Gamers: The Living Misunderstanding

"We gamers are constantly stereotyped as lazy, antisocial misfits..." Begins my expos piece on mobile gaming. And yet, as I look at the world around me, everything in the gaming world is misunderstood. We hold the title of "gamer" because we understand gaming. We know what constitutes a good game and a bad game, we understand who should be able to play which games, etc. But many others believe the opposite.
Apparently, there are still people out there who believe that video games are just a children's toy. This manifests itself in two ways. The first group believe that violent games must not exist in the first place. Even though I strongly believe that young children shouldn't play violent games (mainly because they compose too much of the fanbase for Call of Duty, and they're annoying to everyone, in and out of said fanbase), but that doesn't mean that violent games can't exist in the first place. Games are meant to be an escape from reality. They're meant to be different. Of course, younger kids around 5 years of age may have trouble telling fantasy from reality, so they shouldn't play them. But adults can. It is selfish to say that anyone who isn't a kid doesn't have a right to play video games, let alone video games within their interests. There are also parents out there who believe that every game in existence is kid-friendly. This is stupid, and probably what caused part of the COD fanbase to give much of the gaming fanbase as a whole a bad name. Not that the gaming fanbase didn't have a bad name in the first place. Some time back, Law and Order did an episode on Gamergate. I never saw the episode, and I honestly don't want to. Between the negative gamer stereotypes (so apparently, gamers can't tell games from reality) and the constant cliché gaming puns (seriously, no one EVER uses them!), this has offended many gamers over the internet. And I don't blame them- I'm also kinda offended. Are we forever to be hidden in darkness like this?

I'd hope not.

As gamers, maybe we don't truly exist. Only other gamers can notice us, and fully understand our existence. I hope to change this. This post, I hope, should clear away much of what you think of us. We're not lazy. We're not anti-social. We're not idiots. We're just like other people; we just exist on a separate plane. Others who aren't as open-minded may find it challenging to accept our way of living as a possible way of living. And yet, we're still alive. Through this post, I hope people come to understand us, if only somewhat better. Many of us are real people, living real lives, gathering together in our own little society, completely separate from this one. Some think it's a stupid idea, simply because it's different. But if nothing was different, we'd never get anywhere.