Tag Archives: Online Game

Video Game Taunting – Online Insults

Main Perfromance:

In the online game series called “Halo,” CS was exposed to the start of a long running insult to one’s opponent called “tea bagging.” The movement, crouching up and down over a dead enemy, was so infamous that it got its very own name.

Background:

This action of crouch spamming over an opponent that the player killed, has since expanded to pretty much all online shooters, but is less often called by the name. Instead, the action is by far the most recognizable part of the gesture.

Context:

When playing the online game “Overwatch” with CS, he got killed and “tea bagged” by the enemy team.

Thoughts:

Disrespect and crude humor is a common occurrence in online video games, especially when it gets very competitive. The same way that basketball players might taunt each other before and after making shots, online gamers treat the sport with a similar attitude. With more and more humor coming from the internet, on occasion, this emote/crouch spam taunting makes its way even into the material world.

Reference:

I found one other post about this online taunt/humor in our archive:

http://folklore.usc.edu/video-game-celebration-american/

Mrs. Birdy Webkinz Glitch

The informant is an 18-year-old student, of Italian and American origin, who spends a lot of his time playing computer games.

 

Who is Mrs. Birdy?

BW: Mrs. Birdy was a character in the old online pay-to-play game, Webkinz–like Neopets and Club Penguin. Those kinds of games were very popular at the time, and the way it worked was you go to a store in real life and buy a stuffed animal called a Webkin, then you register it online and it gives you an online pet that you play games with and domesticate and care for and stuff.

And the glitch?

BW: Yeah, well, it was just a rumor, I think, but it spread a lot to everyone that played Webkinz. This was in… I was ten… so like 2007. And there was a rumor that the Mrs. Birdy character would climb in through your house and murder your Webkinz with an axe. Since the game is for little kids, it caused a lot of feared kids. I had to tell my mom, and she Googled it. The official Webkinz site had a whole page dedicated to the fact that it was a rumor and that nothing scary would happen to the kids’ Webkinz. I was still terrified, ’cause I was in the little kid bubble.. and then there’s all this worry about murdering my pets.

 

There are many forum sites either proliferating or desperately trying to end the fears about the supposed Mrs. Birdy murder glitch. It’s somewhat morphed into an issue of parenting and protecting children against the dangers of the internet.