News Articles re Board Games

This appeared in my Crikey news feed today.  The Sydney Morning Herald article it refers to can be found here if you want the full story and its attempt at humour:    https://www.smh.com.au/culture/comedy/board-games-are-terrible-please-don-t-make-me-play-them-20230103-p5ca15.html  

In turn it refers to a Washington Post article which is more informative and less an attempt at comedy:   https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/24/board-game-popularity/

The SMH piece uses the word "nerd" three times to refer to board gamers.  I find this problematic as the word has multiple meanings including:  

• a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest.
• an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person.

Maybe that second meaning should include "overly sensitive and lacking in appreciation of effort that goes into writing humorous newspaper columns"."

Anyway, here's the Crikey article in full.  

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

The rising popularity of board games in adulthood is a scourge we must stamp out, SMH’s Kishor Napier-Raman says, or at least start leaving him out of. Board game nights are nearly always suggested by “The Guy Who is Good at Board Games”, he writes for the paper, who spends a painstaking hour explaining the complex and convoluted rules of questionable pursuits such as “slaying a mythical beast, making sushi, or cosplaying as colonisers in a foreign land”. But it’s never enough of an explanation, and befuddling stretches of time are spent with chipper fellow players repeatedly assuring you “the game gets better” as you quickly sober up amid your intense concentration. Sometimes it does get better, sometimes it doesn’t — the question, he asks, is why do we put ourselves through it? “Must social gatherings be organised around activities designed to distract wayward children?” he asks. It might seem like a petty gripe, but Napier-Raman continues that the whole idea of a board game night is at odds with the precious spontaneity of a social gathering that we went without for so long during the pandemic’s lockdowns and restrictions. Who brings a rule book to a group hang, he wonders, declaring it a sort of “hyper-capitalist puritan logic” that we should engage in competitive tasks during our leisure time after a long week spent grinding in our 9 to 5. Plus, by the time you’ve got a tentative handle on the self-contradictory parameters of the game, an elated The Guy Who is Good at Board Games has already had a thumping victory, everyone else is feeling confusingly dejected, and the wine supply is suddenly frighteningly low. “There is no shame in resisting this,” the journalist assures us. “No matter how many nerds accuse you of hating ‘fun’.” Hoping you stand proud and tall on the hill you choose to die on too — and have a restful weekend.