(Rant Post) Why Does It Feel Like Giving Advice Is Evil?

[KisaiTenshi]

In my job i have to deal with people on a daily basis, usually angry people, it doesn't matter how politely you explain something, the majority of people are just too stupid to understand what you are telling them and believe they are the ultimate being that don't need your advice because they know better. I've had people argue with me about the LAW.

I've been in your shoes, and you're taking the entirely wrong lesson from this. People are not stupid, they are "entitled." You're not explaining things in a way that sounds like it is a benefit to them, so they are going to flip out on you.

Between the wireless, auction and sales leads call centers I worked at, the "stupid person" is not the majority. The genuinely stupid person can have something explained to them, and if they are not willing to follow the instructions, you can hand-hold them through the instructions, and if after that they still don't get it, then you pretty much have to say "please find a teenager to help you." The "worst" call I ever had with trying to explain something? A lady who was unwilling to program her phone, so she passed it to her husband who recently had brain surgery and couldn't stay awake more than 15 seconds. The guy who couldn't stay awake was not stupid, but the wife was unwilling to be helpful. She was told to take the phone to a store. Most "customer support" situations are people who actually WANT help, and they will be thankful for talking to a nice person. When I worked the escalations, I got the completely opposite people, the entitled people who wanted stuff done their way and stomped their feet and held their breath until you give in. I wasn't accepting any of that, you escalate, you lost all the leverage you may have had, and I push you back to the previous rep with the instruction to not give you anything. Who was the most incompetent person in the call center? The person who I trained with who escalated half the calls she got.

When you have leverage over someone, you have control over the situation, that is why you are experiencing arguments from people who can't interpret a contract at your actual job. Those people are the same people who will cut their nose off to spite their face. I've been in those shoes telling people that they've done something illegal, and their services are hereby terminated, they will cry, scream and yell (and one guy flooded every phone number with faxes) until they get attention from someone who will "treat them better" when it's actually their own entitlement that got them into that situation, and they are unwilling to save face. All you can do in those situations is go "Look, you came to me. This is what I do. If you don't like it, your only other option is do nothing, and let nature take its course, at your expense. Nobody is going to change the law for you."

However when it comes to video games, you do not have leverage over anyone. You're not the GM. People who act like entitled jerks, be it in the game, or outside the game (eg forum, discord, reddit, etc), are not good at hiding their true character. If you're not willing to accept that PUG's will never be perfect, and you may get a disaster PUG, then you need to stay out of the duty finder and find a FC or Static to play with. Me, personally, I just roll with whatever PUG I get, and if turns into a disaster, and nobody wants to listen, I'm not going to be the one who aims for the Abandon/Kick button.


Now as to this statement:

I can't help but wonder what exactly is fun about playing like garbage, taking an hour to do something that should take about 15 minutes, and just standing there waiting for a mobs to die while you just watch your dots tick.

That person sounds like a troll honestly. Maybe that is how that person got through all their content. Maybe they just like to play like garbage, and you unfortunately got them. Or maybe they jump-potted and have been playing that way in PotD. But this is one of those situations where they should not have gotten past the first set of trash if they were really playing like garbage. Encounters like this are rare.

People are not inherently stupid, as I said above. What intelligent people perceive as stupidity in the general population is really willful ignorance or entitlement as an act to for some nefarious gain. People who spill hot coffee on themselves at McDonalds are not stupid, they're looking for a lawsuit payout. People who claim not to be aware of the Early Termination Fee in their contracts are looking for a way to skip out on paying for the thing they bought. People who buy and sell counterfeit merchandise online and then have the FBI show up at their door, can not claim not to know. People in the game and on the forum are looking to start a fight, and don't actually have anything meaningful to say other than to insult the player for even having the gall to asking something that was probably covered in a 3 year old guide.

It's incredibly rare to find people who are genuinely stupid, and when they're found, it's usually because PUBLIC education was denied to them, and thus they were either home-schooled, not schooled at all, or were sent to an abusive private religious school, or they had to drop out to find work because their homelife was a wreck to begin with.