Article:
When Trash Talk Turns Into S**t Talk

As a kid, I used to trash talk my friends whenever we'd play a competitive game. It didn't matter whether that was shooting hoops outside, or sitting around the TV putting holes in one another via Golden Eye, I always wanted that competitive edge. And it always came down to the trash talking. There's a certain finesse to talking trash to your friends, and you usually know your friends well enough to find that sweet spot and get right under their skin.

It's all about psyching them out mentally. Some people choose to be pretty mild in their trash talk, while others go all out. But in almost all of these cases, when the game ends, so does the hostility, and you're still friends. This sort of behavior has been going on long before video games, and will likely continue far into the future.

But when the concept of network online play was introduced to the gaming world, all chivalry went down the drain.

If you've got a headset and a great online game like Modern Warfare 2, it's likely that you yourself have either been a victim or an assailant in this endeavor. But it goes far beyond basic trash talking. The things that I've heard through my headset make me sometimes fear for the generations to come, generations that have been completely desensitized in all basic human tenants of morality and compassion for their fellow gamer just for a quick rise or laugh.

The anonymous veil of the internet has seen this plague long before network online play has. If you've ever frequented a message board or forum and seen a "flame war", you know exactly what I'm talking about. Two or more groups or individuals throwing insults at one another, preying on any miniscule fact they can find on their opponent. Usually this sort of thing derails topics and inevitably ends in nothing short of a migraine for those parties involved.

With online play and the advent of voice chat, this sort of flaming has extended into video games, combining with trash talk into a symbiosis from hell, the s**t talker. You can usually recognize these people pretty quickly. They'll utilize whatever they have at their disposal. Had a bad game? They'll tell you how terrible you are, call you a n00b, or overall completely ignore the fact that they probably have poured well over 75 hours of their lives into a game that you've likely spent less than 6 exploring.