I'm playing games to have fun and reboot my mind. I don't see any point in tryharding.

being decent and kind shouldn't be THAT hard

There’s a strange breed of gamer who doesn’t play to win, or to learn, or to experience the medium, or to have fun, but instead, plays to bolster their self-image. You’ve met them. They’re the ones who type “gg ez” after crushing a team of strangers. The ones who say “cry more” not as a retort, but as a reflex. The ones who chase not the challenge, but the opportunity to gloat.

This behavior has become so common, so routine, that it barely registers anymore. It's background noise. But the sheer consistency of it should raise a deeper question: why does this happen so often, and why does it feel so hollow?

We laugh it off, block, mute, or ignore — but nowadays it is THE usual interaction the usual online player gets. This isn't about digital etiquette. This is about what emerges when competition loses its soul.

Right off the bat, this behavior is often rooted in fragile self-worth [ref] [www.researchgate.net]. The trash talker is rarely secure. In a world where real-life validation might be scarce, online dominance - no matter how trivial - becomes their currency. “ggez” isn’t confidence; it’s a cheap mask to hide the fear of being insignificant [ref] [www.sciencedirect.com]. When the only arena where you feel in control is a game, every kill becomes a scream for recognition.

But this isn’t just personal weakness. It’s learned behavior - reinforced through a system that rewards dopamine hits for humiliation. The teabag, the sarcastic emote spam, the grief: all tactics to project control when life elsewhere offers none. A fantasy at the cost of collective joy. [ref] [www.researchgate.net] [ref] [dmitriwilliams.com]

Now scale that individual fragility into a collective. In too many online spaces, toxicity has become normalized if not ritualized. It’s not just tolerated; it’s expected. New players enter not just to learn the mechanics of a game, but to learn the code of performative cruelty. The culture teaches you: never make mistakes, don’t show weakness, don’t express frustration, and whatever you do, never admit someone else played better than you.

This creates an arms race of irony and hostility, where sincerity is punished and only the most sarcastic survive. We pretend it’s all jokes, just “trash talk,” but the result is predictable: a hollowed-out social landscape where real connection dies and people log off feeling worse than they did before.

As a result, even joking about a player's mistake often leads to rage. This pressures players to be mechanical entities that log in, play, log out and nothing else in between.

Philosophically, this is more than bad manners. It reflects a disconnection from what a game should be. Games are one of the oldest forms of human interaction. They’re supposed to teach us cooperation, creativity, grace in victory, and dignity in defeat. When those lessons are replaced by mockery and abuse, we lose something more than just fun.

The Point Isn’t That It Matters… It’s That It Should…

I know this won’t reach the ones who need to hear it. Most won’t care. Some will laugh. Some will say “wow long yap”. But putting this here isn’t about them - it’s about choosing a side.