Politics in World of Warcraft

I had a bizarre encounter in World of Warcraft today. I was loitering around, and this guy kept yelling “Death to Iran!”

Now, if someone yells something in-game with the /yell command, everyone in a large area hears it. It's considered rude to bring in too much real-world stuff. People play World of Warcraft to escape their lives and the real world, and they just don't want political, religious and social arguments to be dragged into the game. Hence, it's considered rude that this guy was yelling “Death to Iran!”

Well, after hearing him shout this for awhile, I /yelled “What zone is Iran in? I'll go kill him.”

He /yelled “Iran is an evil country, you idiot.”

Duh huh. So I /yelled “Oh, ok. I'll add it to the list.” Mostly, I was just needling this guy for being an asshole and /yelling political messages.

Well, then he sent me a private message and said “Why don't you go back to reading your hippie commie propaganda.”

Um ... huh? Okay, I tried to follow his logic and realized he didn't get my humor (do Right-Wingers ever?) and thought I was arguing with him. That's where the “hippie commie” thing came from. To Right-Wingers the only people who could possibly disagree with them is some “tree hugging latte drinking Birnenstock wearing hippie commie fag” or some such. Variations of that are used liberally to dismiss other people's arguments by tossing them over onto the Left-Wing extremist pile (which is most of us, really, according their criteria).

Well, by dismissing me as a “hippie commie” and using pat catch-phrases, he let me know that his brain had not fully developed. There was no use continuing the conversation.

But I couldn't help myself. I know. Big surprise.

In response to his admonishment to “go back to reading your hippie commie propaganda”, I shot back “Why don't you try reading a book?”

His witty response was “I read lots of books” (had no catch-phrase to match what I said, apparently).

So I told him “Mad Magazine doesn't count.”

By this point I imagine his brain was hurting from the strain of coming up with an original thought. He spat out “Chomsky sucks Muslim dick!”

Whut? Hehe. Um ... okay. I still don't know what that meant. Wouldn't know where to begin trying to figure it out.

So I said “Ah. Another rebel without a clue” and put him on /ignore.

Okay. Just for the record, I am not a supporter of Iran. I have nothing against the Iranian people, but their government is ran by a bunch of extremist assholes, and their president is the asshole prototype. But I don't think the issues with Iran are simple enough to break down into a few well placed catch-phrases. And I wish people like this would take their bullshit somewhere else. I have enough problems on my hands battling The Horde than having to take on Iran, as well.