I grew up with three older sisters.

As siblings, all of us have a 4-year age gap (give or take a couple of months. Can’t plan that perfectly).

That means that while I was entering the dreaded and uncomfortable high school era, my sister was leaving it. Honestly, thank God. I think we would have killed each other if I had to ride to school with my sister every day.

The good thing about this age gap, besides both my sister and me still being alive, is that I got to see how messed up high school was before entering it. I saw my sister get bullied, sneak home late from parties (Sorry if mom didn’t know about that. hi mom!), and honestly just get kind of blended through her whole college experience.

This was helpful for me cause I kind of went into high school knowing what to look out for. If someone were showing similar characteristics to some of my sister’s nasty friends, I’d know to stay away.

Thanks, Bekah, for trudging that terrible path and stamping out the thorn bushes so I could walk more easily. It really means a lot.

I didn’t think much about it at the time. In fact, my sister annoyed the heck out of me. And one of the annoying things that really got on my nerves for some reason was how often she would use the word drama.

That’s a big word. At least, it was at the time cause I heard it so much.

“Oh my gosh, she just eats up drama.”

“I really can’t deal with all the drama happening right now.”

“Why is there always drama?”

I don’t know, maybe cause you give a moment in time, a conversation, or a difficult situation power by ascribing the word drama to it? That’s at least what I thought at the time. I’m a much less pretentious person now and recognize that yeah… drama sucks.

I still don’t like the word because it makes something a bigger deal than it could be.

There’s another word that I really don’t like that much, but I see it all the time online and that word is

I actually first learned about this word in high school when learning about civil discourse and how to talk with people that you disagree with. It’s an important concept, and it was a term that got thrown around a lot by the pretentious teens trying to be something they weren’t. So, me.

It felt like an intellectual slam dunk to say “that was some great civil discourse.” To be clear, it was a joke, but the kind of joke a high schooler would make so they’d seem more sophisticated.

The word discourse conveys, to me, a level of snobbery. It’s not just a conversation, it’s discourse. an exchange of ideas, a civil discussion on the merits of a work of art. It’s more important than two people talking about whatever. It’s two people talking about something at a higher level of thought.

Nowadays, I see this word a lot in online communities, and for some reason, in most cases, I feel kind of weird about it. Partially because it reminds me of high school me, but more than that, it adds a level of seriousness that feels… not necessary.

When I hear the word discourse being thrown around, it’s usually because there are very vocal people who hate a certain something.

For example, the video game Mixtape. If you look at the reviews of this game, there are a lot of people who really enjoyed it, but there are also a lot of people who really, and I mean really, don’t like it.

Some of the talking points in these negative reviews are:

One of the issues with calling this discourse is that it’s not actually a conversation. It’s just someone saying they don’t like something, or in some cases, why they don’t like why other people like something. I particularly don’t like this aspect of online discourse.

Another really good example is the Expedition 33 discourse.

This game went through a lot of rounds of conversation. Of course, when the game first came out, reviews were glowing, and people loved this game. Even now, it’s hard to find a negative review about the game, but it was still there. Primarily in chatrooms and posts here and there.

I noticed this mainly when Expedition 33 took just about every single award at The Game Awards.

Turns out, some people don’t like it when people are really successful. See people dogging on the Chiefs for being in the Super Bowl for like the last decade. It does get a bit tiring to see people win over and over and over again, and at the Game Awards, that was Expedition 33.

A common talking point I saw from people who enjoyed the game is that it revived the JRPG genre (JRPG in genre only, not in the J (Japanese [cause it’s a French game])). The issue with this is that JRPGs never went away, and people who have been playing JRPGs this whole time did not like that people were calling this a revival, and they made that known… and were kind of nasty about it. Rude if you will? A little condescending? A wee bit gatekeepy?

The discourse was on the level of people talking about people talking about the game. It was hardly about the game at this point. It’s hardly a conversation.

This is where the idea of this being discourse really starts to fall apart for me.

If you actually intend to engage in a conversation, you should at least be taking a bit of tact with it. If you come at someone who is posting about liking Expedition 33 and how they’re happy that JRPGs are back, that’s just going to dampen their enjoyment of the thing.

Instead, maybe tell them you’re happy they enjoyed the game and nicely recommend what they play next?

Siloing conversations to posts, reviews, a couple of comments, and a YouTube video isn’t actually a conversation. It’s not actually discourse. It’s just people saying something they think and having no accountability for what they’re saying. There’s no back and forth, and we all know no one is going to change their minds or grow from any of it.

Even in chat rooms, it’s totally possible for someone to just dip out of a conversation.

These moments seem less like discourse and more like… hivemind complaining?

It’s really not that serious, but I can’t shake that weird sensation I feel when I hear someone say “the discourse about this game has been crazy,” or “the discourse about The Odysee is rough,” and it’s almost always about people not liking something they like. Or people saying some really horrible things.

I’m now fully in free-form thought, so bear with me;

You don’t need to defense force the media you enjoy. And you certainly shouldn’t be tearing down people who enjoy something you don’t. Someone enjoys something you think is trash? Don’t say anything! Someone isn’t enjoying your current GOTY? Hit ‘em with a nice “ah, bummer it’s not working for you! It sure it for me, hope you have a good day!”

I don’t know where I heard this, but I heard it one time and it stuck with me:

That means, when I watch a movie with my wife that she likes and I don’t. It’s not because the movie was bad, or because she has bad taste; it’s because I couldn’t enjoy it. Not because I have superior taste, but it just wasn’t for me… and that’s fine.

Now obviously I know words change, and it’s fine if the word discourse changes definition to what the general consciousness is saying vs the other ones are saying about something, but let the world know… I started the discourse discourse.