No Heroes

Whenever faced with a question like this I like to make sure I understand what it means. A quick Google search gives this definition:

Hero: noun - a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.

Let's be clear: there are no real heroes in EVE Online. You don't get to be called a hero for sitting behind a monitor screen and moving internet spaceship pixels around. So we're done here.

.....

Alright, alright, let's be charitable and talk about this in a more EVE-centric way and modify out definition to be better suited to this blog banter.

Hero: noun - a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities within the EVE universe and community.

So what counts as courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities in EVE? Does charging your Tengu into an enemy fleet to try and buy some time for your friends to extract count as courage? Does building a website for EVE maps that is free and almost universally used and has tonnes of features and information count as an oustanding achievement? Does starting and running an in game charity that gives ships, modules, and ISK to players in need for no profit to oneself count as a noble quality? Are they heroes?

Maybe. Maybe not.

You see, in my mind I have this ideal of a hero that involves some sort of meaningful self sacrifice and while all of the things I have mentioned as examples do involve people making an effort and going out of their way to help others, I don't think of them as true sacrifices. In some cases they are hobbies, in others they are fun, in others they are simply an experiment or something to do. Even in the best case, like Sindel Pellion's Angel Project, I can't call it heroism. Noble, perhaps... heroic?

No, even with a modified definition of "Hero" I still find myself locked into a mindset that there can be no heroes amoungst the legion of players who sit warm and comfy in their homes with an internet connection and a pantry full of food in the kitchen.