Month: July 2019

I must stress I do not condone pedophilia. It may sound like I am defending it but I am not. I am instead defending dating older people.

So, what brought this about? Recently two Smash bros players (note I do not care about Smash. I don’t even like playing it) were outed for having an relationship while one was 27 and the other was 16. The 16 year old’s AoC in his country is 16 and the 27 year old’s AoC in his state is 17. However, federal law says any cross state or country romance AoC is 18. Even if the older player went to Canada and did anything with the younger player he could be arrested. The thing is we don’t know if they did anything; just that they dated for a year or two. The older player has apologized and refuses to participate in Smash anymore due to shaming the community. Now, that’s not the full reason for the blog post. What is the reason is that people were saying even if the younger player was 18 and older player was 29 it would still be wrong due to the age gap. This is the argument I have an issue with. Their argument is that with that big of an age gap he had to have manipulated him no matter what,even if they were both consenting adults, and that it is true for everyone in relationships like that.

For those who don’t know, I strongly prefer older women. In school when everyone was talking about classmates they liked I’d fantasize about the teachers. I’ve rarely like girls my age,until I started to get older, and to an almost 1% chance or less girls younger then me. In fact, on all my dating site profiles I set 25 as the age minimum even though I am 28, and when I was 22-25 it was still my age min. I then set about 59 as my age max. I will often times have older ladies message me but get weirded out due to my younger age. They think I am older and just using younger photos of myself, but this isn’t the case. I just like older women. I’ve tried to like younger girls. I’ve dated a few. I just wasn’t attracted to them. When some started to hit about 24-25 then I started to. It’s not even a gotta have college or career thing. I don’t care if you don’t have either of those. I just like older women.

Why bring this up? Well, I find it offensive that people say because you’re dating someone older they must’ve manipulated you. My last girlfriend was 32 and I was 27. People had issues with it. However, a family member I know is 32 and married to a 27 year old and no one had issues with that. I guess because as guys we’re supposed to like younger women? People tried to say the same thing though. That she is manipulating me, asking to see our messages, and tons of other stuff. I contacted her first. I had to convince her the age gap didn’t matter to me. She was always afraid I was going to leave her for someone younger. But woo, when I saw her mom, who was in her 60s? Man, did that get me going. Even my current girlfriend is 33 and I am 28. She is afraid of the same thing. I have to stress to her I like older women almost weekly. To be honest, I prefer 40s-60s. That’s just what I am into.

“Oh but those aren’t too big of gaps!” I don’t think so either. However, most people I talk to disagree. My friends came to an understanding of it not too long ago but not many others have. A-but, I have been in a relationship with someone who has 11 years older then me. I was 16 she was 27. Now, nothing physically happened between us. Even when she was planning to come visit me for summer break; she was going to stay in a hotel and we weren’t going to do anything physical. What’s funny is in the state she lived in AoC was 16 and mine was 17. So, if we met in her state everything would’ve been a-okay.

How did we meet? Well, we met on a MMO I was a Game Master for. We had reports of players botting,using software to play for them, in special areas and I was tasked with taking them down. I didn’t really care if players botted, but a job is a job. Turns out she was just using macros. Eventually she started to message me directly with issues of harassment. A known issue at the time and I experienced it because my player account was a female. After a while she asks for my help on stuff and since I was about to log on to my player account I would help. Nothing better to do anyways. Eventually we started to hit it off. She thought I was in my 20s due to my “maturity” and I thought she was 17 due to how she typed and her mannerisms. Eventually we started to edate. One day she mentions not having enough money for booze. I reply, “Yeah, drinking while underage is expensive.” and that started the whole conversation about age. Turns out there’s 10 year gap. In this entire time, a few months, we had been dating neither of us manipulated the other. I believe she thought I was joking cause when a few months later we added each other on MySpace she wanted to see a “current” photo of me. The one used was a few weeks old. This caused some serious talking on our part. She immediately wanted to break up, cause I was a child. I liked her a lot and wanted to stay together. We talked about this daily, for hours a day for maybe a month or two.

Eventually we decided to stay together, and it took a lot for me to convince her. We had set rules of things we can and can’t do/talk about until I was 18. All was good until she decided to come visit me. Once that happened she got weird and eventually broke up with me telling me she loved me too much and it was wrong cause I was still a child and she was manipulating me. The one friend of hers I actually talked to told me she did nothing but cry the entire month after we broke up. Eventually she wound up getting back with her abusive ex and just took the abuse. To this day I still think of her and worry for her. I don’t know if we could’ve made it work, but she deserved so much better then going back to a guy who beat her. I guess she felt so guilty over me she decided to take the beatings again. Eventually I lost contact with that person as I couldn’t stand to hear the state she was in.

