While playing MAG last week, I took note of two gamertags... ugotkilledbyachick and agirlkilledu. Their gamertags irritated me. In fact, "irritated" is probably too mild a word as I think I said something to the effect of "I just got killed by "ugotkilledbyachick" - I f'ing hate stupid gamertags like that... sounds like some 13 year old frag girl wannabe". Later in the game I took actual pleasure in sniping her in the forehead.
Later on, I thought over that incident and thought about how hypocritical I was. I'm the one that often says that women shouldn't be afraid to be visible in gaming. Women are there in the games, but so often are invisible because they use gender neutral nicks and often don't use a mic. If men realized how many women are there, gaming alongside of them, we would cease to be as much of a novelty. As the novelty aspect disappears, so too does much of the harassment. So I guess it was somewhat hypocritical to be irritated by gamertags of very obvious female players who actually used their mics (I could hear them on prox chat).

Being hypocritical doesn't sit well and those nicks still irritate the shit out of me, so rationalization has begun to set in. It's not the "chick" or "girl" parts of the gamertags that bother me... I've seen "gungirl" and "chickwithagun" and neither of those names make me feel bile raise in the back of my throat. It's not the "killedu" part of the nick... "grandmakilledu" is an awesome nick (and an awesome lady). "killedbyElmerFudd" was a nick that actually made me laugh (great visual there!), so it's also not the "killedby" part of the nick. I'm not even sure why those nicks bother me until I remember "blakguykilledu" and realized that this gamertag irritated me too. I think it might be the inherent racism or sexism combined with the arrogance of assuming the kill that bothers me.

The arrogance is the easy part... "gonnateabagzu" is irritating simply because it assumes superiority, like "elitesniperz" and all those gamertags with "pro" anywhere in them. That kind of arrogance is usually annoying, especially when they actually are good and keep killing you! (though it should be noted that not all pro and elite gamertags are bad... "protargetdummy" did make me giggle!) The sexism/racism is more difficult. GayParade was the nick of a guy in the Warhawk tourney and he was awesome.. but a gamertag like "gayguy" has a generic quality that I do find irritating, like somehow he's the only gay gamer out there or represents all gay gamers or something. I think that's part of my annoyance with those two ladies... "ugotkilledbyachick" and "agirlkilledu" have a generic quality that implies sexism combined with the arrogance. Those nicks just seem juvenile and aimed at irritating people, but I guess that's part of what gaming is about. If a gamertag is irritating, then you do notice it, remember it.... and within the game you may even be more inclined to skip the easy kill and instead shoot that irritating gamer tag right in the ass while they're busy teabagging one of your teammates. In the end, I guess it's even more juvenile to be irritated by gamertags like these. Getting killed by "ugotkilledbyachick" shouldn't really be any more annoying than getting killed by "Elsa" or "nobody" or "plonkplonk". Maybe I just have to grow up a bit.

Though some gamertags do require banning and I've only once ever reported a gamer to Sony... and that was a guy named "aidsisgodsvengence", because that gamertag was simply wrong on any level.

Still, I do love noticing interesting gamertags... though it's interesting the opinions I formed based on nothing more than words...

Anything with "weed", "grass", "dope" or "stoner" in the tag:
They think "weed is cool, and therefore so am I". I think "aw crap, another stoner who plays his music too loud and won't shut up about how stoned he is... at least he's easy to kill because he's just standing there like a tool".


Anything with "sniper" or "sniperz" in the tag:
They're probably thinking "I'm that cool lone wolf guy". I'm thinking "crap, another idiot that's going to sit at the spawn and snipe and not bother taking the objective".


Anything with urMom or urSister in it... usually of the "doinurmom" type tags:
Yeah, "doingurmom" was in the same game as the aforementioned ladies.... and while he's probably thinking "I'm such a clever troll", I'm thinking "your doing my 70 year old mom??". The "doingyoursister" tag is even funnier to me, because my sister is bossy. She's much, much, much bossier than I am... and any guy doing her is likely being told he's doing it wrong and how to do it properly. I laugh to myself because I figure this guy is pretty brave... and stupid!


Anything with random letters and numbers that make no sense:
They think ... no wait, I don't think they were thinking, because when a gamer tag isn't pronounceable, then they invariably get called "hey Dickhead".

There are great gamer tags though... I do love ones that make me laugh. I've been killed by "atoiletseat", "nobody", "daffyduck", "27ninjas" and other nicks that did make me pause and chuckle for a moment. To those that pick annoying gamertags... ok, you win. I was annoyed. In future, I guess the only way for me to win the game is to not get annoyed and to ignore the gamertag.

... dammit, that's hard though... so many annoying people out there. Maybe I'll just give up and change my gamertag to "StonedEliteGrlSniperKilledUwhileDoinUrDaddy".