Curses!

You know, I was almost there.

If I’d quit while I was ahead, it would have been a rare, sublime experience. Instead it left me feeling crushed and empty.

Whenever you’re on top of the world, there’s always some bastard who has to drag you down and spoil everything.

So there I was…after a two hour session of Team Fortress 2, no one had complained, no one had felt the need to call anyone else a ‘fag’, no one had questioned anyone’s sexual preferences or the promiscuity of other player’s female parents. I was riding high.

The penultimate round ended. My team destroyed the Blue Team with what can only be described as clockwork precision. As everyone waited for the next round to start, someone from the blue-team said:

“Lol, we did great that time!”

Another blue said:

“Yup…the aim of this game is to die horribly in entertaining ways, right?”

At which point a Red said:

“Well, you were a team member down, it’ll auto-balance for the next round.”

Followed by another red saying:

“Yeah, someone leaving or joining halfway through can really make a difference in the outcome.”

I was in multiplayer gaming heaven. Not only were all the other players treating the game as just that, a game, people were gracious in victory and magnanimous in defeat.

…They were also using punctuation.

I should have just quit then. Instead, I thought, ‘Just one more round’.

This time, the game was incredibly close. My team won by the skin of its teeth. If the game had lasted 7 seconds longer, we would have lost.

In the post-game chat, already filling with comments about how good and close the last round was, I wrote:

“Good game all, gotta go.”

Someone replied:

“See ya, have a good one.”

And then, just before I disconnected:

“OMFG, U FAGS CHEAT! That was the sux! 4 turets at last base? That’s fair u ghey fags!!!11!!!1”

Yep, after the perfect game, some ass hat ruins it all by calling the opposing team ‘gay cheaters’ because they had the sheer audacity to set up a solid defence.

I hate people.