People Suck

I would like to address something that is perhaps a strange way to start this off. In what will probably be the most profound post in this blog, I would like express concern for the current state of people in general. Most people will try to play themselves off as at least neutral toward others, if not at least slightly respectful. However, if you strip away all forms of accountability for their actions, people change. How many of you would steal a million dollars from a massive corporation like Microsoft, if you knew with 100% certainty that you would never be caught or suffer any negative consequences in any way? My guess is, most people would, or at least be strongly tempted to do so. I come face to face with this type of behavior quite frequently while playing videogames on the internet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how online gaming works, you create an account, typically tied to your email address which only the game developers know. While playing with other people, they see whatever player name you choose, and they cannot see your email, your real name, where you live, nothing. You are essentially nothing but some imaginary name. Of course, you are able to talk with other players in the game through various means. The people in these games, to be blunt, are almost exclusively terrible human beings. I have been playing online games since I was a teenager, and have experienced several online communities including World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Quake 2 and Quake 3, Diablo 1 and 2, among others. In all of them, the same flaws have persisted through a decade of my experiences, and in all honesty it scares me sometimes. People will verbally attack others without provocation for no reason other than to attempt to psychologically wound another human being. People will play the game in a way to intentionally disrupt others' gameplay for the sole reason of causing trouble for other people (I'm talking about when the game is not meant to be played this way, and you receive no reward whatsoever for doing so). Players will show no forgiveness for other people's mistakes, even in noncompetitive games, and will take absolutely no responsibility for their own.




For example, one of the best League of Legends player's recently had some of his personal information stolen, and his account to the game was hacked. This hacker logged into the game with this account and played a match. Four other people, some with a high respected standing in the online community, joined the game with this hacker and played a full match. They KNEW that this account was being played by a hacker (they admitted this) and played with this hacker anyway. Their excuses varied, from being a rival to this top player who was hacked, being fun to play with a hacker on a pro player's account, and the player deserving to be hacked because his information was easy to get to. As another example, in World of Warcraft, high level players frequently go into low level areas just to kill new players that stand no chance to fight off the high level character. The high level player gains absolutely no reward for this. No gold, no experience points, they don't level up or gain a badge of honor. They just go to annoy and disrupt other people for their twisted form of enjoyment. These behaviors are so common players have coined several terms for people doing this, typically calling them “griefers.” When given free reign with no tie to their real identity, a disturbingly vast majority of people tend to take actions to cause others harm in some way. Going to most internet forum websites will yield this result as well, where people like this are called “trolls.”



At this point many of you are probably thinking that I'm leaving out all the positive experiences I've had, and that I'm simply being selective. I have met some of my best friends through online gaming experiences. However, I can count the number of kind people I've met playing videogames online for about 10 years using only my fingers and toes. The number of trolls and griefers would number in the hundreds at least. Some people would argue that this is a very small selection of people, and to a degree they are correct. While World of Warcraft has advertised as having over six million players worldwide, they can hardly be considered a global meter for the human condition. However, gaming as a whole has been increasingly more popular, with game names like Halo and Call of Duty becoming recognizable by most teens and young adults. Is this horrible trend applicable only to the nerds and geeks of online gaming, or is it only seen in this population because it is a situation where any chance of suffering a real world consequence for their actions is removed? Nerds are even typically steroetyped as being the “niceguys” versus the more rude and condescending population of “jocks” and “preps.” While I won't go back into the high school clichés, I don't believe that computer gamers are someone more evil than your standared non-gamer young adult.



Others may argue that this entire situation is unrealistic, and that people should not be judged how they respond in a scenario where there is no responsibility tied to their actions. This argument is completely flawed. While this situation may be detached from reality, it shows a person's true colors because it leaves them with no reason not to do whatever they want. There are no inhibitions or outside influences to prevent them from doing exactly as they please. And a majority of people choose to rude, offensive, disrespectful, and cruel to other people. Online gaming communities as a whole have become so hostile that it is nearly impossible to try to play any team-oriented or cooperative game without filling your entire team with friends, because you won't want to deal with the awful personalities of 99.9999999% of the people you meet in the game online. Trying to find a team of random players online that you can get along with well enough to play the game becomes a test of your pain tolerance. I'm not trying to call out videogames in anyway whatsoever. I spend much of my free time gaming and have a wonderful time, provided I play either single player games or bring a team of friends online. Anyway, leave a comment if you agree or have a story to try to brighten this rather frightening trend. I'm going back to League of Legends hoping to have a match where someone doesn't question my sexuality or call out my Mother because my team of five friends (who are actually gamers that are decent human beings) managed to crush his team of assholes.

Wall of Text crits for 9000.