You may be thinking “You were 16 you didn’t know better!” Shut up. I knew what was going on. I had to make the arguments of why we should be together; arguments I have to make from time to time still, but less now. It’s not like I was 10 or 12. I had a understanding, at least. Again, I kept making the arguments on why we should’ve been together. If anything I was the one who manipulated her. However, everyone takes her side that she manipulated me and did all these horrible things. Even though we agreed to not even send kissing emoticons until I was 18. Were we in the right? More than likely not. Did we try to make it right? Yeah. Even when she broke up with me I said, “Can I message you when I am 18?”, I was 17 by this point, she had to “think about it” and blocked me a few hours later. She couldn’t tolerate the fact I was so much younger then her, I guess, or that she fell in love with someone so young. But what could we do? We didn’t know it was going to happen. You can’t help who you fall in love with; you can control how you act with them however. Something we both tried to do. The only thing I blame her for is being such a great person worthy of love and because of it, last I heard, she was miserable and beaten regularly.

I mean, we could’ve asked our ages at the start rather then assume but we didn’t. This is a policy I had to change on my English teaching sites because I kept having 13-16 year old girls falling in love with me and telling me very explicit things they’d do if I was there beside them. I have this issue with the 21-24 year olds I teach too, just less explicit things. After a few months they fall for me and it is annoying but I can’t teach older groups cause they just ask to marry me after the first session. Why don’t I teach guys? Fucking, there are none. Every time I meet one in the social media section of the app they delete their account in a few weeks or refuse to talk to me because I’m not a woman. But the point was you can’t help who you has feelings for you either.

To reiterate, I do not approve of pedophilia. However, some of us strongly prefer older people. Now, you can try to make the case she would’ve been “grooming” me but that was my decision. The same goes for the Smash players, if nothing physical happened. If anyone was grooming anyone it was me doing it to myself or me doing it to her. I do not think there’s a issue waiting for someone you legitimately love if they are younger. Is it normal? No. Weird? Yes. Believe me, I understand it isn’t normal. Every time someone sees my porn collection, or history, I get weird looks. I have friends who make jokes about me banging their mom. You don’t have to be tricked into dating someone older. You can just naturally like it. Again, I thought my ex’s mom who was in her 60s was way more attractive then my ex. Who everyone said was super attractive.

Also, these are not my only stories with dating older women. I’ve had tons of girlfriends I’ve never told anyone about because they were so much older. I wasn’t ashamed but they wanted to be sure before we announced anything publicly. They would’ve been judged harshly for it, even my last ex was. Her friends thought I was using her until I met them and everyone loved me. Not sure how to end this; so, I’ll end it like this.

I hope she’s happy now, the girl from years ago. I hope she found someone who loves her and treats her well. She deserves it. She was a great person who just couldn’t control how she felt.

Hello out there! Today I want to talk about loot boxes and how they are like card packs. First, this is not a blog saying loot boxes aren’t bad. No, they are. However, this is a blog saying card packs are just as bad as loot boxes and gambling. I want to show how they have affected me personally through my life and how they have evolved over time to become more and more scummy as people don’t seem to talk about these things.

Before I start I will admit I have a huge gambling problem. I can’t even do scratch offs as gifts without triggering my gambling addiction and causing me to go blowing money I don’t have. How bad is my gambling addiction? Back in jr high I bet my then girlfriend’s, now ex-fiance, body on a hand. It wasn’t just her virginity. It was basically agreeing to let her be this dude’s sex slave. Luckily, I won this hand. However, this opened up how big of a problem I had to me. Before I go further I must say I do not approve of this action. I was young, dumb, and trying to fill an addiction. To those who don’t have severe addictions let me explain. You will do anything to fill the need. Like how most crack heads offer to blow you to get money for crack. They did not start that way. They are feeding an addiction. Again, what I did was wrong. I’m just trying to explain how I got to that point for those that don’t understand. So, after that and an agreement to no longer gamble to keep dating I switched back to video games.

What do I mean by back to? Well, originally my gambling addiction started with the casino in Pokemon Blue. I spent so much of my Pokemon playthrough gambling it is kind of crazy. I had played games with casino aspects before, like Sonic 2, but they never really rewarded you for gambling. Sure, in Sonic you got rings but rings were mostly worthless. In Pokemon you could buy items and Pokemon! Even after I had everything I kept playing to make my useless coin count rise even more. Then when playing Legend of Legaia I did the same exact thing. In the first town with a slot machine I spent 10 hours playing that slot machine alone. Then I got to the tower that had the arcade. Every time I played I would spend the first 1-2 hours of my play time there and then walk back to where I needed to be to continue the story. Then I would walk back and save so I could start up gambling right away.

