Have. Have. It’s “could have,” not “could of.” God dammit, people.

One of the downsides of living in an apartment building just across the road from a large, public park is — unfortunately — the tendency for incomprehensible gatherings of crew-cut youths clad in bright colours and their beer-gut-and-Budweiser parents in tow, two screaming babies in a pram and another in the oven. Yes, I’m referring to the unfortunate but inevitable occurrences of football games — soccer, as the Americans call it — which in itself would not be a big problem, if not for the fact that it both attracts and largely consists of club-headed neanderthals who appear to display a worrying lack of self-control, leading to what I can only describe as some of the most hoarse, vehement shouting forcing its way out of their Lambert & Butler tar-coated throats.

It’s not just this, though, but any occurrence of this inexplicably dull sport which seems to evoke the most primive and violent natures from these already low-brow plebians. Going anywhere near a public place before, during, or after any kind of match which seems to hold some ridiculous significance to these simians is practically a death sentence, due to their unfortunate nature to riot furiously and violently if “their” team loses the game, a haze of bloodlust hanging over them like a cloud. Similarly, if the team they “support” — and I use that word in the loosest manner possible — wins a game, they seem equally overcome with primal fury, destroying and fighting everything in their path as their uncontrollable wrath leaves broken windows and empty beer cans in its wake. This, perhaps, is the most bizarre aspect of the whole experience, as if every fan is simply a ticking time-bomb, waiting for the moment to explode in bestial anger regardless of the game’s outcome!

I can’t even begin to understand why sports of most kinds tend to bring out the worst, most primal and aggressive natures of ordinarily air-brained yet harmless peons — though it mostly seems to focus around the more physical of sports, ones that involve a lot of running, since I’ve rarely heard of a chess riot, or police being called in to deal with enraged snooker fans.

Truth be told, though, that’d be quite hilarious to observe.

(Image courtesy of my blogging compadre, Gorse.)

Sometimes, I wonder just how the majority of humanity survives without choking on their own tongues. Today’s supreme redefinition of “fail” is in a class of its own, enough to make me despair for the species. Yes, it’s a fail-group in World of Warcraft.

Now, let me step back for a moment and say that I’ve generally had superb experiences when it comes to level 80, “endgame” dungeon-running, even despite the occasional player who displays, shall we say, less-than-stellar performance. People generally know the game, they know their role, and with very few exceptions, things tend to go pretty smoothly. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for misbegotten attempts at low-level dungeoneering, a tendency I’d blame simply on players being new to the game, but that pretty heirloom gear (adorned with Crusader, no less), tells a different story.

I wish I could make this shit up.

So, cue the contestants: Mentat, my freshly-minted (and already level 21) paladin, the obligatory hunter, and three druids. While normally not a major issue, I knew there’d be a problem with our furry brethren when the ‘tank’ (feral spec, natch) started casting Wrath, the healer used nothing but Healing Touch, the hunter’s pet growled, and Muggins here had to sort the whole mess out by flailing into action as a stand-in tank, despite the sheer ineptitude present. Just as I thought I was in some grotesque parody, things turned from bad to worse — the two druids decided to have a tank-off by both assuming bear form and attempting a most painful display of fighting over aggro — I say this, because the healer and hunter were taking more hits than anyone.

The loot rolling was a similar farce — a situation so laughably awful that it could only have been a cosmic joke, with each player a mere puppet playing a caricature. The hunter rolled need on a dagger with arcane damage, the flea-ridden druid rolled need on a shield, the other bear-druid rolled need one a one-handed DPS mace, and all the time I’m praising the god of random numbers for the fortune to bless me with the winning rolls on both Stinging Viper and Worn Turtle Shell Shield (I wanted Kresh’s Back, but that only ever drops when I’m playing a cloth-wearer). After an almost predictable moment of uncertainty, the group ‘leader’ unsure which direction to go for the seventh time, all proverbial hell broke loose and the fail-druids fell down the gap during an easy jump, and between the two of them managed to aggro half a dozen elites. I bravely jumped down to lend a hand, but of course the healer was nowhere to be seen, and I’m sure you can imagine the outcome of this most ill-fated excursion.

Much as I wanted to stay and collect my booty, I simply couldn’t handle it any longer, and bailed — perhaps some other poor fool would take my place, and learn the unfortunate truth of it all; that at the bottom of a barrel is another barrel, and at the bottom of that one is a trio of druids.

But I didn't mind being killed by Dr Blight, because he had a cool name.

A trend I’ve noticed in online gaming lately — well, I say “lately” though it’s been vexing me for a number of years now — is the apparent obsession of people in team-based games to either jump into a game with a host of strangers and expect a quick, painless, easy victory, or jump ship and frenziedly search for another — supposedly superior — team to integrate with, hoping for a quicker victory. This is evident both in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, where dungeons such as the Oculus were so reviled for the effort involved and the potential failure that many people would leave immediately upon entering, and many would refuse entrance to a raid group for those who could not prove that they’ve completed it prior, in fear of “noobs” bringing their team down. It’s also an unfortunate inevitability in other online team-based games, such as the one I’ve picked up again recently after a few years of inactivity, Halo 3.

