When i was like 13 was allowed to use the internet unrestricted for the first time and i spent a lot of time on Runescape. One of the people i talked to on there was this person who had much higher levels than me in every skill and had, to my perception, a seemingly overflowing amount of game resources. One day i was taking about wishing i could get gold ore to level my smithing and not having access to any and they like “here, you can have this gold that i have” and just gave me this big stack and i was like “i don’t even have anything to offer back”. They told me they didn’t need anything and just wanted to be nice. I said that they didn’t have to and what they told me honestly has stuck with me since, they said “life’s too short to spend it being mean to people” and like it’s such a simple thing to say but combined with their actions and the weight they bore to me at the time was hugely influential on my outlook on life and the way i treat others. I don’t know who that person is but they changed my life that day and I’m so thankful to them.
high level MMO-ers are either the nicest people on earth or the spawn of Satan there is no in between
Runescape was a big part of my formative years for better or worse. Age twelve left me impressionable at best and the free lobster this guy gave me one day just stuck with me. We fished together for days on end and we talked about our parents and stuff. If you’re out there NinjaKirby69 I miss you buddy.
I forgot to type it up yesterday but one of my best experiences didn’t even involve me. It was when my younger sister, Runescape user cooldudetha, crashed the steel market single-handedly out of sheer boredom.
I need to know this story
So if you’re not aware, Runescape has the Grand Exchange, which is basically a global trade market controlled by supply and demand. It’s an incredible system, and deserves a lot of commendation.
Well one day back in…I think Summer between 2010-2012? my younger sister and I had nothing to do but play Runescape in our free time. I did what all aspiring heroes do, I was happy to go out and commit mass goblin murder. My sister was more creative. At first she went to train Smithing in Al Kharid, which is this desert area with easy access to iron, coal, a player bank, and a smelter. So basically she made craploads of steel for hours on end for like a week. But then she realized she had nothing to do with the steel. She could go find a smith with an anvil and train Smithing further, but that was boring since she’d already been grinding forever. So she went to the Grand Exchange and sold it all.
Thousands of units of steel ingots.
And it sold like immediately, since there was always a large amount of people training Smithing at the level they could use steel.
Obviously she became fabulously wealthy and didn’t know what to do with her newfound wealth. But since she spent a lot of time at the Exchange, she knew basically how the market worked. I’m not 100% sure on what the thought process was for her, but she essentially realized a basic economic principle: If she could control the supply and demand for steel she could accelerate her profit margins.
So like any reasonable 12-14 year old, she bought out about twice as much steel as she sold. Flooding the market had almost halved the price, and she now was both the supply and demand. Of course, as a result of some mystery person buying tons of steel, the price went up again. So she went and sold it at the higher price. She spent about another week or two playing Carnegie before it got old and she retired to Lumbridge with fat stacks of gold and the finest armor money could buy (but she couldn’t wear due to low Defense level).
I found out from a friend later who was part of one of the big trade guilds that the big market guilds were all pissed that somehow the steel market had crashed, skyrocketed, then crashed in quick succession for no goddamn reason and all of them had lost thousands of coins in the process.
My favorite thing about this is that it validates my entire Master’s Degree. This. This is how games can develop incidental learning and teach kids valuable lessons. This 12 year girl figured out, and manipulated, a free market economy because she was bored. She was able to recognize, understand and utilize a fundamental principal of economics to entertain herself.
I worked with toddlers and pre schoolers for three years. Sometimes I accidentally slip and tell a friend to say bye to an inanimate object (“say bye bus!”) & occasionally they unthinkingly just do it.
I’m glad there’s a teacher version of “accidentally called teacher ‘mom’”
when I worked at Medieval Times occasionally I would slip in real life and call people “my lord”
One time during family prayer, dad began: “our father who art in heaven, American Airlines, how can I help you?”
One time my dad went to the White Castle drive-thru and the lady (who was supposed to say ‘Welcome to White Castle, what’s your crave?’) asked, “Welcome to White Castle, what’s your problem?”
She apologized profusely while my dad proceeded to lose his shit laughing.