After getting back into video game gambling, I was playing the slot machines in Super Mario Sunshine at the hotel. Then when that stopped working I started playing Chocobo races in Final Fantasy 7. Again when that stopped I had to switch to a new gambling minigame. This went on for a few months. Eventually nothing worked and I became more angry and aggressive. I then tried playing poker without money on the line and it had the same results. Worked for like 5 games then stopped giving me the high. Then one day I open up a Magic booster pack at a store and I pull out a card that doesn’t fit any of my decks. Someone asks “What do you want for that?” confused I asked why. They said they’d give me almost any card for it. Locally selling cards wasn’t lucrative. Card shops took them based on rarity. Mana? A penny. Common? Ten cents. Uncommon a quarter. Rare two quarters. I didn’t use eBay at this time so I didn’t know cards were going for real money. Eventually I found a market for Magic cards. This turned opening card packs from giving me the feeling of opening a brithday present to a hand at poker. I can spend $3 and possibly make 50! I began spending all my money, and stealing money, to buy Magic boosters.

It gave me the same exact high I got as when I was playing a hand of poker for money. However, no one had an issue with me spending everything I earned on Magic cards. Eventually I stopped buying Magic cards, and card packs in general. I just couldn’t afford them at all due to college and was so busy and stressed I didn’t even have time to keep up with sets. However, after I dropped out of college my addiction kicked right back up. I would go to Walmart and buy groceries and notice card packs next to me in the lane. I’d pick one up thinking it was okay. Then I would go “Well, what if the good cards I are these two packs?” and so and so on until I bought all packs that lane had. I would then sit, in the middle of Texas summer, in my card without it turned on and open every pack. My food was rotting in the back seat but I didn’t care. I needed that fix right away. My friends never understood why I didn’t buy boxes. Here’s the deal. I never intended to buy the Magic cards. They were impulses I thought I could control that I couldn’t. Every time I told myself I am done I would come back and spend twice as much. If I cared for the game I would’ve just bought them on eBay. If I was planning on opening and feeding my addiction that way I could’ve bought a box and saved money. However, neither of these scenarios were true. I couldn’t help myself. I was going into debt and spending money that was for food on card packs. I needed help, and a lot of it.

Eventually I was diagnosed with tons of mental health issues and when I was able to get treatment my urges to buy card packs, and gamble in general, dropped significantly. I was able to buy cards I wanted on eBay. I was able to buy just 1-3 card packs as a treat for doing well at work. I didn’t get that high but I didn’t need it. Oh, I should also point out the animal crossing Amiibo cards. I spent, and I kid you not, $600 on these cards in under a year. By the time I stopped I had over 2k cards. You get 5 in a booster pack for $5. What is sad is I never got my Isabelle in that entire time. It wasn’t until I went to eBay and just bought her did I get it. Now, I am unable to afford the help I need and every time I go to a store I see card packs. I have to use all my willpower to not pick one up. If I pick one up I know I am going to buy it. I had to stop playing card games all together because that was my excuse. “Oh, I’m just doing this in hopes of getting this card for cheaper then $50 on eBay.” That was a lie. I was doing it to feed my gambling addiction.

Officially my response was “MAGIC IS DEAD!” but in reality I can’t control myself with these games. They use tons of tactics to keep you buying. From first prints, mythic rares, limited runs, event only runs, holographics, limited holographics, and tons of other stuff. This is the stuff I would like to cover from here on.

You may be wondering, “What is a limited holographic?”. Well, some card games that I played would print regular holographics. Then when the sales started to dwindle they would release the same cards as holos in the set again but this time with custom effects. You could have one that looks like a glass pane, sparkles, a fractal, fractured glass, a diamond, or tons of other effects. These would be in boosters for 1-3 months usually. If you wanted this super rare holo you had to act fast. Then some games started to do autographed cards by the voice actors, or artist, but again only in limited time slotted runs. If these are starting to sound like loot boxes, that’s because they are. This is the same technique game devs use in loot boxes to keep you spending on events.

Even Magic does this with Modern Masters sets. They release these sets for 1-2 months at a time and they are full of reprinted cards. However, cards keep the original rarity status. So, the real powerful cards are rarer then they are listed; like even a powerful common is rarer then the trash ones they fill the set with. The Modern Masters set is a limited run of chances at old powerful cards. The kicker is these booster packs are twice or three times the price of a regular booster pack. So, this would be like Overwatch doing a Halloween loot box from last year this year but also charging more for it too.

Then another argument against the comparison is “You know what you are getting. It says you will get 10 cards you know you are getting 10 cards to play the game with”. This used to be true. I don’t know when Magic started to do this but they started to count mana with that 10 card count. Originally you got 10 cards + a mana and any ad for an event or pro they wanted to throw in. After opening and counting booster packs in the recent years I’ve noticed packs not containing mana at all or me being so unlucky I would get 3 in a pack. Each time I got one it counted as the 10 cards. Now Magic has these art cards mixed into their boosters. Some people like them some don’t. Personally I’ll buy a few off eBay. But the point is you are no longer are guaranteed 10 game play cards. You have mana and art cards counting towards your 10. Then, I don’t know if it was me being cheated or what but, I was getting booster packs that had the stupid description of the new skills for that set counting as one of my 10. Same with tokens too. Magic has loaded its booster packs with the equivalent of sprays, voice packs, and all the junk you find in loot boxes people complain about. Yes, some want the sprays and such. Most buy them for skins. Like how most people buy card packs to get the cards to play the games they like.

