Breaking My Silence.

At any time playing WoW, if you have the General Chat channel open, you're bound to see something like this:

"OMG I am teh roxxors! U are all teh SUX!!!!"

Normally, in that kind of situation, that person gets a spot on my handy ignore list, or I just leave that channel. Today I tried something different.

A guy logged in who's first message was a very witty:

"U all suck, bitches! ur all gay fags!"

So here guy who was playing WoW purely to insult people and get something started. Now ignoring hardly ever works because there's always someone who'll bite. Reason certainly doesn't work and throwing threats back is like trying to fistfight a guy in a tank...totally pointless. These people are out to get a reaction, plain and simple.

Someone will always react in a way to spur them on, so I tried something different:

"Isn't a 'gay fag' a straight person?" I asked.

"OMFG LOL WUT???" He replied.

"Well, a 'fag' is a derogatory term for a homosexual. If a gay heterosexual is a 'fag', as you so eloquently put it, wouldn't a gay homosexual actually be a straight person? Double negative, dude. You know...grammar?"

"OMG ur GAY!" Was the witty comeback.

(Like I said, reason doesn't work.)

"Look pal." I said. "Just because you have some real self esteem issues that require you to make yourself feel big by insulting people anonymously over the internet, that doesn't mean you should work out your misplaced aggression on strangers in WoW. Tell you what, log out, come back when you have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in .jpg and we'll talk then, K?"

(At this point he was getting laughed at by more than a handful of people...I'll admit that I wasn't being amazingly witty, but I really didn't have to be.)

"OMG, you must be a real nurd to know a comeback like that!!!" he said.

"If you understood it, doesn't that mean you're as big a nerd as me?"

"STFU fag!"

(It was definately working. This guy had stopped having fun pissing everyone off and was getting annoyed himself)

"Look dude, honestly, I feel your pain... but just because your birth certificate was an apology letter from Durex doesn't mean you need to take it out on everyone else."

"I said STFU!"

(I knew I had him. People like this absolutely adore dishing it out, but absolutely hate taking it. The whole chat channel was laughing at him now.)

"Sigh, look pal, I refuse to have a battle of wits with someone who's obviously unarmed. Go google a few Chuck Norris jokes that you can twist into something approaching a witty comeback and we'll go from there."

(Silence, glorious silence. I click his name and he's logged out).

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the secret for dealing with the douchebags who love to spam racist, homophobic insults... Threats don't work (and online, they're totally pointless)and ignoring them doesn't work. Next time you're faced with a douchebag, just get everyone else laughing at them. It's not exactly difficult if you have an IQ about 25. Really, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Oh, and use grammar...grammar scares them.