Video games, as we know, get one hell of a bad rap. I remember back when the 3DS was released, the tabloids were spouting all these horror stories about the handheld’s 3D effect. To hear these doomsayers tell it, the glasses-free 3D function was some kind of unholy witchcraft. The media reacted like the first caveman to discover fire; scratching their hairy cave-behinds in mingled befuddlement and terror.
When televisions were introduced in the fifties, some people were convinced that they would rot our brains. Judging by all this reality BS we’re subjected to these days, these people were spot-freaking-on, and that’s just how the 3DS was treated. But the lambasting of gaming goes further than that.
The gore-leaky likes of Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat are blamed for all sort of things. Just think of the whole Manhunt scandal or the critical response to Hatred, that innocent pedestrian murder ‘em up. It doesn’t matter if the perpetrator of a violent crime turns out to have only played Pong a couple times with their grandma back in 1976, you can bet that VIDEO GAMES INSPIRE HORRIFYING KILLINGS or some such headline will result.
On top of this, all kinds of outdated stereotypes still linger, regarding what gamers are and what gamers do. They’re part of popular culture, and you know what the Internet does with popular culture: It’s shoved into the top of the ACME Meme-o-Matic machine, and all kinds of hilarity results. Without further ado, then, let’s check out 15 Hilarious Memes That Prove That Gamers Are Bad People.
15 Nintendo Fanboys
If you’ve been gaming for a long time, you’ll know that Nintendo have never been afraid to innovate. To stray from the norm. To completely ignore what their rivals are doing, give them the finger and mosey on in their crazy way. This might not be sound business sense, but that’s some chutzpah, right there. These guys have cojones.
Part of the reason they feel safe to bust out the likes of the Nintendo Switch is their rabid loyalists. Nintendophiles will not hear a word against the company and will continue to throw their money at them with such enthusiastic force that Miyamoto is in danger of getting papercuts from the dollar bills.
All console manufacturers and developers have these fans, sure, but generally, I see the big N’s as the most devoted and/or cretinously defensive.
14 Bowser Parental Control Memes
On the subject of the Nintendo Switch, let’s take a look at the feature that launched a thousand snarky memes. Nintendo, being the family friendly, sun-shines-out-of-everybody’s-butts funsters that they are, have always emphasized the child-safety aspects of their consoles. In the run up to the Switch launch, they demonstrated a parental control feature which would allow parents to monitor and restrict the time their children spent playing.
This was shown off in a quirky little clip featuring Bowser Jr and Bowser, as The Koopa King tried to shield his offspring’s delicate eyes from unsuitable content. One meme making minute later and this was born. 4Chan, the home of the dark sides of the souls of gamers everywhere. That's enough to terrify even the biggest and baddest of villains.
13 Console Wars
For almost as long as there has been gaming, there have been console wars. When that big a-hole kid with the bowl cut wouldn’t let you play at recess and cast aspersions on your mama’s sexuality and/or weight problems, all because you were a Mario guy rather than a Sonic guy, he was setting the scene for what would come decades later.
Whether we’re talking PS4 vs Xbox One or PC master race vs… everyone else, gamers can be really, really vicious to each other. Can’t we all gather in a spring meadow somewhere, all clasp hands and sing "Ebony and Ivory" together as we enjoy our shared hobby? No, no we can’t. This aggression has always been a thing in gaming, helped along by the anonymity of the Internet.
12 Gamer Girls
Historically, gaming has been seen as a pursuit for lonely nerdy gauchos, the ‘basement dweller’ type who eat slices of bread straight from the bag with the drapes shut. The Amstrad days are way behind us, though, and video games are a much more mainstream source of entertainment now. The market’s expanded to just about everyone, from little urchins playing Peppa Pig’s Super Cute Crappy Cutesy Funtime Frolics to oldies getting their brain training on.
In this new enlightened age, you’d probably think it’d be safe for gamer girls to just call themselves plain ol’ gamers like the rest of us. Sadly, though, there’s still a hell of a stigma that comes with being a female gamer at times. Ladies, have you ever sent a dude a message over Xbox Live that said ‘dick pics or GTFO?’ I’m guessing that you haven’t.
11 Elitism
If you’ve ever played a video game online, you’ll have come across this guy. Everyone is this guy. He is the God of the game, master of the game, and he’s here to tell you that he’s much freaking better at the game than your sorry ass.
Why are you bothering to play? Why do you exist at all? You’ll never surpass the elitist’s mad skills. This jerk is so skilled, he can whup your butt with one hand while typing out a snarky PSN message to his previous opponent about how he whupped their ass too with the other. This mentality is a mystery to me. If you’re better than me at whatever it is we’re hypothetically playing, then by all means beat me into a sad, crying pulp on the floor and move on. Don’t brag about it afterwards like some otherwise-unfulfilled smartass, because I don’t care.
10 The Struggle of Gamer Relationships
It doesn’t matter who you ask. Your woman, someone else’s, your sister, your dear old ma, whoever. Just find someone of the female persuasion and they’ll tell you one thing for damn sure about men: we don’t listen.
I’ve no clue whether this is just a fact of our genes or slander spread by the anti-dude brigade, but you hear it all the time (that is, you would, if you were listening). In gamer terms, this meme hits a little closer to home than a lot of us would like. How many of our partners choose that tricky boss battle or unpausable online match to start up an in-depth discussion about Susan from the office’s upcoming divorce? This interested-while-also-appropriately-concerned expression on my face is totally genuine, I swear.
9 Impatience
There’s a rare breed of gamer with seemingly unlimited patience. These wayward mavericks give no effs, have no bedtimes, and only call their mamas seven times a day. They cruise through the gates of hell on grandpa’s mobility scooter, painstakingly collecting 99 of every single item in a Final Fantasy game, for no reward at all, just because they can.
