The Five People You Meet on Xbox Live

Warning: The videos included in this post contain foul language, racial and homophobic epithets and Guitar Hero. Definitely NSFW, view at your own risk.

Ah, Memorial Day weekend, a time to relax, be with family, go to the lake, barbecue and honor the brave men and women that gave their lives for our country. Or, if you’re like me, a time to catch up on some much needed video gaming. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a nerd at heart and nothing makes me happier than the cinematic shift modern video games have taken. Graphics have finally caught up with the developers’ and players’ imaginations and the result is truly outstanding.

The problem is, with my new job and its added drive time and hours, not to mention the off-the-clock work and trying to nurture a rapidly dwindling social life, I don’t have as much time to commit to saving the world as I wish I did. But three-day weekends are perfect for that kind of time wasting and during the first 72 hours of my holiday weekend I played a lot of video games.

I explored the seedy streets of Liberty City as Niko Bellic, jacking cars, getting into shootouts and doing whatever it took to make a buck. I blasted my way through Half Life 2: Episode 2 and enjoyed one of the most frantic final encounters the series has to offer. I kicked the shit out of bums in Condemned 2 and scratched my head at its idiotic plot. And I guided my figure study model through the perspective-inspired puzzles of Echochrome, one of the most original games since Portal.

In short, it was glorious.

But many of the experiences I just described occurred offline. And while I love playing online, this weekend was the first chance I had a chance to thoroughly expose myself to the dirge of children, racists, homophobes, future-pedophiles, jack-offs and out-and-out morons that occupy the online spectrum since I began working at Ink. And what a grand encounter it was.

John Steinbeck used to travel to small towns or sit in diners to get in touch with the everyday American. In the 21^st century, it’s Xbox Live. And while there may be more than 10 million subscribers to Xbox Live alone, the online community can really be broken down into six types. They are as follows:

The Jerk-Off: Having a great online game isn’t enough for these ADHD sufferers. They get bored easily and decide to take it out on the community around them. They kill their teammates if friendly fire is on. They find ways to get on top of multiplayer maps. They discovered the superbounce and sword jump in Halo 2. They play Call of Duty 4 rounds with only the RPG or they spend all of their time trying to run people over in GTAIV’s multiplayer. And when they’re not doing that, they’re usually filling the channel with a combination of insults, muffled music or their own pointless commentary.

The Cheat: Like the Jerk-Off, the Cheater plays outside of a game’s intended parameters. The difference is that while the Jerk-Off does it out of boredom, the Cheater does it out of necessity. These are the guys that modded their original Xbox, so that they would have an advantage in Halo 2. They’re the douchebags who find ways to equip two accessories to a gun in CoD4.And worse than that, the assholes always, always brag about it, like being a snake is something to be proud of. It’s not. And there's a Web site dedicated to tracking them.

The Kid: What’s worse than having to hear the high-pitched, whiny drone of a child during a round of your favorite multiplayer game? Seeing his or her name above yours on the leaderboard when the round is over. Even more disturbing is how casually the little munchkins blow people’s head’s off with sniper rifles, run over scores of innocent people and tear people in half with chainsaws.

But all crotchety cane-waving aside, the true annoyance of The Kid is that they’re playing at all. They’re the videogame equivalent of taking a baby to a movie –– they’re obnoxious, annoying and have no place being there.

The Hatemonger: These guys are everywhere, in varying degrees of evil. Their bile runs the gamut from casually calling something they don’t agree with “gay” or an opponent who bested them a “fag” to calling the OpFor in Call of Duty “towelheads” or “sand niggers” to finding creative ways to hide racial slurs in their gamer profile.

The problem with The Hatemonger harkens to the greater problem of Xbox Live and online gaming in general — everyone is anonymous, so no one has to be accountable.

Prepare to lose faith in humanity right...now:

The Hot Head: These guys are awesomely ridiculous and they, along with the The Kid and The Hatemonger, are the primary reason for the Mute button. They scream, the curse and they smash their way through controllers like most people go through toothbrushes. The Hot Head’s love of videogames is matched only by their intense frustration at their own mistakes and volatile temper.

Take it away, Croyt!

The Expert: The expert is good, stupid good. They’re the people who go through Prestige Mode five or six times in CoD4. They’re a level 40 or better Halo player and they can breeze through “Through The Fire and Flames” on expert in Guitar Hero 3. On top of all of that, they are achievement whores, going after any and every pointless award they can. Some even play games they’d never bother playing if it weren’t for the awards.

The Expert is only one step away from The Jerk-Off. It’s just a matter of time before they get bored with being good at a game and decided to start testing things.

While these are extreme cases, most of the people on Live are composites of two or more of these archetypes. But it's a big world out there and there are a lot of crazies there to occupy it. Creepier still, all of these people are fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, mothers and daughters who live normal, well adjusted lives in public. Give them a headset, a microphone and complete anonymity and they become something much worse.