Are you childish?

Ok, so that's a rhetorical question, but I'll still say that "Yes, I am". Or maybe rather "yes, it happens". I like to see myself as a mature, logical person (although Love says otherwise), but I do nerdrage from time to time (as you might have noticed) or just plain act childish when someone/thing annoys me.

Today for example, I was playing my hundredandfifth paladin and doing a quest in Duskwood for killing Plague Spreaders. You have to kill 20 and there are about 20 around, so if anyone else has the quest you have to compete for the spawns. Or of course cooperate. And I usually try to cooperate. If I'm about to kill some mob for a special quest and see someone come running to do the same thing I invite them so they can get the kill. I expect people to do the same for me, and usually they do actually. But back to the Plague Spreaders. I was happily killing along when a warrior and druid, most likely teamed, come up to me and start saying odd words. Words like "widge" and "wooper". Words that don't mean anything to me, and to no dictionary either, but maybe they're some sort of slang, what do I know. I do know however that they're on the same quest and the fight for spawns begins. Because of the odd words, which I decided to interpret as profanities, I started really busting my ass off to snatch mobs from them. I did so even when I was long finished with my own quest! Snatching a mob from them and receiving another nonsense word as thanks really... made me happy. Yes I admit it, I was really childish stealing their mobs and it was all just to annoy them.

And sometimes (and embarrassingly enough I love to do it) I let people that I don't really like die in instances. I've even done it to Love once, and he hated me for it, with all right! It is an extremely immature thing to do, unless the person has done something like it to you, or some other horrible thing. But I sometimes do it just because the person annoys me, which is just wrong.

And everytime someone I know rolls another alt and then expects to be taken to different raids to get gear for it I think "heck no, I aint gonna boost your alt. Gear it yourself first". And who am I to talk anyway, with a million alts? In my defense I do try to gear them somewhat properly before going to raids, I don't like to not be able to at least pull my own weight. But I know I can have this really illogical, immature attitude to peoples alts sometimes, which is really bad since I'm the one with the most alts...

It has alot to do with what the other person/s does of course. My point is probably that it is extremely easy to go from a mature, nice person to immature douche just because someone else is acting like an immature douche. Trying to keep your cool or just shrug something off when someone is nerdraging around you is damn hard. For instance the other day when Love was doing Naxx for the weekly his reminder addon that tells anyone who's missed a buff, whispered another druid about mark of the wild. Since Love himself plays a druid the other druid was really annoyed and said something like "wtf dude, buff that shit yourself yada yada". But the addon is automated, it whispers anyone who can cast the buff if it is missing. Love tried first to explain this but got another angry reply and then decided to become douche himself and simply said "well cry more".

Another favorite is the raid leader that yells at everyone because one person does a mistake. "Are you all fucking retarded!?" because someone failed at something. Does it really improve peoples playskills? I'm not so sure.

There is rarely a reason to fly off our handles about things in WoW, and yet we do it. But why do we do it? Maybe it makes us feel better, like telling the other guy that "you're not going to be allowed to douche around alone like that. I can be douchy too". Maybe it is about power? By stealing their mobs I had complete power over their playing, and it made me feel good, because I wanted to punish them, or something. By letting people die in instances I tell them that "if you don't behave I will punish you, I have the power to do so". OBEY (the crab)! Maybe even the verbal insults actually are about this power-displaying thingy. "I call you noob and that will make you feel bad, I have the power to make you feel bad".

But does our childish behavior actually make anything better? Do we honestly believe that throwing a tirade of profanities in the face of some guy will make him come around and say "well yeah dude, when you put it that way I realize I was wrong".

Maybe we should be more careful about our aggressivity. I'm not saying we should remove it entirely, I'm still happy I annoyed those silly questers by stealing their mobs ^^. But there are definitely moments when it is better for us to bite our tongues rather than pour our hate onto the keyboard. Not let the douches rub us the wrong way. Count to ten?