Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

It's an interesting coincidence that so many quotables this week had something to do with our mental processes. For example, when Brian Wood pretended to interview Ghostcrawler for Scattered Shots, the faux-Ghostcrawler said the following:

Anyway, so the chimp has a lever, and when it pulls the lever it gets a piece of lettuce. Chimps like lettuce; it's tasty. So the chimp loves the experiment to death. Pull the lever, get more lettuce, eat the lettuce and pull the lever. Then after a while, the researchers change things up. One time, the chimp pulls the lever and gets a grape. Chimps love grapes; they're way better than lettuce. But then the chimp pulls the lever again and it goes back to getting lettuce. Now the chimp gets pissed off and throws the lettuce at the researchers.

So just a minute ago the chimp was loving the lettuce, and now it's insulted to be given that garbage. The lettuce didn't get any worse or any less tasty, but the chimp's perception of the value of the lettuce changed. MMO players are even more extreme -- in an MMO if the players even hear that we considered giving grapes, they'll suddenly be insulted with the lettuce that they loved until that point. So while we can't avoid every nerf, we really try to avoid as many as we possibly can.

Brian's favorite response was from Undra:

Ghostcrawler promised me a grape!

Promises, promises. I promise we have more psychology related comments and some that only slightly have to do with what's in our noggin. And I also promise no mention of sparkle ponies. Well, except that one. I broke my promise while making my promise. Wrap your noggin around that.

The psychology behind antisocial behavior

When Drama Mama Lisa and I answered Antisocial's letter about his troubles making friends, I was moved by a response that really shows what it's like to be on the other side and how being antisocial could be a psychological problem. It also gives me another excuse to show off my new awesome Drama Mama Robin avatar, created by Kelly Aarons. Awesome.

Irem: To the letter writer: I've found myself in a similar position recently, not so much because I have high standards or get into frequent arguments, but because I'm deathly terrified of people like you. Haha.

In all seriousness though. People like you are the reason I stopped roleplaying, the reason I stopped raiding with any regularity, and the reason I stopped trying to meet new people. I'm socially nervous at best, and there's really only so many times you can tell yourself "It's okay, I can handle this" when every time you venture out of your shell you run into someone who has a laundry list of things that tick him or her off for no particular reason, and that no one could possibly predict. I mean, just confining it to roleplayers, pull up any forum topic with a title like "What Are Your RP Pet Peeves?" and discover a magical world where within ten different posts by ten different people, there are twenty different completely contradictory things guaranteed to drive someone into a frothing rage and never speak to you again.

I'd like to tell you that part of living in society is getting over the fact that occasionally, people will do things that annoy you; and if you're unable to handle it to the point that you're driving people away, that you actually need to expose yourself to "happy, well-balanced" individuals. If my guess is right, you're fairly young, have always been the type to keep to a handful of friends, and carefully screen people you interact with to make sure that they fit your personality and interests. To be blunt, you have trouble making and keeping friends and finding people you're compatible with because you have few or no social skills. Your standards are impossibly high because you feel out of control when someone does or says something that doesn't fit your view, and I'm going to venture a guess that you're unforgiving when your friends slip up and stop being the "perfect" match you thought they were. You're probably equally judgmental toward yourself (you have that tone in your letter that suggests that you're trying to put your flaws forward "realistically" before anyone else gets the chance).

I'd like to tell you to get help, and find a therapist that you can talk to, because you won't find any good friends trying to avoid happy, well-balanced people. Those are the people you want to be friends with, and you probably find them annoying because you're not happy or well-balanced and it's so damn tiring to try to keep up and be who you think they want you to be. They probably seem like aliens to you. I'd like to tell you to try anyway, except as someone whose sole outlet for social interaction is currently long-winded posts on this website, I'm not sure that I'm qualified to give advice, armchair diagnoses aside.

Understanding psychology

When Michael Sacco noticed that the readers were favoring orc for his Choose my Adventure warlock, he took to the @WoWInsider twitter account to sway the vote toward blood elf. In our virtual office, our resident shadow priest seemed to express the sentiment behind the immediate surge in orc votes.

Fox Van Allen: After you tweeted, I went to vote for orc. That is what you get for not understanding how psychology works.

Stretching the theme

Does our taste in eye candy have anything to do with psychology? I'm sure we can make an argument for it. Regardless, our spotlight now shines on this conversation about Alex Ziebart giving us some male eye candy in The Queue to complement Monday's female offering.

Endario: Clooney? Clooney!? Bah!

archbaotho: Are you "bah"-ing clooney?!?! Come on, look at that face!!!! I'm male and even I'd let Clooney touch me at night ... You know he'd cuddle after. That's the kind of security I want.

Endario: Hey hey, I said nothing about kicking him out of bed. I'm just sayin' he was an uninspired choice. It's like saying Brad Pitt is hot or that a pizza party with Taylor Lautner and John McCain would be freaking amazing: it goes without saying.

Not related to psychology at all

Griftah is my go-to guy when I write about scams and account theft, but this decision was questioned recently and many voted the dissension up in agreement.

Jormund Fenris: I'm confused over why you've used a picture of Griftah in this post. I mean, he seems totally legit to me. He sold me an Infallibe Tikbalang Ward not long ago and I've NEVER been attacked by those nasty tikbalangs! Let's not even mention his amazing Soap on a Rope.

Awesome.

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