Richard Lewis shares his derailed train of thought with the wider world in his regular column feature, Gonzorreah.

Read Richard's last column "3D Or Not 3D "HERE

This column is the sole opinion of the author and does not represent the opinion of Heaven Media Ltd or the opinion of any affiliates.

It’s no wonder the CS:S scene is as weird and twisted as it is, sometimes appearing more like a retreat for the insecure, the autistic and the unstable. Finding an oasis of normality in the whole landscape seems, at times, impossible. Once you do think you have stumbled upon it the illusion starts to fade and before you know it instead of soothing waters cooling your parched throat you wake up with a mouth full of sand and sunburn on the eyeballs. Yes, it’s no wonder it’s all fucked up. No-one involved in it is capable of seeing reality at all and the evidence of this is in the things we say, that we all say, my rotten self included.

Never forget this is what the average online gamer looks like anyway

It’s like we are all living in some collective delusion, the game itself being nothing more than a group hallucination in which we all participate. Certainly there’s nothing even close to reality in the way we assess what is happening in the game. Don’t believe me? Well, if you haven’t said any or all of the following then you are in the smallest minority and possibly the only person who has survived the madness that CS:S seems to induce on all who play it.

"He's not fucking blind!"

Because they never are, are they? While it’s no secret that flashbangs online are a lottery at the best of times thanks to the voodoo of graphics cards, dxlevels and cvars, players are convinced that for $200 they can guarantee that the only person greeting them round that corner is Stevie Wonder. The logic for this seems to be the often chanted mantra that “when I’m blind it lasts at least ten seconds” even though a flashbang wouldn’t last that long on a ZX Spectrum.

Of course all the times you have laughed when you’ve made three headshots through the careful deployment of white-screen WASDA, or because you happened to be lucky enough to have the right pixel of a wall in the centre of your screen the flashbang had no effect whatsoever. It would be too much for a CS:S player to make the leap and think that this might happen to other players too.

“I’m so fucking blind!”

The flipside of the blindness coin… Despite always buying a full compliment of flashes yourself you seem completely perplexed when pushing a site that the other team have elected to do the same. As they rain down from all angles to prevent you from executing your plan, do you take up defensive positions? Do you throw some back? No, you instead decide to stand perfectly still and lambast the opponents for having the audacity to do something so cowardly.

This type of rage is particularly prominent if the opponent has saved some flashbangs for the end of the round, something you yourself advise your team-mates to do in your infinite gaming wisdom. As you blunder around trying to plant the bomb blind, the thrower of the flash has only gone and got the fuck out of dodge to watch the clock wind down from a safe distance. Even though this player has used that thing that is most prized in CS:S – a brain – you will curse him to his dying day for being a retard for not attempting to shoot you.

"Fucking DXlevel 95!"

“What’s he doing?!?!?!”

Evidently he’s doing something you haven’t anticipated, which is kind of the point of the whole exercise is it not? Of course, for every time the act of “stupidity” doesn’t work in their favour, you’re willing to let it slide but that time you don’t check that corner, or look behind that box, all of a sudden this player is some sort of primitive, incapable of grasping basic concepts of CS:S etiquette.

The reality? Your failure to anticipate something has cost you… But such self analysis is meaningless when you’re surrounded by cronies who will happily tell you that what the player did is indeed some sort of unfathomable act of monstrous stupidity. As the use of this quote becomes habit forming you will find yourself using it for even the most basic of actions, such as someone emerging from some cover and shooting you. “WHAT’S HE DOING?!?!?” – usually the same thing you are, just better.

“He just prefired me!”

Did he though? Did he really? Really?

It seems the margins of what constitutes prefire have radically altered. Prefire used to mean someone facing your position already shooting. These days it seems to mean that they have simply managed to fire their weapon before you. It’s OK though… As long as your team-mates are alive you can just say any old shit and they can’t disbelieve it.

Even if you’re not lying, so what? It’s not 2005 anymore where the use of this crazy concept of “prefire” was enough to see you branded a cheater. It’s as standard as anything else in the game and bar a few obvious exceptions it can usually be explained. Still, why let that get in the way of a good old fashioned bout of hysterical shouting on Vent or Mumble?

Not every CS:S player is as tough as this guy (It's Rasputin)... It's usually just you

“How’s he not dead?”

Short answer? Because you missed him. Long answer… Well, you missed him. Sure, with any online game there’ll be the odd registration / netcode issue but even in one such as CS:S, that has had its problems highlighted mostly by an embittered competitive community, the vast majority of times the player isn’t dead because you missed.

It doesn’t matter if in your mind spraying a full clip from an AK-47 into someone ten metres from you should kill them every time. It’s a computer game and it doesn’t work like that within the game’s mechanics. You know that before you even go “full retard” and start spraying bullets everywhere like an American soldier when he sees a friendly unit approaching. Yet you still did it and still do it time and time again. The real question you should be asking is “why?”.

