Online Gaming and its Effects on the General Public

If there is one thing in the world I hate, it's the general public.

This is excluding my readers of course, who have distinguished themselves by following my blog, and thus have become more of a specific public.

As you may have assumed by the title, this particular entry will be in the form of an essay. An angry essay. An angry essay without links to relevant facts, footnotes or any kind of empirical evidence. Imagine this essay is me shouting my opinion at the world, horns rattling in my helmet. It could be argued that this is not so much an essay as it is a rant, but as the title is particularly grandiose (that's French for awesome [because French=Intellectual {they had to be good at ONE thing}]) I have instead decided to call it a Relevant Argument that is Non-Technical, or RANT for short.

Anonymity is a powerful thing, so powerful in fact that it makes the general public, who are already a seething mass of stupidity, turn into into ungrammatical insulting nightmares (as shown by Mr. Snipes).

It can also turn 'normal' people into creepy people who make you really wish that Mr. Rudd would hurry up with his castration policies.

I am a Viking. To me, the world is very logical. Watch my powerful Viking logic in action!

Mark + Viking Hat = Viking Gamer

Simple. Let's try to expand:

Vikings are awesome horned-hat wearing bad-arses.
Mark is a Viking.
Therefore: Mark is an awesome horned-hat wearing bad-arse.

There you have it. Life in three short sentences.

BUT, when you turn on that console and prepare for what should be a leisurely pursuit of victory through online achievement, lo and behold, you are faced with countless idiots.

No, I don't care how good your equipment is. I don't care what spells your using, I don't care how much time you put in your character, in fact, if you were to suffer a stroke on your side of the computer, I would never know and never care. Hell, I probably wouldn't care if I did know.

The problem is people think this stuff matters. Yes, enjoy your achievements and your abilities, but why take them so seriously? There is a reason it's called a game. If it was supposed to be taken seriously, we would call it 'war' or 'reality' or more likely, 'what the hell is wrong with you?'

I recently went on a Viking raid which led me to an Internet cafe. The people inside were oblivious to the screams, fire and disembodied heads on the street outside, despite the shop front being made of glass.

As you would expect, Vikings hate getting glass in their beards as it is very tricky to get out without having to shave, and shaving is far, FAR worse than death. Naturally, I went to the store next door, which was a dry cleaners, killed the inhabitants, regretted killing the inhabitants because I needed my bear skin coat pressed, and proceeded to kick a man sized hole in the wall where I burst through to the Internet cafe.

Standing on the body of a crushed nerd, I realised that all the other gamers inside had failed to take notice of my amazing presence. Using the Gentle Beauty (my favourite double-headed axe) I cut arms and hands off randomly selected gamers, and found that only those who had been affected by the Gentle Beauty took any notice of me by screaming and bleeding and running for their lives (see how essay like it is!? That's a rationale people!).

From this test I discovered that people must have a private place in their heads when it comes to dedicated gaming. I have named this the Somethingwrongwithyou brain-space-head thing.

Furthering the study, I ripped out the earphones of an Alpha Male Gamer (which is surprisingly close to the Alpha Male Viking, as we both weigh 120kg, don't shave, have a particular odour and eat constantly) and pushed the Gentle Beauty in his face.

He responded as any Alpha Male would by immediately urinating, defacating and vomiting.

The next moments I will describe as close to reality as I can recall.

My giant, veined biceps strained against my tunic as I held the Gentle Beauty before me.

"Behold!" I bellowed, my powerful voice matching the ferocity of Odin himself, "I Am The Viking Gamer!"

Looking past my enormous pectoral muscles, forged by wrestling with bears and the original Xbox controller, I crinkled my nose at the fat sweaty geek.

"And!" I continued bellowing in his face, "You Really Smell!"

"Please don't kill me!" Cried my certainly soon to be next victim in a voice that was so shrill and womanly I nearly spat on him.

"Look!" he cried again, pulling his wallet out and handing it to me, "I have three level eighty characters on WoW! Do you really want me to never see them again?"

As I looked at the pictures the geek began sobbing violently and continued to defecate himself. The smell was atrocious, but I felt moved by his dedication to his characters.

"I Am Moved By The Dedication To Your Characters!"

The nerd looked up in gratitude.

"Thank you merciful Viking Gamer for..."

"I Am Moved To Kill You!" I said cutting him off. "See What I Did There? You Thought You Were Going To Live! It Is A Viking Joke Yes? Hahahahah! I Laugh At How Funny I Am Today!"

Luckily for him I was joking, and I let him go after I cut all the fingers off his left hand.


As an example of an in-game experience I had, I recently re-downloaded Guild Wars on my computer. After having difficulty with one of the missions I was approached by a high level character who asked if I wanted to team up. In any normal circumstance I would have reported this player to the support team saying the he accosted me in the game, telling me that he was going to rape my dog and make me watch and have him banned from the network for eternity, but I threw caution to the wind and said, 'OK'.

He then proceeded to tell me everything I specifically didn't care about, which was everything he had to say. He told me about his equipment and skill, all of which I had not asked about. He then proceeded to tell me his DPS (damage per second, which is what you brag about when you haven't used your penis in a multiplayer capacity) and how great and 'fast' his character was.

Thinking maybe this was the etiquette, I replied 'OK' and we began to play.

On approaching the mission with high hopes, we began the attack. About two minutes later, I died, and so did my NPCs (non-playable characters that escort you in missions). Realising that my new ally was nowhere to be seen, I double clicked on the auto-find, and my screen zoomed in on the Judas, running away like a peasant. As he was already quite some distance away, he must have tucked his tail between his legs rather quickly. I didn't understand at first, because his character was GREAT wasn't it!?

Reading his last comments, which he must have typed from safety, he said:

Sorry man can't do this (This is OK)

Good luck with it (This is less OK, as he ran away)

I didn't sign up for death lol (What a retard)


This game has no permanent punishment for loss. You lose NOTHING. What does happen is you lose a percentage of health UNTIL YOU RETURN TO A TOWN WHICH IS ALWAYS ONLY A DOUBLE CLICK AWAY.

You didn't sign up for death? Well when you were bragging about how great you were I didn't think I was signing up to fight with an insufferable pussy.

Yes I realise this sounds hypocritical when I say it's just a game, but hell, if I offered to help someone I would try, no matter how many times I died, not only because I am an honourable Viking, but also because there is NO PENALTY FOR DYING.

It's a game people, live or die it really wont effect you unless there is nothing else in your life. And if there is nothing else in your life, then I don't see how a healthy castration will be a problem.

While I do understand that there are gamers out there who aren't this retarded, it's always safer to assume that they will be, and also to make sure to strap on your helmet and raid more Internet cafes.


I give the online gaming general public 5/5 severed fingers. I also don't know whether this is a good or bad thing, but it is a barely veiled threat nonetheless.

Till next time, the gamer with horns in his hat.