I just met that kid with the headset, you know the one, the one that hangs out in FPS games and shouts profanities and internet slang. You probably have had a few altercations with this type of kid, but I just met him in real life: the personification of the naughty 14 year old with a 360.

The other day I was at work reading Official Nintendo Magazine, the UK equivalent of Nintendo power I guess. Suddenly a kid, perhaps 13 or 14 years old, walks in and approaches my counter. He exclaims that he has not read “one of those” in forever. I had not either, gaming magazines are pretty irrelevant now with the internet and all, but I needed something to keep me entertained for the shift. However, I misunderstood him, he meant the Nintendo magazine as he has a subscription to the 360 magazine.

Next he asked if I had a Nintendo. I told him I had a Wii, to which he replied that the Wii and DS are “baby’s toys” hat are “gay”. I hate it when people use that word in that sense, so this was just an awful experience from the getgo. If you did that in public at my university you'd be ostracized. Apparently, Nintendo used to be cool when he was little, but now that he was “all grown up” it’s stupid and boring.



I saved my breath and restrained the inner gaming fan while I disapprovingly shook my head. If he was not going to order anything our conversation was over as far as I was concerned. Two lines into my next article the magazine was snatched straight from my hands. “Oh my God! New Golden Sun! Awesome!” he exclaimed before flipping violently through the rest of the magazine, finding nothing of interest and setting it aside, crumpling all the pages as he went and losing my place. I was a tad angry to say the least.

I continued to talk with him, begrudgingly I assure you and he couldn’t believe I had a Wii and enjoyed it. Apparently it only has 2 good games: Mario Galaxy and Wii Sports. I suppose it’s still 2006. He inquired about what games I had for the “shat box” as he called it. I told him “Okami, Madworld, Resident Evil, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and the Conduit to name a few.” He had not heard of any of them, aside from Resident Evil to which he asked “Like the movies?” SERIOUSLY? He told me he only had 3 games for the Xbox 360 but it was all he needed: Halo 3, Gears of War and Gears of War 2. Also, his family had a Wii, but it was “gay”, had poor online and was not any fun whatsoever.



I had enough of this little tool, he needed to shut up, leave me alone, buy something or get the hell out of my store. I decided to belittle his Red Ring Waiting to Happen. I told him it was the worst system of the generation, inferior to the PS3 in the hardware department, run by the evil Microsoft, had expensive online, was late to the motion control party, had no BluRay, and was more expensive to get to the same specs as the PS3. I also told him that it was going to die soon in a RRoD. He then realized he was going to be late for his next class and took the liberty to tell me the “PS3 is for gay fags” on his way out the door.

So I met the kid with the headset. He was too young to even purchase the games he was playing. He’s that kid you’ll hear yelling noob, fag, and pwnd at the top of his lungs. The kid that is so hardcore that he only plays Gears of Halo. I suppose it is not a stereotype or something the kids turn into once they get onto Xbox Live, but real hypermasculine, macho kids in their early teens that think they have grown out of the children they still really are and are desperately trying to run away from.