“He’s cheating”

A contentious one this. With there being absolutely no sense of shame in the VAC ban and the old “it was a TF2 ban” excuse being the saving grace for anyone who does want to continue without a stigma, cheating isn’t as self-regulated as it used to be. Throw in the declining price of private cheat packages and the ever increasing amounts of personal abuse attached to CS:S and you’ve got yourself a minefield.

However, is there someone cheating EVERY game? If there’s anyone out there shaking their heads then they certainly believe in a very different reality as soon as the white sands of dust2 scorch their retinas. Most players seem to find it hard to accept that anyone out there could be better than them, which begs the question why they’re not at the top of their competitive field. They’ll bemoan a lack of opportunities, cliques, having to play with incompetent teammates but mostly it’s the fault of ALL THESE CHEATERS.

Think it gets any better at a top level, where the players only generally play amongst themselves? It isn’t… The accusations come just as thick and fast aimed at anyone and everyone. Strangely enough no evidence is ever forthcoming. The reason for this? Even if the person making the accusation was correct, take away the excuse and what else is there?

“Look how keen he is… Fucking virgin”

Typically uttered by players who themselves have the same amount of hours played as it would take to learn a second language, the use of the word “keen” as an insult is hardly a new phenomenon. What constitutes being keen? Simply put – having a better game than the person doing the raging.

Of course, they’re not trying… Why would they feel the need to? It’s just a game they don’t really care about despite the 70 hours they’ve pumped into it in the last fortnight, or – as is becoming vogue – have gone out and bought a second account to play on just so no-one can see how keen they themselves are.

This is another trend that spilled over into the top end of the competitive scene, with many teams insisting that they could be as good as VeryGames if they could only be motivated to be as keen as them? But what’s the point, right? It’s not as if they’ll be moaning about it next time they lose, or throwing out the old lack of practice excuse as another LAN title falls into French hands.

When wanting to win and practicing to improve are decried as being negatives in any field, it’s safe to say it’s probably safe to say that it’s not worth attaining excellence in anyway.

And you can fucking stay there...

“I’ve just headshotted him X amount of times”

Come off it… You didn’t. Don’t pretend there were any “dinks” in your headphones either because no-one else heard them. Even in the highly unlike event you had your crosshair on the opponent’s head you were probably either moving from side to side, jumping up and down or spamming mouse 1 like a lab rat that’s just discovered doing so dispenses cheese. Or chocolate. Whatever those fucking things eat.

You certainly didn’t headshot them that many times or they’d be dead. They aren’t and in fact they killed you. Kind of like that thing you do when you say “WOW I did him 96 in 6” when in reality you’ve added on 3 extra hits to try and make it sound like the game is broken when in actual fact you’re just shit.

“WASDA some more”

Generally an insult uttered by people that are the most delusional of all CS:S players. While everyone who plays the game likes to believe that their aim is superior to everyone else’s, the people that rage about WASDA labour under the belief that they have never held down a movement key while firing in their entire gaming careers. Indeed, more often than not you will see these happy go lucky merchants mashing their keyboard only managing to get a kill once they go into the invincible crouch position.

CS:S is a game where you can move and shoot for good or for ill. Anyone who pretends they’ve never done it is the worst kind of player. You can generally spot them on forums saying how they won’t play CS:S until it’s “fixed” or how they preferred 1.6… They achieved absolutely nothing in that game either.

“He’s just fucking killed me jumping”

Yeah, he has and there’s nothing you can do about it. Do you remember though that glorious week or so when Hidden Path fixed it? They made it practically impossible for a jumping headshot to ever be hit again, like the good old days when seeing one was as rare as an eclipse of some kind.

Your collective response? To whine about the fact you can no longer jump around corners with an AWP and quickscope someone, forcing Hidden Path to change it back to what it was before. The option of exploring some mid ground wasn’t even entertained. “We don’t want to have to adapt to changes” the competitive community said, for once echoing the sentiment of those whose highest ambitions is 2.00+ kpd ratio on that public server they found that doesn’t have sv_pure on.

This could have been a thing of the past. Now it’s back with a blood-pressure busting vengeance how can you really complain about it?

“J A E G E R: Prowning like your daddy used to prown on you”

If you are in any doubt as to how much shit the average CS:S player talks, simply look at all the binds you have from players doing exactly that. Funny aren’t they… The things they’ve typed with their little brains and look at their grasp of the English language. Even if they’re foreign, it’s funny.

Now think about how many times you’ve been bound yourself. Yeah… It’s probably loads. The sensible type absolutely nothing at all but we can’t help ourselves can we? Which is kind of the point… Whatever gets typed is almost certainly going to be stupid and laughable. Until you can see the game for what it actually is, be honest about what is actually happening, then there’s really no point in trying to do anything else.

U Mad? Evidently, if you play this game, you are.