Yesterday I went to Wendy’s and the girl said “Welcome to McDonalds” and then just sighed
Somebody in the elevator asked me what floor I lived on, and I answered “please open your books to page eight”, and we just kind of stared at each other, blinking.
i work retail full time and my script gets frequently messy – ill ask the same question twice, or say “$2.60 is your total” while handing back their change, or say “how are you doing today?” instead of “have a good day!” like name it ive bungled it
but anyway, this lady came thru my line buying a book and the review on the front said: “few books are well written, fewer still are important, and this book manages to be both”
as i handed her the bag i was trying to say “thanks, youre all set” and instead my brain mashed up the review and i said “thanks, youre important”
there was this short pause in which i tried to figure out what the fuck id just said. she blinked and then said “oh thank you! youre important too!”
the real kicker was one of my coworkers. when i was relating this story later his response was “at least you said something NICE. last week i accidentally combined ‘youre welcome’ and ‘no problem’ into ‘youre a problem’”
one time, since I used to work as a daycare teacher with preschoolers, i was on my college campus in my gym, and someone was running in the weight room and tripped over a machine and fell, and instead of offering to help, I just stared and said, “This is why we use our walking feet.”
we both sat there for a while until the guy nodded and said, “yeah, okay, i should’ve done that.”
I’ve spent a good chunk of time working in kitchens, so I still will reflexively say shit like “behind” and “coming around” as I maneuver through spaces and around people.
Which, actually, not such a bad thing; I’m a big guy and can come across as imposing pretty easily. The position calls can help defuse that, and also help avoid collisions.
Less good is the time my brain was half functional and I let slip a “coming with a knife” while grocery shopping. THAT took some explaining.
I work in an office and send tens of emails to customers every day. Once my mum asked me to send her a train ticket I had bought for her. I emailed her “Hello mum, as agreed, please find attached the ticked you requested. Thanks, Alex”
I’ve worked in health care my whole life, and for solid ten years I started my every shift by grabbing my bp cuff and stethoscope, then going from room to room and checking the vital signs on my 20+ patients.
So fast forward to my office job, I stuck my head into the account payable office to ask for the last quarter’s employee reimbursement, and ended up saying, “Hi Robin, I’m sorry to bother you, but I need your vital signs.”
This is finally done: a more concise description of demon summoning. This kind of handbook would probably have been given out to all the military cadet mages. For further reading:
This Tumblr user disappeared into the ether about two years back, which is a crying shame – would have been nice to see how this particular slice of world-building (and in turn, its combination of goopy body horror and clean, minimalist design) continued to develop.
· They drain the San Antonio Riverwalk once a
year. They tell you it’s shallow, only three feet deep, but no matter how much
you stare you cannot see the bottom. They’ve found prosthetic limbs in the
annual dredging.
·
You’ve been driving for hours. Surely you’re out
of state lines by now, you tell yourself. But the scenery hasn’t changed at
all, and the sky has long turned dark. You can’t remember the last town you
went through.
·
There are lights above Marfa. People come from
far and wide to see them, but we don’t talk about them. We don’t talk about the
lights above Marfa- they listen. We don’t want them to hear us.
·
We don’t sing “Deep in the Heart of Texas”
because it’s a tradition. We sing it to keep it sated. Because deep in the hill
country, if you stand still enough, you can feel a deep, steady throb beneath
your feet.
·
You hear screams in the heavy heat of summer
nights. Your mother tells you that it’s nothing but the wind, but you don’t
believe her. There hasn’t been wind in months.
·
The heat is sticky and heady against your skin,
even in the dead of night. “Sure is hot this summer,” your mother says. Her
eyes are glassy, and her teeth grind together as she stares out into the
distance. “Sure is hot.”
·
There are tunnels beneath San Antonio. They
connect the missions to San Fernando Cathedral. They’ve long been closed off-
no one goes in the tunnels. No one wants to go in the tunnels.
·
The grackles are waiting in the grocery store
parking lot. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them- they scream into the
sky and watch you as you pack away your groceries.
·
The ground has cracked into dusty plates. There
are children that have never seen rain. You don’t remember the last time it
rained. A lot of people say it never will again.
·
Basements are banned. The ground is too dry,
they say. It’ll crack your foundation. But you know why they’re banned.
Everyone knows why. But we must forget.
·
The forest is deep, so very deep. You walk on,
but all you find is a roofless hut filled with shotgun shells. There are claw
marks on the wall, on the ground. You scuff at them with your shoe.
·
Off the highway, decaying farmhouses stand like
gray smudges against the blue sky. The cattle graze around them, away from
them. The grass around them is dead.
·
Don’t Mess with Texas. Texas remembers. Texas is
vengeful.
·
You don’t watch the heat waves that rise off of
the gravel. Look forward. Look forward. Keep driving.
Hen's Hellsite 