In an effort to help understand each other and promote harmony among the AH community, I present to you...
"Understanding You and Your Fellow Pilots - Part 2"Research indicates that people view cultural differences through 10 different lenses. Which lense do you view the AH world with? Which lense do your fellow AH pilot view the AH world? To find out, read on….
The 10 Lenses of Aces High Cultural Diversity1. The Assimilationist ("When in Rome, do as the Romans do")These are the cheeleading dweebs that do whatever it takes to be seen as a respectable, upstanding dweeb in AH. These are the dweebs that can't understand why others' don't have a desire to "fit in" -e.g. "I don't understand why they don't want to wear leather and fly German planes?". These dweebs have 12 step plans to help the poor dweebs from WB, Fighter Aces, IL2, etc. adapt to AH and become AH dweebs. They define a whine as the slightest suggestion that something should be changed in AH. These dweebs are pretty open to differences as long as it fits their standards of conformity.
2. The "Colorblind" ("When I see you, I see a person not a La-7 Dweeb")These dweebs focus on the individuality of others and believe cultural factors such as being a furballing dweeb or bnz dweeb are purely superficial and have no relevance. They don't have any clue that there are actually dweebs that have preferences for particular planesets, styles of fighting, or gameplay. The dweebs are really pleasant and pleasantly oblivious to the existence of sub-cultures. ("Why, I had no idea that you only flew big, fat, ugly blue navy planes!")
3. Culturalcentrists ("Flying LW iron is central to my personal & public identity")These dweebs identify themselves with a particular cultural group (e.g. I'm a furballing dweeb, I'm a gallant German knight dweeb, I'm a Jug or Runstang dweeb, I'm a buffing strat dweeb). These dweebs seek to improve the welfare of their cultural group by accentuating (and sometimes embellishing) their own history and identity (usually with THEIR versions of history or "data"). They are the ones who believe that their specific plane, style of flying, or style of gameplay is the RIGHT CHOICE compared to all planes in the planeset, styles of flying, or gameplay and zealously defend their preferences along with their cohort dweebs. These dweebs wholly embrace differences in AH and recognize these differences by whining about them while making sure you know the CORRECTNESS of their choice (sometimes waving irrefutable "data").
4. Elitists ("Membership has its privileges")These dweebs are somewhat like Culturalcentrits except that they ACTUALLY believe they do belong to the SUPERIOR class of pilots. They are also motivated by a strong desire to educate the AH community of their superiority though sometimes unknowningly (like when their stats somehow find themselves in a discussion - "now how and why did they get there??? Hmmmm.") since the rest of the community is just a mass of helpless, hapless sheep in much dire need of their knowledge, talents, and skills. They recognize the superiority of their skills, their particular aircraft, or style of game play and see it as their job to enlighten the rest of us less fortunate souls- e.g. (CT pilots are superior to MA pilots, simmers are superior to gamers, I'm superior to you etc.) They are also the Generalissimo's that command whole countries and point out the error in strategy for missions posted by others. These dweebs also like to tell you what you should fly or how you should fly. Differences merely demonstrate the superiority of these dweebs.
5. Integrationists ("Ebony and ivory live together on my keys, shouldn't we?")These dweebs support breaking down all barriers between AH groups by merging people of different cultures together in communities. These are the mission planning dweebs that have missions made up of hvy bombers, medium bombers, bnz fighters, turn fighters, jabos, gv's, goons, backup goons, supply goons, supported by carrier tasks forces and pt's from the ocean. These are the bridge building dweebs that know there are different sub-cultures and work at helping the Spit and N1K2 dweebs understand that bnz'ers really aren't lame and for bnz'ers to understand that furballing is actually more interesting than running on a hamster wheel. To these dweebs, differences are merely opportunities for integrating AH sub-cultures.
6. Meritocratists ("Cream rises to the top")These dweebs believe that their merit in the AH community is determined by measurable activities. These dweebs are obsessed with things like K/D, K/S, and K/TO ratios. Scores and statistics are the backbone of these dweebs and their planes and flying styles choices are motivated by their stat. These dweebs actually like to try and land each sortie and also have a tendency to fixate on chasing perk planes around to boost their score. These dweebs will also do things such as vulch often or fire at ground objects to improve their hit %. Often times these dweebs argue among each other as to who has more merit since they can't seems to agree as to which stats are the most relevant in determining someone's skill or standing. Differences are reflected in scores and stats for these dweebs.
7. Multiculturalists ("The more cultural diversity the better")These dweebs celebrate the diversity of cultures in the AH community. These dweebs are somewhat like the integrationists except that they don't worry about trying to get the boring strat guys to fly with the brainless furballers. Instead they celebrate that such diversity exists and like to come up with even more diversity such as suggesting that HTC implement 15 variants of the same plane, or implement planesets spanning back to at least the 1918's. A role-playing based system along with a rolling planeset in AH is popular with these folks since they can have a diverse career that allows them to get credit for not only driving different vehicles and planes, but also allows them to cycle from pre-historic planesets to X-wings and TIE-fighters of the post-modern world. Diversity is good to these dweebs - and lots of it!
8. Seclusionists ("Birds of a feather flock together")These dweebs are somewhat versions of the Culturalcentrists on steroids. These dweebs feel strongly that they should protect themselves from other AH groups that diminish the character and quality of their group’s experiences within AH. These dweebs are interesting people since they usually have strict preferences on what the fly, how they fly, who they fly with and who they fly against. These dweebs tend to have complexes and for some perplexing reason tend to see only a single plane type whenever they are flying making statements like "all I see are Spits", or "..La-7's" etc. They tend to go on tireless and endless crusades against these planesets that they are always seeing. Diversity infers caution for these dweebs since it can diminish the quality of the AH experience.
9. Transcendents ("There's really only one country in AH") These dweebs focus on the human spirit, our universal connection, and our shared humanity in AH. These dweebs don't believe in the concepts of countries in AH and so rotate through countries often. Sometimes this is motivated by their passion to share in the universal connection of joining the hordes and celebrating the success of winning one-sided wars. These dweebs often times want to do away with radar and icons as well since that only demonstrates that countries exist. They also believe we should all share in the universal experience of flying around the sky aimlessly chasing dots. Furballers and bnz'ers are all the same to these dweebs - all just targets.
10. Victim/Caretakers ("We Shall Overcome") These are the sentimental, underdog dweebs that see their liberation as a crucial goal. They feel that they are still suffering from the generational impact of previous oppression and often whine about unbalanced numbers between countries or being gang-banged by hordes of enemy. Sometimes this manifests itself in the form that they believe that HTC has purposely under-modelled their favorite ride. For these dweebs differences only illustrate that HTC has hatched some evil plot to oppress them and oppress their favorite ride.
In the end, we are all just Dweebs! Enjoy!
Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs
