Impatience

Whenever I play online games, it always comes to my attention that people are extraordinarily impatient, at least while others around them are just screen names. The two games that brought this to my attention are Combat Arms, the free MMO from Nexon, and Left 4 Dead, the not-free zombie apocalypse simulator from Valve. In both cases, players sit in an online lobby and chat it up until the room leader decides that they have enough players to start. Once the game starts, everyone has fun. However, there are two instances of impatience here that always make the game a little uncomfortable for me.

The first instance of impatience is the most basic: People will get tired of waiting in the lobby and will start telling the room leader to start the game. This would make sense if they did it in a normal fashion, but unfortunately most people online would rather take the more forceful, less-effective method of spamming "start," "go," or otherwise in all-caps until they get what they want. This would also be at least somewhat reasonable if the person was just easily-irritated. However, since the internet revolves around the user even when they're playing an online game with other people, this is the sort of conversation you get:

Cen_Beta: Wow, he wanted you to go when we only had 3 [players]
*NaClsalt enters the lobby, others follow*
NaClsalt: NO GATING
Cen_Beta: Indeed'
NaClsalt: rdy up
NaClsalt: start
NaClsalt: start
NaClsalt: MAPLE (the room leader)
NaClsalt: STAT
imyourdad2: GO
MrQuintero: SATRT
NaClsalt: ...are you afk...
Killer999: go maple
NaClsalt: GOD
imyourdad2: GO GO GO GO OG OG O G OG GG
MrQuintero: B****
imyourdad2: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Killer999: come on

One important thing to note is that NaClsalt started saying everything he did IMMEDIATELY after he entered the room. He didn't even wait for the leader to recognize that he had entered. This whole conversation took place over the span of ten or twenty seconds. This phenomenon is unfortunately typical of online games as a whole, and is strange to see when the message given to me growing up was one of delayed gratification.

The second form of impatience comes into play when the game has actually started. In certain online games where there are classes that have specific spots that they are best suited for, whenever someone new comes on and doesn't know such things, people have a tendency to say "OH NO THEY'RE A NOOB KICK THEM OR ELSE WE'LL LOSE." I find this odd for two reasons. The first is that everyone has to start somewhere, and you won't know where those spots are except by seeing other people doing it or experimenting yourself. The second reason is that to appease such people, the only real way to do it (aside from outright avoidance, in which case they would never get any new players) is to enter those games as a spectator and just follow whatever class you're looking to play or do what I did before I got Team Fortress 2 and just watch a bunch of gameplay videos online that illustrate strategies for each class. I don't know about you, but I play online games because they're fun, not because I want another class. It's becoming harder and harder to find people who are just interested in a casual game of whatever you're playing anymore... It always has to be about winning. Especially when it comes to First-Person Shooters.

I read an article in the Psychology Today that my parents got for me about how people today are becoming increasingly rude. One example given by the author was when she, driving along, honked her horn at a driver who was about to crash into her as they were trying to park while talking on the phone. The other driver responded by flipping the author off before parking, getting out of their car, and saying "Just off to find a little inner peace, you redheaded b****!" It should be noted that this very aggressive woman was en route to her yoga class.

I'm not sure why people are suddenly losing their knack for chivalry, but it is definitely a problem.