Entry for February 20, 2008
Yes, what should I begin with?
Yesterday (19th Feb.) I was in a clan chat in a MMO and talked with a friend of mine. I had left a clan, for about 2 months ago, which I lead in about 6 months, and he had been a loyal clan member. He always showed up to events, where we did stuff together.
Though, I only did these events because I wanted to kill a dragon or some other difficult monster, which I thought I was unable to do by myself, not because I wanted to be with someone, I just needed him. Sometimes I actually found it annoying that I had to have help to do stuff that I was unable to do by myself, because I wanted to do everything myself and not have to rely on other people to help me.
That has changed. Now I love to do stuff with other people, and it's enriching to just know that there are other people around me. This feeling becomes enforced if they seem to get it better from something I do for them. This next might sound a bit silly, men someone lost a pen, and it made me happy to give it back to him. Just that this person had lost his pen; and that I gave it back to him, and just that that this person had recieved it back.
Oh well, this former clan member said so in the clan chat that he wanted me to come back to the clan and become leader again. I said no, because I couldn't since I already was in another clan. He didn't like that at all. He kept on asking, and I kept saying no. Suddenly he starts to us :( . Then I got curious.
I asked him repeatedly if he was sad, he made excuses and tried to change the subject, talk about something else. That made me just even more curious. After a while, then he said in the clan chat that he was unhappy. That it didn't go so well for the clan, several people had left, and it just became smaller and smaller. The clan had gone from about 50 people dow to 10. He mentioned where certain people had gone, some had joined another clan, some had stopped playing altogether. He mentioned that things were better while I was leader, that there were several people and had it better together, but now people fled and didn't want to belong anymore.
I thought of course that was unfortunate that this clan I had been a part of and even lead slowly fell apart towards nothing. But that was not what I was curious about. It was that he used this column symbol and left-parenthesis. I kept asking if that column and left-parenthesis was to show that he was unhappy. He said at last, that so was. I didn't want to believe it at first, and I thought it was something he just wrote in hope that it would affect me and try and get me to come back to the clan, that he didn't mean it.
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When I was shy, and I saw ikons and how people used those column ':' and left- and right parenthesis '(' ')', the only thing I saw, was a strange use of symbols. I knew well that they signified emotions, though I never thought that if someone wrote :) that he/she was happy or if someone wrote:( that they were sad.
When I look back now, I didn't think farther than someone used those symbols as if they were pretending - I don't know exactly how I'm supposed to put it. I probably mean that I thought they were dishonest, or I simply didn't fanthom that this was a way to express an emotion that they showed.
I myself also used these column and parenthesis symbols, but I felt like I was a half a liar often I used them in both chats, multiplayer games and forums. Though, I can say I found things funny and humourous in somewhat the same way that I do now like I did before and sometimes used ikons and 'lol' for a good one, but is humour an emotion?
