It's lamers on parade!

Yes, friends, it's time for all the lamest, stupidest, most offensive and generally bad letters I've ever received, collected together for the first time ever. I left them out of the column because they were either too lame to bother responding to, or too offensive to risk posting. But today, well, I just feel like venting. So I'm printing them today. You can see some of what doesn't make the Double Agent cut, see what pisses me off, and be reminded that, however nasty and high-handed I am with most letter-writers, I'm not nearly as angry as I could be.

Sensitive, happy-go-lucky readers would be well-advised to skip today's column. It gets ugly, both in the letters, and in my responses, some of which are very heated.

Regular letters will resume tomorrow. But for now, pull on your asbestos skivvies, 'cause it's about to get hot...

The subject line of this letter was "Re: Metal Gear Solid review." Considering that GIA doesn't have a review of Metal Gear Solid up at all, I'm doubly lost as to where the hell this letter came from.

As you'll see in later letters, I am apparently at fault for a wide range of hated decisions and practices, but this is the only time I was blamed for a racist socio-economic construct in a country I've never been to. For the record, I haven't the faintest idea how I could be at fault for Apartheid, and deeply resent the accusation that I'm racist, since it's flatly untrue, and about as low a blow as these things go. But frankly, I don't think it's necessary to defend myself from the likes of Mr. Nelson, who's so deluded that I can only muster up pity for him.

This is what happens when someone with a keyboard, an internet connection, and roughly six brain cells decides to write haiku, I guess.

The abovementioned gent wrote back later, helpfully giving me a link to his 3l33t warez page, which he was storing on AOL. I'd give a link to it now, but it didn't take all that long for his account (and page) to be yanked off their servers. I like to think that he's out there somewhere, though, drooling away in a little paper cup, confident in the knowledge that he is indeed the l33t3st one in the land.

We've been trying to figure out some way for GIA to turn a profit for a while now. This isn't quite what we had in mind.

Fucko count: 2

I get a lot of letters that flame me for not being "hardcore" enough, but this is one of the classics. No capitalization, random bursts of yelling and arrogance, and best of all, the ever-popular "in my day." Every time I read this letter, I expect the next sentence to be "Back in the Golden Age of gaming, we had to walk sixty miles through sleet-covered minefields, uphill both ways, to play a game of Pong."

So why else does this letter suck especially? Well, there's the handy-dandy elitism tack. There's the theory that an RPG without level-building is inherently bad, which is crock. There's the supposition that anyone who doesn't bow down before FFV and worship it as an earthbound incarnation of God Himself is a blithering idiot, which is also a crock. There are plenty of very good, compelling reasons to dislike FFV, thank you very much. It is not infallible. It is not touched by divine powers. Get used to it.

He also invokes the holy name of 7th Saga as an icon of RPG achievement, which elicits a long, satisfied chuckle from yours truly. Likewise for the Beyond the Beyond reference. I'd rather tear off my own genitals with a monkey wrench, then fly up north and feed them to a pack of hungry polar bears while wearing nothing except a Blue Jays baseball cap and sandals than ever undergo the horror of playing Beyond the Beyond again.

In short, the above letter is stupid, irrational, and a compelling argument in favor of mandatory sterilization of the terminally lame.

I'll let you make the connection between masturbating to computer games and his name yourselves.

Lastly, I will say this loud and clear: GIA will never cover hentai games. I don't care if they take a PhD to comprehend and play, I don't care what the site masthead says, we're not covering porn here. Period. I think it's a sick, sad thing to even consider replacing a real-life relationship with a batch of pixels. I don't condemn everyone that plays hentai games, but anyone who honestly believes that Dragon Knight IV is a suitable replacement for a deep, honest, sensual, romantic relationship is just sad.

Well, I guess I should be thankful that this letter was written before Tinky-Winky came out of the closet, huh?

In short, J. here is a bigot. Besides the highly dubious assertion that Laguna is gay in the first place, the ludicrous idea that homosexuality is a "plague" in the journalistic community, and the use of the word "Jap", the core idea of this letter makes me physically ill. I often say that everyone has a right to their opinion. Well, screw open-mindedness. This letter is just plain wrong. It's wrong to state that homosexuality is a disease, it's wrong to suggest banning a game because it might involve a character who is gay, and it's wrong to purport bigots who compare homosexuality to the Black Plague as "right-thinking." J., if you honestly believe in this bullshit, then I don't want you in my species, much less my country.

Fucko count: 3

Passionate words indeed. This is one of countless dozens of letters I've received that blame and flame me for the business practices of game companies. How anyone can read a press release from a multimillion dollar company and somehow conclude that I'm at fault for their activities is beyond me. Everyone's really eager to shoot the messenger, I guess.

The very first letter that called me fucko. Ah, the memories. Fucko count for today's column is 5, I guess. As an aside, the above guy also sent me a massive warez file and then emailed by sysadmin to report that I'd been peddling warez across the internet, and should have my account revoked. The abuse guy at my ISP laughed very hard once I forwarded him the above email, and in turn, my good friend who wrote the above had his own account revoked by an apologetic ISP. Oops.

Closing comments

Well, there you go. The lamest of the lame, the worst letters I've ever had the displeasure of reading, and part of the reason why I'm always in such a bad mood. Anyone that made it all the way through, well, you now know part of what I sift through daily, and can certainly spot some emotional buttons of mine you should never, ever push.

For those that were offended and shocked, well, good. It nothing here offended or shocked you, I'd be worried. But don't worry about this being a trend - these are selected unprintables from the past three months of Double Agent, so don't expect to see their like again.

And lo, the smack hath been laid down most mightily upon the lamers, and a column hath ended. I'm going to go hug a bunny rabbit and spread joy amidst the people of the Earth now, but I'll see you all tomorrow.

Assuming I haven't scared all of you away, that is.

- The Double Agent