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From: "Ryan ." <blueyoshi2187@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 21 May 2005 00:53:54 -0400

As a duelist I’ve had to deal with the ridicule that accompanies playing a trading card game. I’ve gotten used to people poking fun at me. And I’m sure most other duelists have dealt with it too. But to be fair most of the time it’s just my friends joking around with me, which is fine. I understand that what playing Yu-Gi-Oh is unusual, and people will always find unusual things funny. That’s just how it is, I can’t get mad if my friends mess with me every once in awhile. It’s the same with my other hobby, tearing the heads of Pez Dispensers and keeping them in small jars.
I can see why some people might think that’s unusual, even a little strange.
Or when I went through that phase where I would sneak onto the property of famous actresses and put combination marriage proposal/death threats in their mailboxes, I completely understood why the police arrested me.

But this article isn’t about my disturbing hobbies that I should never have told you about. It’s about people who judge us just because we play Yu-Gi-Oh. As I said before Yu-Gi-Oh is somewhat of an unusual hobby, so when someone jokes around about “how Yu-Gi-Oh is for kids” I find it’s best to just laugh along with them. But sometimes you meet someone who doesn’t want to just joke around, sometimes you meet someone who just wants to be mean. The kind of person who carries around needles just so he can pop any balloons nearby children holding, the kind of person that kicks kittens in the face whenever he sees one, the kind of person that makes fun of duelists just because he can. When somebody decides to constantly bring up the fact that I play Yu-Gi-Oh and laugh at me about it I get aggravated. The majority of the time merely asking that person “What’s wrong with Yu-Gi-Oh?”
is enough to shut him up, mostly due to the fact that he put no thought into his irrational hatred of Yu-Gi-Oh.

My question to those kinds of people is why you would make fun of what somebody else does in their leisure time. Is there some kind of recreational activity hierarchy? When you want to have fun do you do something so amazing it gives you the right to look down on my hobby? Well you know what; unless in your spare time you either help feed the homeless, take in injured animals and nurture them back to health, or secretly fight crime you have no right to judge what I do in my free time. I’m sure whatever it is you do for fun is just no better than what I do. In fact, why don’t we take at look at some currently popular recreational activities:

Maybe you like playing video games. You know, it’s funny, video games used to be considered uncool. Yep, playing video games used to make you a loser.
Now pretty much every guy my age I know plays video games, they might not own a system (though most do) but they’ve all at least played video games on a friend’s console. Perhaps if a company made a card game about football or stealing cars that might make trading cards games become inexplicably cool.

Do you think Yu-Gi-Oh is just a fad? Well, if you want to talk about a card game that’s nothing but a fad let’s talk about poker. Everybody likes poker now, thanks to TV shows featuring celebrities playing Texas Hold’em who don’t know a full house from the coffee stain next to their cards. I don’t see how you can make fun of me when at least I took the time to find a game I actually like. Hey, maybe you did play poker before it was cool. If you are an overweight middle-aged man with in a dead-end job, whose only joy in life is the possibility of winning a few bucks in his friends smoke filled basement…that’s fine. Otherwise you’re just following the crowd, which means you don’t get to say squat about my hobbies.

You don’t like Yu-Gi-Oh because of the TV show is stupid? As long as we’re talking about stupid TV why don’t I mention the current big TV fad, reality shows. Which everyone says is dumb and swear they never watch, yet reality shows keep getting put on TV anyways, so somebody must be lying! Call me crazy, but I just don’t enjoy watching someone get dumped into a swimming full of live cockroaches, having to eat their way out, and then once they finally escape to freedom having two cockroaches shoved in their eyes. I might be exaggerating, but when it comes to realty TV there’s a good chance I’m not. So call Yu-Gi-Oh stupid all you want, but the moment you waste your time watching someone eat a bucketful of cow eyes, your opinion of what’s entertaining becomes null and void.

Ok, I’m done with that rant. If you like any of the three things I previously mentioned that’s fine, I think all those are great ways to spend
your free time (except of course reality TV). I talked about those things
to make a point. We all like having hobbies to enjoy, something fun to do in between work and sleep. I happen to think Yu-Gi-Oh is a fun hobby, in fact, I think it’s a great hobby. But I’m not going to go around telling people that what they do for fun is stupid and what I do is better. Part of the reason I mocked those three activities was to point out you could call any hobby stupid. That means in order to look down on me because of what I do for fun you would have to do absolutely nothing but work and sleep. So until you devote all your time to charity you have no right to judge me.

One day I hope people stop criticizing each other about the most insignificant things. I just don’t think its right that when I buy a new starter deck at Wall Mart I become so uncomfortable in the checkout line I feel the need to loudly say “I SURE HOPE MY LITTLE COUSIN LIKES THESE CRAZY YU-GI-OH CARDS!” And when I’m walking through the parking lot to my car I shouldn’t have to tightly hold the cards to my chest with my arms over them like I just came out of a adult book store. Hopefully one day people will accept each other’s hobbies. Whether it be playing cards, collecting stamps, or waiting in bushes until someone walks by and then jumping out at them (actually if you do that you should probably stop). Until that day comes, however, all I can do is vent my anger by submitting highly opinionated articles to websites where I know 100% of the readers will agree with me.

This is BattyMan saying “I may disagree with your opinion of realty shows.
But I will defend, to the death, your right to watch them.”

Email me if you liked the article at BlueYoshi2187@hotmail.com