The Secret to Making Enemies

Battlefield 1943 is a wonderfully enjoyable game when everyone on your side works as a team, advancing at a smooth pace. It's even more fun when both sides are organized and challenging. But because it is played on the internet, the reality is that at least of of the time you will be playing with and against total jackasses. Fortunately I absolutely adore playing with jackasses.

"Why", you may ask "would anyone enjoy that?" The answer is, of course, because when you play with people there is an unspoken code of conduct, but when you play with whatever the hell it is that congeals between the consoles you have free reign to do as you please. "Really?" you say to me with your brow furrowed and one hand resting coquettishly (fruity-like) on your hip, "are they that bad?" Yes. They are absolutely that bad. Almost exclusively when they have microphones with no noise cancellation. Here are some of the worst offenders:

Vocal kid who dies frequently but is puzzled as to why,
Dude who calls anyone near him a fag,
French dude,
Group of dudes with TV on in the background,
French dude with nagging wife,
Sarcastic "look at my score" guy,
Kid who can't pronounce "wow",
French dude with nagging wife and coughing baby.

These are just the assholes on your team. Feel free to step or drive in front of their shots often. Are they in a vehicle? Just driving in that game can be difficult, so if you continually ram into them it becomes a herculean feat to stay on a road. And if they're in your vehicle, by all means, drive them far away from the action. I like to give people narrated tours of the islands until they realize that I'm not going anywhere near the shooting. Best of all is to get one or more players into your landing craft and take them as far out into the ocean as possible, and then just sit there. They can't kill you or make you give up the driver seat so the only option is to swim to shore. Once they start making their way in drive the boat in front of them, always positioning yourself just out of their reach. And lastly if you bail out of a plane while flying at someone you can actually manage to kill teammates. Good luck!

When messing with the other team try to pick someone and make it personal. Anyone with "420" in their name is a reasonable target for hate. Be unrelenting and imaginative. If you pick the sniper job you can head shot people on their starting carriers. You get no points for it, but it is incredibly irritating to the other players. I know the preferred term for this kind of activity is "griefing" but I'm not one of the cool kids. I just call it "fishing" where the rod is your gun, the fish is the asshole in front of you, and the lure is your bullet. I suppose that's an alright metaphor. Except in real fishing you don't catch a fish, wait for it to re-spawn, and then catch it again. And you certainly don't shoot a fish in the head over and over again until it rage quits and leaves you a message calling into question your sexuality.

Then again, maybe I'm not doing it right.