The Hilarious, the Sad and the Downright Stupid

March 21, 2011 7:20 AM

Why Was I Banned? via GFi
posted by jtron (126 comments total)

Well now I know where everybody went to after The Barrens.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 7:27 AM on March 21, 2011 [13 favorites]

The answer to the question in all instances, it seems, is "Because you suck."

WHICH IS TRUE
posted by grubi at 7:28 AM on March 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

So, wait, someone was banned for saying he's openly gay? Because if so, that is thirteen different kinds of fucked up.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:29 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

So, wait, someone was banned for saying he's openly gay? Because if so, that is thirteen different kinds of fucked up.

No, I think they were banned for saying someone else was gay... sorry 'happy'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:32 AM on March 21, 2011

So, wait, someone was banned for saying he's openly gay? Because if so, that is thirteen different kinds of fucked up.

It sounded to me like he said someone else was.
posted by rollbiz at 7:33 AM on March 21, 2011

So, wait, someone was banned for saying he's openly gay?

Pretty sure he was saying that someone else was. Methinks it's been a while since you've spent time in the company of a middle school-aged boy.
posted by phunniemee at 7:33 AM on March 21, 2011

Do they police language that kids use on the microphone during gaming? Because holy crap that's some potty mouthedness there.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:34 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Was I the only person confused when seeing this on the front page?

"This is suppose to be in MeTa, what the what..OH, right"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:35 AM on March 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

Also, "screamingly cyan" is a great ban reason.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:36 AM on March 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

Man. I think I had like, one single moment of support forum stupidity when I was about 12 or 13 or so, and essentially went online to ask MS support why I couldn't connect to the online multiplayer for the hacked copy of Age of Empires I downloaded. Oh god, I sent the hilarious "i have the right to a trial copy for a 24 hour period" excuse email that was ALL the rage of 1994 and everything. Said I would never buy another Microsoft game ever. Yeeep.

I'm glad I was born just, JUST before the era of your stupidity being permanently enshrined on the internet forever.






Joined: August 9, 2002
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:48 AM on March 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

Is this something I would (a) have to be 15 and (b) play online multiplayer to get/care about?
posted by Old'n'Busted at 7:50 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

I don't own the XBox - why is modding a bad thing? Isn't it just customizing the game as with the skins you can get for TF2, or is it a way to cheat?
posted by mippy at 7:51 AM on March 21, 2011

It's vaguely interesting in the sense that it's a detailed confirmation of the general puerility of adolescent gamers. Mildly amusing, but didn't hold my interest past the first page.

What would be possibly of wider interest: a "Why Was I Banned" for MetaFilter.
posted by WalterMitty at 7:53 AM on March 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

Mippy - modding the Xbox can mean modifying the hardware, which is often done so pirated games can be played on the consoles. Microsoft takes an understandably dim view of that practice.
posted by WalterMitty at 7:55 AM on March 21, 2011

mippy- modding is banned because there is an entire host of problems it can cause on the system, including hacks that alter gameplay, open the system up to viruses or spybots, and generally hinder the overall safety and fairness of the network. Of course, on the financial side, modding also lets you play hacked games by bypassing the CD reader, overriding software safety checks, etc. And yeah, MS sells Avatar customization, which is mostly pretty stupid but they're going to protect their ability to sell stuff.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:57 AM on March 21, 2011

Is this something I would (a) have to be 15 and (b) play online multiplayer to get/care about?

No, but thanks for complaining anyway!
posted by flatluigi at 7:59 AM on March 21, 2011 [16 favorites]

Needs more anti-Obama drum beating.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:04 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

But there are a million people calling other players fags and niggers all day long on voice chat and nothing ever happens to them.

Who even looks at profiles?
posted by empath at 8:07 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

Harsh?
posted by knapah at 8:10 AM on March 21, 2011

nothing ever happens to them.

If you complain about it, the XBL enforcement team is supposed to check it out, up to and including joining a game to see if the player misbehaves. I don't play much multiplayer, so I've never had to occasion to know if that's accurate.
posted by kmz at 8:11 AM on March 21, 2011

Man, this was like crack-couldn't stop reading. Thanks!
posted by purenitrous at 8:13 AM on March 21, 2011

middleclasstool: It doesn't seem to apply to that particular case, but yes, Microsoft did indeed ban people for saying they were openly gay in their XBLA profiles.

