Haters Gonna Hate

Did you know they remade Elevator Action for the PSN? One of the greatest games I’ve ever played in my life; some quiet nights, I can still hear that 8-bit theme song as it drifts out from the empty hole in my soul. There is just something really transcendentally great about watching guys vapourize as you crush them with an elevator. Something about that really spoke to me as a child. So I wasn’t able to resist downloading it when it was released yesterday, and I am proud to announce that as of press time, I hold the absolute worldwide high score in Stage 02-3 of Elevator Action Deluxe.

Again, the game’s been out for less than a whole day, but there was a definite period of time (at least hours!) when I was the absolute world champion of Stage 02-3. And no one can ever take that away from me. I think that is why this proceeding story reverberates with me so profoundly…I now understand the weight of existence that a fellow WORLD CHAMPION must carry through their daily lives.

Did you catch the latest flavour of the week that has transfixed the entire collective of the world wide web? Basically it involves a Gizmodo writer lamenting that her OKCupid date didn’t disclose that he was, in fact, a Magic: The Gathering World Champion. Which in itself is all types of hilarious, but the full scope of the article and the level of online backlash and anger at her takes this to an entirely new level of entertainment.

I don’t think it’d be very difficult for you to find examples of the online nerd rage, but the IAMA Jon Finkel thread on Reddit where he just takes open questions is one of the more interesting things I’ve read for a while. I’m actually surprised at how many questions are Magic-related…and then I am further surprised in turn at why I’d be surprised by that at all. There is also at least one occurrence of someone posting a picture of their (someone’s?) boobies for his (our?) benefit, but since this is the internet, I refuse to enjoy it because I don’t know the hand with which I’m fed by.

There is something wonderful about the definite disappointment and possible anger that this woman felt once she realized she had been tricked or duped, by a secret Magic player that had somehow “infiltrated” OKCupid, the most exclusive and least Magical dating site out there. Magic players! On OKCupid! How dare they poison such a fertile ground of human relations! And apparently the original article was even more concise in its hate – the two rambling cop-out paragraphs about how meanness and judgement are part of human nature and blah blah blah were added later, possibly after the initial wave of nerd backlash.

Though I’m not going to lie, the Jeffrey Dahmer thing was weird.

I love this new pop culture movement where “nerd is the new cool” or geek girls are suddenly the new cute thing or whatever. I love it. It’s so bullshit, all of this nonsense pandering. Playing Flash games on your computer doesn’t make you a gamer girl. Watching or even liking Star Wars – a billion dollar commercial franchise, one of the biggest pop culture properties that’s ever existed, and one of the most famous movies human beings have ever made – doesn’t make you a nerd. You know this girl probably sells herself as a geeky tech nerd every opportunity she gets as well. Oh, I write for Gizmodo, yeah I know I’m a little famous, here’s my name, “Google away.” And I just love it when the true face of nerdom arrives, and it’s crushingly short of whatever insane preconceptions of “nerd” existed in their vapid, delusional brains. I don’t even know if I can really call this dude Jon Finkel a nerd – I mean, all things considered, he’s pretty normal looking. You know, for a Magic champion or possible sex offender.

I’ve just spent a weekend at PAX, amid living walls of unwashed gamer flesh. I fucking laugh at this story, I LAUGH VERY HARD AT IT.

But I for one, am totally on board with this girl. Yes, I do in fact, believe that all hardcore Magic players should be labeled as such, in all areas of their life, across any and all official documents they may own. Now I’m not one to speak for another, and my capacity for introspective reading is not what one might call “good,” but I think basically the article is saying that all people who play Magic should publicly disclose that fact in all venues of their life as if they were sex offenders, for those crimes are equatable. Pretty sure that’s the main message behind this article. I’m the last person on Earth that would ever purposefully make light of the very serious issues of sexual assault and pedophilia…but given the choice, I’d imagine most people would rather have been molested by one of their wacky uncles than live with the memory of actually buying and opening a booster pack of Homelands.

I know I would. I can still hear the crinkle of the wrapper in my ears and the bitter disappointment of a Dwarven Trader in my heart as I stand outside of Dolly’s. That’s something I’ll have to carry with me my entire life.

The crazy thing is, if she was hot, none of this would have been news. Hot women are allowed to say mean things and have unpopular opinions. Because they’re hot. Men have wacky standards too and you can argue that they’re even more extreme than the ones women have. If she was hot, half of these internet nerds leading the backlash would be defending her instead, out of some strange delusion that she would read your internet post, be impressed and also emotionally comforted by your fortitude against (other) internet nerds, your emotional link somehow impossibly turning into sexual attraction, and that she would fly out to your parents’ basement in Oregon to give you a handy.

But at least we’re consistent, never compromising. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise. Hot women will always be attractive, and ugly women will never have a place in our eyes. In our hearts maybe, but never in our eyes. There will never be a male-led movement to celebrate and worship gamer chicks. Because most of them are fucking ugly. And we know that, and we’re honest about knowing that. That’s consistent. If you’re an attractive girl, why would you be wasting your time playing video games? You’d be out in the real world, dominating every social circle you pass through, because that is what we would all do, and satisfying the win conditions of real life are infinitely more enjoyable than those in video games. The only attractive women that seriously play video games do it because they know the field of attractive women there is even more incredibly narrow. Instead just another hot woman out in the regular world, if you manage to sufficiently satisfy the criteria of a gamer girl, you immediately surround yourself with mostly pretty homely chicks by association…and suddenly you jump to a stratospheric height of relative hotness. Attractive women get really into games, comics, science fiction, sports, or cars because they know it makes them even hotter in comparison to other attractive women. That is the only reason. A picture of a bikini-clad woman is meaingless on the internet. She is irrationally held to the impossibly high standards of Sports Illustrated models, by relative association. But if she’s also wearing a Storm Trooper helmet, it spreads like the T-virus in Raccoon City. It’s kind of a genius move, actually.

“Did you tap it or untap it?”
“Vigilance – there was no tapping or untapping”