Left 4 Dead, though quickly followed by Team Fortress 2, is the first online multiplayer cooperative game that I’ve ever played.  Ever since I’ve been playing and interacting with hundreds of other players under those two games, I’ve noticed weirdly distinct and common traits that are only consistent among girls (largely influenced by the fact that they are the minorities) who play video games aka “girl gamers” or “gamer girls.”

There are three different types of girl gamers…sort of.  The first one can be found anywhere, including my Steam friends list.  They’re all exceptionally different but have one thing in common and that is to have fun and play a game, as it should be.

That’s the first type, awfully broad, but whatevez.  The other two types, on the other hand, are both painstakingly narrow! I’ve surprisingly witnessed and heard so much of it that I’ve decided to segregate them from the original group entirely and turn each of them into one cohesive character:

The Zealot (sometimes referred to as The Feminist Gamer) – “You just got pwned by a GIRL! Yes, a GIRL!”  The Zealot is a gamer who has a vagina and you bet your hp that she’s damn proud of it. Her MySpace, Facebook and Steam page bears the insignia of “GIRL GAMER” and she’ll go to great lengths to remind the gaming community that she is a GIRL GAMER by joining-or worst creating biased fan clubs, communities, and/ cults exclusive to other gamer girls, potentially building this terrifying, never-ending empire of zealots.

The Zealot is usually a veteran gamer, who apparently lived a hard knock gaming life demanding equality and respect in the gaming world. In the past, she was regularly shunned, belittled, and sometimes insulted by male gamers (predominantly made up of her older brothers and cousins) for simply being a girl gamer…which explains a lot.

But what the Zealot doesn’t know is how times have changed.  Girl gamers have already proven their worthy and competence, thus earning most of the respect of the guys.  To be overly and overtly proud of being a girl gamer is akin to being a proud female painter; it’s retarded and convinces everyone that female painters are in some way inferior to male painters.

The Chosen One (usually in multi-player/team games) – While the Zealot encourages more girls to play video games, the Chosen One wants nothing more in life than to to votekick all of them off but herself.  And unlike the Zealot, the Chosen One is more likely to be a newb.

When the Chosen One started playing video games, she thought she was the only special girl gamer who existed within her continent due to the overwhelming number of gamer guys that have given her the attention she had always craved for.  That is…until…another girl gamer joined in on the game and then another.  Typical girl gamers would react with excitement and relief when encountering their first girl gamer, but this had only brought darkness, rage and jealous tendencies to the Chosen One.

The Chosen One will do anything in her power to votekick off another girl gamer while ingame just so she can feel somewhat special and unique again, being the only girl gamer in a game of all male players.  She will either ignore the other girl gamer throughout the game and weep afterwards, or ragequit and weep should she fail at votekicking her competition off.

Next week I’m going to see some of my relatives for a little family get-together. For the most part, I’m excited…but I’m also dreading it because one of the girls there really dislikes me.

We only see each other about every 4-6 months, and yet her aversion towards me has been going on for years. When we get to see each other she never greets me; she doesn’t even look at me in the eye. I’m always the one who says hi to her first, but sometimes she ignores it, and other times she says hi back, but in a cold and careless way.

She quite a talker, but whenever I come up to her and try to make conversation she suddenly turns into this socially retarded brat who can only give you one word answers.

Tiff: Hey man, how’s school and everything?

Fine.

Tiff: Still talking to what’s his face?

Yes.

Tiff: Oh right on…uh I’m doing fine too incase you were wondering.

(She says nothing, walks away to talk to someone else)

When she’s not talking to me, I always catch her eyeing my shoes or a certain article of clothing that I’m wearing, it’s creepy.

I always try to be nice to her. I always try to minimize that unnerving, awkward tension that exists between me and her but she always seems to shun me. I do it for the sake of my relatives. If she wasn’t part of the family, then I wouldn’t even bother.

It sucks because we use to play together occasionally when we were kids, but ever since she hit college she started to care a lot more about boys and makeup, and now, she sees me as some kind of competition. It’s really sad and pathetic because she doesn’t seem to grasp that I don’t give a shit if she looked better and dressed better than me or had the hotter boyfriend or whatever other dumb shit chicks usually try to compete with other chicks for in middle school.

I really don’t care dude, if I could, I would give her a gawddamn plaque that said she won if it means to make her insecurities go away and for her to quit acting like a brat towards me. For now, we can only wait.

On a side note, don’t take the title of this entry too seriously. haha

When I find something bad or annoying about one of my friends that could possibly be detrimental to our friendship, I have no problem bringing the subject up to them just so we can resolve the issue.  However, there is one particular “friend” who I can’t stand and I don’t have the balls to bring it up only because the “issue” that I have with her isn’t that bad or serious, but at the same time, I can’t stand it, I’ve been purposely screening her calls and ignoring her messages, and as cruel as this may sound, I don’t have a problem if we lose contact with each other entirely.

The main problem I have with her is that she hogs every friggin conversation and she never shuts up to let you talk.  Every conversation I’ve had with that motormouth has only been one-way communication: One person speaks and no feedback is allowed.  She definitely possesses some good traits, like, she can be fun and entertaining because of her feisty personality and she’s an incredibly intelligent person, but her own mouth outweighs the goods by a whopping landslide, it’s unfortunate.

Don’t get me wrong, in certain situations, it is okay to just listen and simply allow the other person to spill their beans to you, but it absolutely cannot be that way all the time. In a normal discussion, it is common sense to talk and pause every minute or so to let the other person talk and/ give their feedback and vice-versa, but she, on the other hand, doesn’t understand that!

It is so bad that if I want to say something, I always have to interrupt her.

It is so bad that when I interrupt her, she interrupts me right away.

It is so bad that I’m blogging about this.

So here’s how our conversation would look (er…or “sound”?) like in a nutshell:

Motormouth: Timmy and I are dating now. He’s so sweet! One time, I got this text message from him and it said, “I wurv you a lot and I miss your feets”. And I’m like, “That is so cute. I’m going to save this text…forever.”

Me: Aw-

Mouth: I miss him so much. Man, I can’t wait to see him tomorrow.  Oh yeah, and then school’s pretty stressful-

Me: Mm hm

Mouth: I have to study for two tests. I’m working on one project and writing a five-page essay about sea sponges-

Me: Hey sea sponges are-

Mouth: it’s pretty aggravating because sponges aren’t that fun to write about.  I mean what do they do? Nothing really. I rather write about killer whales and dolphins-

Me:  Mm hm

Mouth: They mobile and stuff, as oppose to sponges. Sponges…I wash my dishes with them-

Me: You know-

Mouth: Dude, there’s this cool show I went to the other day-

HOLD UP. NO HOLD UP. JUST HOLD UP MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER MOUTH. I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS.

Yeah, I’m not really sure how to bring this up to her.  I don’t like the idea of ignoring her phone calls, but I feel it’s the most “reasonable” thing to do, since it’s not that big of an issue.

We’re going to bump into each other at one point or another, and when that time comes, she’s probably going to ask for an explanation due my um…absense haha.

Any advices?