Thursday, 03 March 2011

• Gamers in Love + This is Why Girls Pretend They're Guys in Online Games [A Double Feature!]

  
  (Skip to the bottom of the page for "This is Why Girls Pretend They're Guys in Online Games" which you should definitely read if you previously missed it. Cringing is guaranteed!) 
  
  Gamers in Love:
  
  There's a positive side to communication in online games. Relationships and marriages have been built upon the foundations of LittleBigPlanet and World of Warcraft. Gamers who aren't complete cretins exist, and they're willing to travel hundreds of miles to see their high-leveled love warriors. It's like fusing blind dating with online dating, except without the tedium of writing boring "about me" introductions.

  You don't hear about this often because people are ashamed of admitting that they fell in love while beheading faux-zombies together in Resident Evil 5. Can you blame them, though? It's certainly not the most romantic of scenarios. Then again, neither is drunken pretend sex that passes off as dancing at a club.

  With the availability of headsets and its ease of use, it has become easier to communicate while playing online games. Services like Xbox Live and PSN should just go all out and create a dating infrastructure to incorporate into their services.

  Since webcam-like devices are common to game consoles (Think Playstation Eye and Kinect), they could always start up gaming's version of Chatroulette, which can feature parental controls if you want to shield your kids from furious bouts of masturbation.

  What better way to meet people who share your passion of gaming? Although I encourage going out for some fucking fresh air instead of cramping up next to electronic devices for social networking, I won't pretend to be a miracle worker who can exorcise gaming addictions. What I'm saying is, for the intended demographic, it would be more useful than Lara Croft and lube.

  A good friend of mine was in an emotionally and verbally abusive marriage. Her escape was going online and playing video games with other people since she obviously can't go drinking with friends every single night. I would hear her husband mistreating her and yelling over her headset often, so I started worrying about her mental health.

  Since we would play the same game online often, it gave us plenty of time to chat either alone or with friends. She eventually met a group of new people who replaced me when I stopped going online for a few months. I'm irreplaceable, I get it, but what was she to do? Anyway, when I decided to finally go online once again for a few quick games, I was met with the news that she had divorced her husband, and was now dating a guy she met over her Playstation 3.

  Being the love doctor that I am, I deduced that she had been emotionally detaching herself for a few months now in order to make her divorce easier. Video games helped, and so did her new boyfriend, I guess. They've already met up numerous times, and are moving in together this year. Oh, and the sex was great. She hadn't gotten any action for months with her ex-husband. What an asshole.

  My point is that while video games offer a great way to escape from the shit-stroll that life is nonchalantly leading you through, it can also form unbreakable bonds in the unlikeliest of places. Some of these places include a plague-ridden town in Africa, a generic battlefield, and Charlie Sheen's coke-laced dreams. Ahh, how romantic.

  I'm curious.

  Do you know a couple who met through an online game?
  How do you feel about meeting people through video games?
  
  
  This is Why Girls Pretend They're Guys in Online Games:

   
  I can't determine whether he has a mental or trolling issue. He could very well be impersonating a desperate, needy, sex-deprived version of Homestar Runner. Regardless of how you interpret it, this is pretty common in the online gaming community and it's depressing (or funny).

  If we look past the video and think about this for a moment, it should become clear that desperation knows no boundaries. At what point does it go from being funny, to being a cause for concern? Team Fortress 2 says it's at the 1:19 mark in the video.

  So this guy "Sean" (It's possible that he's actually Shawn Elliot, a well-known 'griefer') insists on sending the girl in question, "toxinangel," a friend request. After some time passes by, he notices that she hasn't accepted and proceeds to push the issue. It's clear that she's trying to avoid communication with Sean and giving one-word replies in hopes that he'll get the hint.

  Now, thinking that a guy such as Sean will get the hint is about as fruitless as cherry-picking on a low-carb diet. After offering to give this complete stranger any game of his on Steam, and proposing that they play some Left 4 Dead together, she decides to politely speak up for herself.  

  "Sean... I'm not interested, but thank you." (1:57)

  Feeling like his offer is one that few would ever refuse he asks, "How could you not want that?" to which she replies:

  "Because I'm not very attracted to you, that's all."

  Although Sean had been pleading for a while amidst the Internet "white knights" who were trying to protect toxinangel by constantly interjecting, he finally gets a clear, straight answer. What does he do? Well, he offers to send her a (most likely naked) picture of himself as if that would change things for the better.

  She shoots him down yet again, and tries to squash his attempts for a final time.

  "I don't want to be your friend, I'm sorry." (3:12)

  After an awkward silence and the hilariously timed death music, he continues trying to buy her friendship with digitally downloaded video games. Throw in some comments by the other random guys giving their input, and you've got what sounds like a possessed abortion weeping at the sight of a clothes hanger.

  Similar to an irresponsible mother, she either puts him on mute or becomes silent out of shock, disgust, anger, guilt or all of the above. There are no words. It goes from being funny, to a Robin Williams comedy special.

  I personally think that Sean has Autism or some sort of problem, because crying over a stranger in an online game isn't normal. Even if this is the case, I've had to listen to similar attempts at hitting on women in online games from what sounded like healthy people.

  It's great to make friends, but when you begin to act like there really aren't any women on the Internet, things get awkward and girls shy away from speaking over their headsets. The one game where this doesn't apply is Fat Princess. It's like the entire female gaming population decided to congregate and gossip.
  
  I actually have some female friends who play on PSN very often, but do so with male usernames because they would rather be left alone, free from remarks about their sexy voices and clichés about sandwiches. Growing up as a gamer from the NES until now, I've seen the stigma that's attached to us male gamers diminish and it's a beautiful thing. It also wasn't until recently that the female demographic rose to all-time highs as a result of Nintendo's DS and Wii. God bless you, Nintendo.

  But then there are situations like these which happen commonly alongside the repeated use of gay slurs and "nigger" like we've regressed back to 1920's America. I'm reminded of why gamers have garnered such negative sentiments and any positive thoughts I had about progression burn like taking a piss with gonorrhea (I'm STI-free, I promise).

  We need to embrace the opposite gender and make playing online games less awkward. I don't want to feel like I'm surrounded by overly excited mouth-breathers vying for some female attention. I want gamer equality, dammit.
  
  An Alternate Take on Sean & Toxinangel:
  
  Just use the fucking mute button, problem solved. Take your self-righteousness and stick it up your ass like the tampon you've had lodged up there for weeks. I hope you get toxic shock syndrome.

  Men, tell me about your encounters with women through online gaming, or stories/people you've heard.
  Women, tell me about your online experiences and how you've dealt with these types of people. Do you use a male or androgynous username?

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