Now, let me step back a moment and express my general distaste for being thrust into a team consisting of mouth-breathers who probably don’t even know which way up to hold the controller; lament as I may at games where I scored the highest in the entire round and yet my team still lost, if there’s one principle I’ll stick to — largely due to the experience point penalty accrued as a result, which would hinder my progress through the game’s military-style ranks — it’s that I stay to the bitter end, even when left in a short-handed team because three of them ran for the hills when the tables turned, and the last aside from myself resorted to that most heinous act of team-killing, presumably in the name of ill-gotten “fun”. In a fairly childish and unsportsmanlike way, I shot him in the back twice as retribution before spending the rest of the round hiding, and watching my “teammate” repeatedly hunted and slaughtered by the dominant group.

Nonetheless, my ire still holds relative validity in my mind: By simply fleeing the game, these people are not only throwing away a potential victory — I’ve seen plenty of “turnabout” games where the tables turn at the last minute, to provide a satisfying and crushing victory to the underdog — but they’re forsaking the rest of their team, forcing the remaining members to either lope on like a three-legged dog, or attempt to justify the “two wrongs make a right” philosophy and follow their lead, further augmenting the problem. I remember lamenting a similar issue a while ago with online game servers which provide numerous versions of the same world to balance the player-base; rather than accepting the natural balance and helping to keep things steady, players have a disturbing tendency to force their way into the most over-populated and over-crowded worlds, even going so far as to abandon the emptier, dying servers in lieu of something more populace, thus exacerbating the reason they left in the first place!

Is it simply human nature to constantly try to impel ourselves into “easy win” situations and the “best” groups, no expense too great in the quest to be with the “best” — even if they themselves could not adequately be judged as such under this banner — or is this yet another case of online gaming, with all the anonymity it entails, bringing out the literal worst in everyone, turning normally-reasonable people into a pack of drooling, rabid animals?

As a long-time dweller of the internet, having found my footing back in the more burgeoning days of the mid-90s — the era where every website looked like a MySpace page and owning a domain name was a badge of honour — I find the more recent and modern ‘traditions’ of the ‘net vexing at best, thoroughly obnoxious at worst. I’m well aware that times change and as one of the old guard whose time has been and gone, I’m becoming somewhat of a staunch defender of obsolete traditions. This is a given, and I’m sure I can be forgiven by others who remember the fledgling era with fond — cynics may say rose-tinted — memories.

Admittedly, I’ve been guilty of many antics in my younger days — one which I still remember fondly is a website featuring Cheezburger-esque commentary, intentionally terrible HTML, and festooned with dozens of animated GIFs, featuring various flags of the world ablaze. “burn italy but save all the pizzas!!!!”, it proudly proclaimed, among many other offbeat messages. I received a lot of hate-mail over that site (largely from irate Americans), which was of course the sole intention of this misbegotten project. Of course, this is laughably tame by today’s standards, but highly offensive to some and the cause of much ill-will in the earlier, protoplasmic time before Blogger, YouTube and the rise of the mighty Google.

But I digress.

While hardly innocent of heinous breaches of etiquette myself, there is one thing — admittedly small — which stands head and shoulders above the others in terms of absurdity and devoted following among the mouth-breathing masses, and frustrates me to no end. That is to say, the tradition of racing to be the first commenter on a freshly-minted post on a popular website or blog, and ostensibly proclaiming one’s apparent superiority for attaining the hallowed top spot by proclaiming simply, “first”. As if this inane practice wasn’t bad enough, following hot on the heels are usually the obligatory nay-sayers who deride and shun the first-poster for this harmless yet inexplicably annoying offense — whom I can certainly side with, though I find their methods futile — and as if by cue, the yes-men follow suit with claims that the embittered critics are merely “jealous” that they weren’t somehow skilled — or fortunate — enough to beat the first-poster to the punch, sometimes even congratulating the miscreant who began the brewing storm.

This often fills as much as two or three screens worth of comments, the back-and-forth commentary predictably droll, like parrots regurgitating the same tired arguments ad nauseum, both sides so obstinate — so righteous — that they could never bend, or even simply agree to disagree (an unfortunate trend in almost any internet-based arguments or ‘debates’). Worse, envious late-comers will often proudly proclaim numbers aside from the first — “second” is disagreeably common, as are many of the numbers that follow, as is “last comment!!!!11″ in systems both highly-popular, yet limited in the number of comments that can be supported per post. The most bizarre spin-off I’ve observed thus far has been “first reply”, which is to say, the first person to reply to the first poster in a comment thread. Asinine doesn’t begin to do this practice justice.

And that leads me to simply ask: Why? What distinction, what honour or respect can be gleaned by staring at a screen with raw eyes, finger poised hesitantly above a mouse button, awaiting the moment to dive in and claim this apparently most prodigious of prizes? Am I simply too old — too stuck in the past to understand — or are peoples lives truly so shallow, so lacking in meaning and purpose that they glean some spurious sense of self-worth from the electronic era’s equivalent of “Kilroy was here”?