who monetize are "only" in it for a money but, tell me, if you weren't making a single cent would you livestream for hours every week, manage a blog, pay your domain registration fees, and forego a non-gaming/blogging career just to help people?

Not likely. I believe you are sincerely interested in helping people and I believe you help a ton of people. But you must admit that being paid to do so makes you much more likely to be interested in helping people than those who make nothing. It also gives you significantly more time to do so. When someone can only talk about gold on forums for an hour in the evening they don't want to spend it teaching 1000 people a month how to use TSM when there's a perfectly good guide on the forums, so they may say they won't help people learn TSM. That doesn't mean they aren't interested in helping, just that they have limited time and don't want to waste it. Hell, check out /r/loseit for a few days and see how many people come in saying "herpderp what diet do I choose" and the countless "Read the FAQ responses." People get sick of helping people who are not interested in helping themselves. The amount of time you can invest in helping others and the incentive you have for answering the same question over and over again allow you to look like the shining example of a humilitist in your scenarios while, at the end of the day, even the most elitist jerks would probably turn into a humilitist if they had the same opportunity.

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On realm of one:

So that's that about elitism. Let's talk more broadly about your idea of realm of one/many.I assert that, in life, there is no such thing as a realm of one. The idea is neat on paper but a true vaccuum in which only your opinion matters cannot exist. We are part of a society and who we are is largely the product of socialization by that society. Even when you're singing in the shower you probably think "Man, I sound really good." Well, what's "really good?" Really good is what you think singing should sound like, which is what you've learned from hearing other people sing.

The standards against which we compare ourselves are ever-present; they may shift or we may try to diminish their influence but we will always look at topics from a point of view that is influenced by the input of others.

With regard to casual/hardcore I think people confound the issue far too much. Consider hypertonic/isotonic/hypotonic. You cannot say "this solution is hypertonic." Because it can't be described using that word unless compared to another solution. You can only say that "Solution A is hypertonic to Solution B." Words exist in language that are purely for comparison to others and casual/hardcore are two of them. That's why people have so much trouble defining them; because their definition is based on a comparison. You can't say that a solution with 10% [solute] is hypertonic. But you can certainly say that a solution with 10% [solute] is hypertonic to a solution with 5% [solute].

If we were truly in a realm of one at any point (which I assert is impossible) then the words casual and hardcore cannot have any bearing on thought because they could not accurately describe anything. I think we largely agree that casual/hardcore are comparative words so I'm not really trying to change any minds here, just explaining my view on why I think the realm of one is irrelevant to the conversation.

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So that's what's been turning over in my mind. Now I've written it down I can stop thinking about it. :D

As a first-time visitor, I wasn't expecting to find so much information in one post. I've gone through a couple of gold making phases in the game, but I'm encountering a horrible problem with a couple of players who are cheating the system something fierce.

It's very discouraging to do everything by hand just to watch the same two robots move back and forth between the mailbox, guild bank, and auction house for hours on end. I've spent thousands across quite a few characters to level up professions just to find that it's impossible to compete against people who manage to undercut you within a minute of posting an auction. I've since moved away from crafted items and am now reluctantly focusing on transmog gear.

Hopefully your blog will shed new light on alternative ways to rake in the shiny stuff and help banish my discouragement. :)