Plenty of shit has been said about the Mercer Effect.
This is something that older gamemasters talk about, where the behaviour and expectations of players that have been introduced to the hobby through Critical Role are completely different to those who have played for a long time.
The reason this is the case is because they have been introduced to the hobby through gamer porn.
Let me explain.
Sex is a private and intimate act performed by two (or more, if you want) people for the sake of their own pleasure, and occasionally reproduction.
Pornography is taking that intimate act and productising it for the pleasure of others.
To turn sex into successful pornography, you have to make some changes. The positions need to be better for the camera. It needs to have all the awkward bits taken out. There’s no one getting leg cramp and having to sit out for five minutes while the camera rolls. There’s no conversations about condoms or birth control or pulling out.
All the things needed for actual sex are removed to make a better product.
This is much the same as tabletop streaming.
There are no hour long conversations about whether you are going to buy fifty or seventy-five foot of rope. There are no mid-session toilet breaks that then run on for too long as everyone else discovers they need to go. There’s no mad rush for the pizza and books being removed from reach in case they get greasy.
And like pornography, the quality of both people and sets in successful streams are unachievable by your average gamer.
Streamers are mostly attractive LA wannabe actors putting on funny voices and engaging in crazy hijinks, while your standard tabletop group is half a dozen goblin men guffawing at stupid jokes around a wobbly dimly lit table.
A lot of the big streams have beautifully painted set-piece battles, always prepared just on time for the group to fall into. In reality, you have Jimmy scribbling out maps with (sometimes) a collection of grayscale miniatures.
These things only really work in the world of streaming. I can only imagine putting together a beautifully arranged set piece encounter with masses of painted miniatures and then having the players decide they’re going to ballista your €50 dragon miniature.
It would be devastating, and I would be tempted to prevent them from doing the smart thing in order to force them into the encounter. That wouldn’t be good.
The biggest difference from porn is that most people know that porn isn’t like the real thing. I’m not sure the same can be said of stream watchers.
The point is not really that they’re unrealistic, although they are. It’s not that it’s just a product for consumption, although they are. It’s not that they set up bad culture, although they do.
The point is that engaging in the actual fucking hobby is more enjoyable than watching alone at home.
If you love tabletop streamers then instead of watching this shit, go play. Stop worrying about whether your peen will look like Matt Mercer’s and just play the game.
Drop some eejits into a tavern with a goblin camp nearby and watch the fun bloom. Play some tabletop with scribbles on paper and imagining the game with your minds.
Avoid planning and set-pieces and character arcs.
All those things are gamer porn.
Go have gamer sex instead.
Let me offer you a counter point... even though you are definitely not wrong. (Also why am I responding to a substack from half a year ago? Who knows. Don't ask questions haha).
I came to the hobby through Critical Role. It's a bit embarrassing to admit that and I don't want the show now (it's become honestly god-awful), but it's true. And I think I'm a pretty good player and DM now, whose opinions on many areas of the hobby, on what makes a good game of D&D, on this edition over the other or this ttrpg vs. that one, have shifted and are still evolving over the years. But yeah, it started with CR. Why?
Because I've never had nerdy friends. Where I lived, in my school days (ah the days of yore...) I was the girl that went to watch respeat showings of Lord of the Rings on my own at the cinema to get away from people and immerse myself in a world that I loved... (I was in a boarding school at the time and didn't like my room mate). I read loads of books and wrote stories, later wrote a lot of fanfiction online and did some written rpgs without any dice involved, just storytelling. But my IRL friends just weren't into that kind of thing. It was honestly a bit lonely, having that big part of my life and personality that pretty much anyone I knew and liked thought of as a bit silly.
And I sort of knew D&D existed; in school my brother had a very short stint with it with some friends and I remember being intensely jealous. But they didn't stick with it. We didn't have much money, and it never got far enough to get the books. But I made little character sheets of my own, tried to retrofit something I didn't understand.
Years passed. I like my friends a lot, but this nerd aspect of mine is just not something we share. And I will say, as a woman and an introvert, I find it a rather big hurdle to walk into a game store and see if they have games. And anyway, I was in my thirties, so, I'd mostly forgotten about my erstwhile D&D dreams.
Come the pandemic, I was on a hike with a friend (I almost can't believe now how even that felt like we were doing something bad...) and we both discovered that we had always been curious about D&D but honestly didn't know how to get into it. And yes, you could say "just buy the books", but I didn't know enough about it, or the option of actually using the books with anyone seemed incredibly low. And then my friend said "I think there are people now, who are streaming D&D".
And yes, you are correct - it's not real. Although, I started back with season 1 of Critical Role and it has a LOT more of the things that are now cut out. There was food on the table, speaking with your mouth full, long shopping episodes, etc. And I find those old episodes intensely more charming for it.
And even if it is not real, it made the game seem accessible to me in a way that a book really wouldn't. I needed to understand sort of what it is like, what the unspoken rules are, what the process is, some of the general assumptions... at least a little bit. And I think 2 weeks after starting to watch it, I was looking for a game online and never looked back.
I'm still mostly playing online because it's convenient and I made some great friends, my IRL friend and I play in an online game together, in fact. And we keep saying one day we will find two or three more locals who also prefer to speak English and also want to play D&D and do this at a table... but we are happy with our game, so haven't really gone out of our way.
And I absolutely agree that it's stupid to keep watching these shows INSTEAD of playing. That just seems sad. But I think for a lot of people (and i'm gonna be honest, especially women), they make the game feel accessible and doable, and not this hyper complicated almost arcanely mathematical thing that only intensely nerdy guys play in secret basements. And I'm good at math, it just seemed like a community, I had no idea how to even get into, or would possibly be wanted or welcomed in.
On the other hand, and here I am with you -- I think we are seeing an intense increase in the "pornification" of the hobby in certain streams. Like Critical Role, but way more in stuff like Dimension20 etc. I can't watch that at all. But on the other hand, it's not so very hard to find smaller streamers where the game does feel a lot like a home game - or where you can learn a lot as a player and a DM.