The Sandlot

As of late, I have begun to play some Halo 2 on Xbox Live. Used to do this all the time; several hours a day, several days a week. Stopped playing regularly some months ago because it got lame. Be it people cheating, boredom with the game or whatever. But lately, as there's nothing ever going on, I started playing again out of sheer boredom. The game is going on 3 years old now and if you ever played Halo 2 online during its heyday, you know what it was like. If you've ever played any sort of video game (console or PC) online, you know the kind of people it attracts.

If you're a shut in or "too cool" to play video games let me explain a typical Halo 2 online experience:

Sign in
Select match type
Away you go.

Only takes about a minute to get in a game with 8-16 people. All the "fun" happens in the game and the post game lobby. Lets break down the in-game experience.

Several things can happen during the course of a game, and they usually happen in tandems:

Sometimes you get guys hacking and cheating to level up.
Sometimes you get guys who run around killing themselves to level down.
Sometimes you get guys who quit near the beginning, middle or end of a match.
Sometimes you get guys who run around yelling/singing on their headsets just to be annoying.
Mostly always everyone is shit-talking.
Mostly always the quality of shit-talking is on a kindergarten or pre-school level.
Mostly always you get stuck with d-bags who don't speak English.
Mostly always you run into cocky-fucking 12 year olds.
Usually some one whines about you taking a weapon or "stealing their kill."
Usually some one is racking up kills with a cheap weapon combo(referred to as the newb/noob combo in nerd language) and claiming to be the worlds greatest.

Then the post game lobby:

Some people just leave.
Some people talk more shit.
Some people carry on their annoying singing and yelling spiel.
Some people talk more shit.

Now all the above descriptions are pretty negative and unfortunately the norm. Occasionally you'll run into people who just keep quite, play the game, say good game and go on their merry way. Even more rare is there might be a guy like me on their, who generally keeps his mouth shut, plays fair and only insults those who choose to act like d-bags and fill one of the above descriptors.

Let me tell you a story that happened just this afternoon. I was playing some Halo 2 with shawn. You get paired into 2 teams of 4 for those now in the know. One match in particular spawned this whole post. It was me and shawn and 2 random guys, Guy A and Guy B. Right from the get-go I knew we were in for one of those games. Guy A said hello, guy B immediatly inquired if Guy A was a 12 year-old. I immediatly knew 2 things: that Guy A was in fact, a 12 year old, and that Guy B was in fact, not a white American.

The rest of the game featured Guy B making fun of Guy A for being 12 and Guy A bickering back at him with whatever comebacks it is 12 year olds use these days. After about 5 minutes of this nonsense I got fed up and told Guy B he was the worst person ever and the main reason that abortions should be socially acceptable. He then responded in his muddled Engrish that that was intersting and that I couldn't articulate (no sense?). No further comments were necessary in the post game lobby and Shawn and I exited.

Do I have a point? Just one that I've made many times. People suck. If you're gonna make fun of some one, be clever about it. "Oh you're 12 hahah" isn't funny. I swear, its like people are trying to see who can be the better douche bag, its like some contest with a super sweet prize is going on that I'm not aware of. And this isnt just applicable to the world of online gaming.

Real life is plagued by people being un-funny, scummy douche bags. Walk into a random high school, dorm, bar/club or house party and you'll see how right I am. This is basically the reason I want to kill myself every time I go out and the reason why I've become an out of touch hermit. At least it beats the alternative.