So, World of Warcraft players have formed a sub-culture within the gaming culture. What is cool is that a lot of members of this affinity group were not traditionally gamers.
Anyway, I was thinking about all the crazy internet memes that have propogated via WoW such as Leeroy Jenkins, the O Rly owl, the Chuck Norris vs. Vin Diesel debate, and the 50 DKP minus dude. But this stuff is part of a larger trend of new talk. People make shit up all the time in WoW it seems. Why do they do this and how does this new shit propogate?
One answer might be all the tedious grinding that has to be done in WoW. What else do you have to do while killing 200 plainstalkers to get 12 feathers or whatnot? Shoot the shit on the general channel. What else do you have to do while grinding for rep in Winterspring? Make funnies in the guild channel. Right?
Or maybe it’s just a simple matter of having enough people participating in some sort of meaningful event that a critical mass has been reached and language/culture can emerge…
If ways of talking/ways of being are dynamic toolkits, how the hell does participating in WoW culture help someone? Is it only useful for in-game stuff?
You might be interested in this article: http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/wright/