Another argument is the rarity chances. So, here is where Magic skews this shit hard. In Magic a mythic rare card has a 1 in 8 chance of being in a booster pack. Note, that is a 1 in 8 chance. Not only that that’s a pack, not a box. So, you can theoretically get a box of boosters that were all the ones that failed their chances of getting a mythic rare. Generally people read this as each box has 1 in 8 packs with a mythic rare. But, they don’t state those are box odds. That’s a 1 in 8 chance against all boosters printed odds. Then the boosters are put into boxes. Meaning in a booster box with your 36 card packs you have 4 chances of getting a mythic rare as a best case scenario statistically. But there’s also a chance that they select all boosters without mythic rares when filling that box. Something that actually happened to my brother when he used to buy booster boxes. It happened once, but it still happened. I’ll also go on record saying that he got a booster box once where over half the packs had mythic rares.

Where as if you look at a fifa pack it states you have a 70% chance of this, less than 1% (which I agree they need to state the real odds) of this, and so on. You clearly see your odds being displayed with some loot boxes. With card packs there is a 12.5% chance the pack gets one. Instead they word their odds as if you’re going to get a mythic rare on the 8^th pack. However, through real world statistics we know this isn’t true. You can watch people open CSGO loot boxes that have odds of 10% for a loot drop and they open 30 and don’t get it. Theoretically they should’ve gotten that item 3 times. But they just had a 10% chance to get it. Here Magic is doing the same but phrasing the odds like they are a guarantee. Which I think it way worse than what loot boxes do, the ones that display odds. If you disagree think about a Fifa loot box saying you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting this player instead of 10%. 1 in 10 sounds better then 10%. The phrasing of 1 in 10 makes it sound like on your 10^th one you’ll get the player instead of every pack only has 10% chance of getting them.

“But they don’t ping you to buy them like games do!” Why do you think the impulse buy section is full of them at stores? They are lined up alongside lanes beside drinks and cheap snacks. These things are designed to be there to get you into buying a low price item while you wait to be serviced. A game may give you a free loot box for events, as you level, or ping you to buy them every so often. However, once you sell or uninstall that game you no longer have that issue. Every time I go to a store I see card packs. Every week I have to test my will power to not buy one. I can’t even find a store that doesn’t have them. Even pure food and drinks only stores have them. I can’t even go to events at local comic shops cause they give them away. Triggering the effect all over again. Outside of leveling up and getting one for free, they do the same exact shit the games industry does.

Now, I disagree that loot boxes and card packs are like hatchamels or blind bag toys. Yes, they can show signs and be used to some degree of gambling. But the main difference is card packs, and now video games, are games designed around gambling and exploiting the players weakness. If I want to not see a hatchamel I can go to a store without toys. I can’t do this with card packs. Even gas stations here carry them, same with digital money for games to buy loot boxes. Plus a hatchamel is a toy, and while you may prefer certain ones over others, it doesn’t affect you which one you get. Where as card packs you spend money to try and get good cards to play the game to stay competitive or sell to make money. The same thing with loot boxes in video games. Now if these blind bag toys made games and certain ones came with stats and stuff then I would put them on the same level as loot boxes and card packs. Until then they are an addicting toy but you don’t gain anything from getting certain ones. I think that is the big difference.

To wrap up. I am all for people speaking out against loot boxes. I just hate when people say they aren’t like card packs or they are as harmless as card packs. No, they are both very dangerous and prey on addiction. I have spent way too much money on card packs over my life time. I spent over 2,000 dollars on Animal Crossing cards alone. Magic I spent even more than that because I would buy so many at once I was spending 1-200 at a time on packs. Hell, I probably spent twice that amount a year on Magic cards. My friends may find that hard since when I gave them away I didn’t have many but I lost over 20k of cards in numerous floodings at my old place, some were stolen, or I just threw away tons due to them being worthless. However, I am doing better now; that is because I got actual mental health help. Here’s the thing. I’ve spent $5 on loot boxes in video games in my entire life. I bought 2 TF2 keys cause originally they made it sound like you only got hats. First time I got a hat. Second time I got a gun I already had. Never touched them again. I also can’t play games with free in game currency only ones either. They trigger the high and then stop producing it and lead me to spending money on outside gambling, including card packs. Which is why I haven’t bought the new Yoshi game. However, that’s another topic for another time. Thank you for listening and I hope my story can open up this discussion more.