Have you experienced the Bughouse Effect? What was it like?
I’ve been on both sides of this, but as soon as you started describing the dynamic, the first case that came to mind was when I was on the receiving end. It was a 2v2 Starcraft game with strangers. I don’t recall very much about the match, except that I responded to an attack with exactly the wrong kind of unit (Starcraft has a very rock-paper-scissors-ish structure, and I responded to rock with scissors, basically). I think plausibly this cost us the game, but I suspect we were doomed anyway. My teammate absolutely lost it. He even kept “yelling” at me via messages after the game.
He of course had a point, and I don’t blame him for being frustrated, but the main thing I remember thinking and saying to him was something like “I’m a random guy on the Internet and I’m bad at this game and I don’t understand how any of this is so surprising to you that it would make you this mad?” I didn’t really get the thing where he got super mad, when he had no reasonable expectation that his teammate would be competent, given the complete lack of matchmaking at the time. Maybe I really was an outlier of incompetence for him? He was having a bad day?
For me to feel any large amount of Bughouse Effect, I need to start out with the expectation that my allies are not bozos. If I assume from the beginning that they are (or are likely to be) bozos, then I have an entirely different orientation toward the thing we’re doing together, and it’s much harder for me to get mad about it. But, for a long time, this had the side effect that that I’m way more likely to get mad at people I know and respect than I do with random strangers. By now I’ve mostly learned to assume that my allies will do dumb things, no matter how competent I thought they were. This mostly solves the problem, but it does leave me less excited in general about doing things that require competent allies.
If I assume from the beginning that they are (or are likely to be) bozos, then I have an entirely different orientation toward the thing we’re doing together, and it’s much harder for me to get mad about it.
Yeah, I’ve gradually learned to usually do something like this.
This mostly solves the problem, but it does leave me less excited in general about doing things that require competent allies.
Yes, this is also my experience, which is very sad (as IMO shared intentionality is a pretty fundamental human faculty). I want to have countervailing forces of still trying those projects, even if they’re less exciting because riskier and more annoying and less likely to work. And I want to learn how to avoid the worst sorts of Bughouse-y dissonance. E.g. by doing some more work up front, in order to
get on the same page, or
just not do the thing in the first place, and avoid the overinvestment and stress, or
at least be somehow prepared/forewarned for the significant chance of failing each other.
I’ve been on both sides of this, but as soon as you started describing the dynamic, the first case that came to mind was when I was on the receiving end. It was a 2v2 Starcraft game with strangers. I don’t recall very much about the match, except that I responded to an attack with exactly the wrong kind of unit (Starcraft has a very rock-paper-scissors-ish structure, and I responded to rock with scissors, basically). I think plausibly this cost us the game, but I suspect we were doomed anyway. My teammate absolutely lost it. He even kept “yelling” at me via messages after the game.
He of course had a point, and I don’t blame him for being frustrated, but the main thing I remember thinking and saying to him was something like “I’m a random guy on the Internet and I’m bad at this game and I don’t understand how any of this is so surprising to you that it would make you this mad?” I didn’t really get the thing where he got super mad, when he had no reasonable expectation that his teammate would be competent, given the complete lack of matchmaking at the time. Maybe I really was an outlier of incompetence for him? He was having a bad day?
For me to feel any large amount of Bughouse Effect, I need to start out with the expectation that my allies are not bozos. If I assume from the beginning that they are (or are likely to be) bozos, then I have an entirely different orientation toward the thing we’re doing together, and it’s much harder for me to get mad about it. But, for a long time, this had the side effect that that I’m way more likely to get mad at people I know and respect than I do with random strangers. By now I’ve mostly learned to assume that my allies will do dumb things, no matter how competent I thought they were. This mostly solves the problem, but it does leave me less excited in general about doing things that require competent allies.
Yeah, I’ve gradually learned to usually do something like this.
Yes, this is also my experience, which is very sad (as IMO shared intentionality is a pretty fundamental human faculty). I want to have countervailing forces of still trying those projects, even if they’re less exciting because riskier and more annoying and less likely to work. And I want to learn how to avoid the worst sorts of Bughouse-y dissonance. E.g. by doing some more work up front, in order to
get on the same page, or
just not do the thing in the first place, and avoid the overinvestment and stress, or
at least be somehow prepared/forewarned for the significant chance of failing each other.