Generally, though, I’d say that many more of us fall into the super impatient category. You know how it is when a loading screen takes a few seconds longer than you feel it should, and suddenly you’re cursing the developers and their whole families for eighteen generations. That’s the way of the gamer: we know what we want and we want it right freaking now.
8 Entitlement
On that note, here’s another essential aspect of the whole gaming experience. Not only wanting more, but damn well demanding it. Whatever your issue with gaming today, be it dastardly and bastardly on-disk DLC, season passes being thrust into our faces with all the vigor of that IT’S YOU finger from the old lotto ads, or something else entirely, it’s the ultimate first world problem.
This isn’t to say that these things aren’t legitimate issues, by any means. When Capcom, Ubisoft and the like drop terrible business practise after terrible business practise, they deserve to be called out on it. All I’m saying is that we do have a tendency to overreact. There are all kinds of industry issues that don’t have a quick fix switch, however much we demand one.
7 The Friendship-Destroying Power of Mario Kart
To the uninitiated, Mario Kart seems like such an innocent prospect. A cutesy kart racer, featuring beloved Mushroom Kingdom characters like Mario, Luigi and Wario (well, nobody else loves him, but I do)? Don’t mind if I freaking do. All first time Karters think like this, until they get a taste of the series.
Mario Kart is pure unadulterated evil. A group of super close lifelong friends will be bitterly fighting to the death and setting each others’ gonads alight after a race or two. When that blue shell collides with the back of your head on the last bend, sending you from first place to fifth, you will curse, scream and hate the perpetrator forever. That’s just the way things work. See also: Mario Party.
6 Rage And Ragequits
The Mario Kart/Party Effect isn’t an isolated problem. Rage is a widespread issue affecting gamers everywhere, for which there is no cure. Interventions and Rageaholics Anonymous meetings have only gone so far to curb the rise of rage. It’s a concern, a real concern.
Snark aside, it’s actually quite ridiculous how common ragequitting has become. I’ve been enjoying the holy hell out of For Honor lately, despite the fact that, with no penalty for leaving a match in progress, ragequitting is literally more common than finishing a match legitimately. Which is just plain sad, whichever way you slice it.
What is it that makes our precious stats and K/Ds that important? What is it that makes us behave so utterly douchetacularly to our online opponents? The world may never know.
5 Gamer Stereotypes
Saying it’s easy to stereotype gamers would be a hell of an understatement. It’s more like shooting short-sighted fish in an antisocial barrel. Remember the Simpsons episode where the front wall of Lenny’s house collapses, revealing him sitting in his tattered underwear eating raw beans straight from the tin, and he begs "please don’t tell people how I live?" To hear the media tell it, that’s the quality of life of a gamer in a nutshell.
We’ve heard them all. Basement dweller, neckbeard, virgin, nerd, Cheetos and Mountain Dew snacker… It’s not a pretty picture and if everybody who plays video games really was like this, we’d have a real problem on our hands. Fortunately, only some of us are. Let’s all be thankful for that.
4 Suspension of Disbelief
There’s a certain kind of person who will sit in the movie theater and nitpick every motherfreaking thing. That’s ridiculous, they’ll say, that would have killed him for sure or there’s no way she’d have fitted all of that up there. Depending on, you know, the smut factor of the ‘movie’ you’re watching. Point being, some of us just can’t quite grasp the whole suspension of disbelief thing.
If you’re this way with movies, it’s safe to figure that you’ll be the same with video games. The same principle applies. These are not bad people, per se, but they’re not super fun to be watching or playing with. I’m here for the escapism, my friend, I don’t care about these pernickety problems. Stop that crazy talk already.
3 Excuses And Johns
Lag. Hax. Cheap. General BS. Whatever your preferred excuse, there’s always a reason. As this meme demonstrates, gamers rarely take defeat lying down. They take it on the chin, like real men, by crying, bitching, sending hatemail and nursing their egos with excuses.
Can we simply accept the fact that we lost to a better player and move on? No, no we can’t. Our opponents fall into the noob or tryhard categories, depending on whether we won or lost, and that’s the end of it.
Now, I’m not trying to suggest that bullcrap never happens because it sure does. All I ask is that maybe we try and be a little more dignified in defeat. Just slightly? If possible? No? After all, denial is never a healthy state to live in.
2 The Horrors Of The Outside World
As we know, in the spangly new world of 2017, just about everything is Internet enabled and wi-fi ready. We’re more connected than ever, and barely an inch from a Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque world where Big Brother is watching our sorry asses 24 hours a day.
Which, you know, has its positives and negatives. For one, the tired old anti-social gamer trope is getting more and more ironic by the day. Our consoles, PCs and cell phones allow us to connect to millions of gamers worldwide from the comfort of the butt grooves in our couches. Who would I find if I went outside? Just Pigeon Pete, the weird dude who lives on the end of my road who mutters to himself and reeks of pee. It’s really not the same thing at all.
1 Exploits
Now, I know what you’re thinking. It’s just a video game. We’re not talking about the Olympics or something, where ‘roiding your way up to pecs the size of The Hulk is frowned upon. Playing fair isn’t much of a concern to gamers. It’s all about the wins, the K/D, as any tryhard will tell you.
This doesn’t mean that you’ve got yourself a free one way ticket to Be An Assholeville USA, though. Not in my book, buddy boy. Some things are intended parts of the game’s mechanics and others are exploits. The inherent competitiveness of the gamer makes them throw all these concepts of honour out of the window, all in the name of getting those all important Ws. It’s a little sad, really, but it’s true.