Me, you, and the fanboys

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’d like to remind our readers that Tarquin’s opinions do not necessarily coincide with those of anybody else at Critical Gamer. Tarquin’s views are only guaranteed to represent the views of Tarquin.

Hey look, a disclaimer just for me. Bless ‘em. So, my first article for Critical Gamer attracted a fair amount of attention, both here and at N4G. It’s nice to be noticed – even by sociopathic nerds.

That doesn’t tell the whole story, though. First of all the majority of comments that referred to me directly were somewhat negative. Secondly, most of the comments on N4G didn’t refer to me and, to be honest, most of them didn’t even acknowledge the existence of my article. I had inadvertently set off a mini fanboy war between PS3 and 360 zealots, which seems to be even easier than I had suspected. I repeat the sentiment of my previous article: people are idiots.

That said, one of the first commenters on my article here at CG actually made a good point. He said, in a nutshell, that the worthless cretins who post abusive, brainless comments on websites are the vocal minority. I’d like to believe this is true, and so choose to do so. The problem is, it doesn’t matter how delicious your bowl of divine and hideously expensive soup is. If there’s a few rat turds floating at the top, that’s what grabs your attention.

Vocal minority they may be, but there are too many thousands of these venomous shits for my liking. They defend their console/computer with more passion, I dare say, than they would defend their parents. What kind of lives do these people lead? Perhaps lives like this:

Fourteen year old Johnny Bottomfeeder loves his games machine. The games with adult ratings are the best, because they have BLOOD and TITS and LOTS OF FUCKING SWEARING and are therefore awesome. He’s an unpopular underachiever at school but that’s okay, because he’s on fourth prestige in Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer. He rocks. He absorbs all the physical and emotional abuse he receives at school like a superhero, and shoots it back out across the internet via his keyboard and headset. Love is for other people; all he needs is to pwn n00bs. He lives for his weekends, which are a hedonistic marathon of gaming and epic masturbation. He is doomed to die a lonely death in his parent’s house before his fiftieth birthday, choking on his fifth bag of Doritos whilst watching an Adam Sandler ‘comedy’.

Why are these pathetic losers allowed to scuttle around in our hobby? Why are they permitted to carry on hurling homophobic and/or racist and/or otherwise needlessly vulgar abuse at each other and the rest of us? Both PSN and Xbox Live have systems in place to report offensive behaviour. Both Sony and Microsoft have been known to ban people from their online services, either temporarily or permanently. Whenever you hear about such bans, it is virtually always for fiddling about with a console’s firmware or hardware. Okay, fine. But why are such a tiny percentage of these abusive, brainless jizzwastes punished for their behaviour? Let me provide a sound effect to give you a little clue.

Kerching!

Modders and pirates definitely are in the minority of gamers and besides, publishers and console manufacturers make little to no money from their activities. They are banned (or more accurately, their modified machines are banned) in the hope of forcing them to become paying customers. If somebody is using internet anonymity to persecute an individual because of their race or sexual orientation, why should Sony or Microsoft care? These fascists – in – waiting are paying customers. It’s all cheerily ignored. So it’s certain that nothing will be done when people try to ruin your online experience with less controversial insults and taunts.

This army of immature underachievers is here to stay, so get used to them. And if you’re one of them and you’ve got a problem with anything I’ve ever said or done – I don’t care. Your father should have emptied you into a tissue instead of into your mother.

What? I’m holding back here.

What we all need to do – and yes, I need to cut through my own apathy to take part myself too – is report these morons every single time we spot one. Whenever you hear the usual crap slithering through a headset, make a note of the ID/gamertag and report it. Though it’s less of a problem, even note the IDs with offensive clan tags and/or usernames. Somebody with a clan tag such as ‘BNP’ or ‘IRA’ or a username such as ‘i_hate_[insert race of your choice]‘ should be brought to the attention of the company hosting the online service. Hell, even report people who indulge in less vile harassment. You are after all encouraged to report anybody who intentionally, needlessly spoils your ‘online experience’. I said that this behaviour is ignored, and that’s true. If enough complaints are made about this sort of behaviour though, there’s a chance that the companies will start to get nervous about what people might do if enough of them get sick of the abusive minority. They might – good god, no – take their money elsewhere!!!!

Then again, they might simply continue to sit pretty in the knowledge that a flock of consumers will put up with anything that they’re told they have to put up with. Maybe, if, perhaps, although… it’s your call. Are you prepared to put a little effort in for a slim chance of success, or are you content to sit back and do nothing for guaranteed failure?

PSN user complaint form

What to report on Xbox Live, and how to report it

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Written by Tarquin X

He hates you and everything you stand for.

9 comments

  1. About Tarquin X:
    He has valid points to make, but verses them as the very fanboys he criticises would; with vulgarity and sarcasm – the lowest form of wit.

    Hypocrisy rules.

  2. Yeah I don’t think you are much better. I read the other article too and these are clearly fanboy war food made on purpose. But got to hand something to you. Successful troll is successful.

  3. Michael J /

    Fourth Prestige? Fucking noob.

  4. BRubble /

    “I repeat the sentiment of my previous article: people are idiots.”

    Report them??! Unless there is some child sex luring going on then reporting someone for being an idiot is undoubtedly pointless. You yourself fall into the “people are idiots” category by doing so. Not to mention ranting on about fanboys being idiots also makes you an idiot…..
    Ive got a novel idea…dont bother with the xbox or ps services, which are simply an annoying fucking babysitting service. Obviously you cant help yourself and you dont really find it that bad of an experience or else you wouldn’t bother playing with said idiots. If you really need to dork it up then play on PC, as most if not all PC hosts will simply ban one for such behaviors. Pretty fucking simple remedy.
    Your article is simply calling the kettle black. Idiot.

  5. R.Furie /

    Dear, oh dear Tarquin. You’re making potty-mouths of us all here, and to think CG was a nice clean site before your arrival. In your first post I said I wanted to punch your (probably) rosey, sweaty, posh face and… I still do. But man, you slayed me with that “Your father should have emptied you into a tissue instead of into your mother” comment.

  6. half_empty80 /

    Easier to read than the first article and some valid issues here. I will reserve judgement on Mr X for now.

  7. good points, well made. May I laugh now at people calling you a hypocrite. Sometimes you just gotta get mad at these a##h##les. They really are sad little people.

  8. rustynuts /

    What’s wrong with Adam Sandler :)

  9. MS do 24/48/weekly/2 week and permanent bans all the time, hell you can get temp banned for having s**t or f*** in your bio.

    The reason the loud mouthed little shits don’t get banned is because ms would need to catch them being loud mouthed little shits (When you complain about a bio a snapshot is taken and saved for review) which with the amount of players is going to be a mission.

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