It was part of an ill-conceived no-tolerance policy intended to crack down on the rampant use of LBGT identifiers as insults on the network.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 8:14 AM on March 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

But there are a million people calling other players fags and niggers all day long on voice chat and nothing ever happens to them.

You can't really police what adults say and talk about.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:14 AM on March 21, 2011

I searched and can't find a simple answer -- is "Lobby" what XBOX refers to as an instance or server?
posted by cavalier at 8:15 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Heh. I suspect that whenever an effective automated means of detecting that is found there will be a lot of howling.
posted by Artw at 8:16 AM on March 21, 2011

I'm surprised that Microsoft allows its employees to respond publicly like this. Especially in a snarky manner. I don't think it's a bad thing, it just is surprising to me.
posted by grouse at 8:16 AM on March 21, 2011

XBOX team is a different breed...
posted by Artw at 8:17 AM on March 21, 2011

> I'm surprised that Microsoft allows its employees to respond publicly like this. Especially in a snarky manner.

Think of them more like crack dealers than account reps since it's video games.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:19 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Community moderators can get a little feisty, especially when the community is pretty feisty all the same. Check out Blizzard's forums for another example.

That said, the burn out rate on community moderators on game sitse is... high...
posted by cavalier at 8:19 AM on March 21, 2011

You can't really police what adults say and talk about.
True enough, but many aren't yet 18.
posted by mippy at 8:21 AM on March 21, 2011

Sometimes they'll suspend you just because they don't like the name of your town.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:22 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Anybody know what this 15th Lobby thing is? A mod that lets you unlock all the achievements in Call Of Duty?
posted by Ad hominem at 8:24 AM on March 21, 2011

I am with cavalier.

What is a lobby?
How would one buy or sell one?
What is this modding?

I know what mods are in general, but is the xbox so hackable that any kid can do it?
posted by frecklefaerie at 8:24 AM on March 21, 2011

Dude, I've played Halo: Reach against "Sgt Sodomy" and a hundred more disgusting gamertags. I've been steadily racking up downvotes for "language" for calling the lag-master-3000 types who would rather lose consistently than pause bittorrent "dial-up dickheads" even though there's always some 12 year old crying into his conroller that somebody had a comeback for "herp derp faggot". Policing this sort of stuff is a losing battle.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:24 AM on March 21, 2011

'Sgt Sodomy' sounds like a corporal punishment service for gay men as advertised in a phone box near you, next to 'Whip Mistress' and 'BBW Black 40DD A and O-Levels'.

I'm not sure that's what that user really wanted to convey (unless teenage boys are much more liberated about their sexuality than they were in my day).
posted by mippy at 8:26 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

My favorite parts are the fumbling, ineptly-phrased threats of legal action.
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 8:29 AM on March 21, 2011 [6 favorites]

I did some googling, and apparently 15th Prestige is the highest rank in multiplayer. Lobbies are multiplayer 'groups' and are roughly analogous to a set of people playing on a server. People are paying to be in hacked lobbies to boost themselves to the highest multiplayer rank.

Dude, I've played Halo: Reach against "Sgt Sodomy" and a hundred more disgusting gamertags. I've been steadily racking up downvotes for "language" for calling the lag-master-3000 types who would rather lose consistently than pause bittorrent "dial-up dickheads" even though there's always some 12 year old crying into his conroller that somebody had a comeback for "herp derp faggot". Policing this sort of stuff is a losing battle.

Do you report them for that? You should be. Call it XBOX's version of flagging and moving on and the downvoting your correct punishment for not letting it go.
posted by flatluigi at 8:32 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The English word "gay" has been effectively redefined by homosexuals so that it no longer means "happy and carefree". This was apparently in retaliation for straights re-defining that word that used to mean a bunch of sticks.

Fair is fair.
posted by three blind mice at 8:33 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure that's what that user really wanted to convey (unless teenage boys are much more liberated about their sexuality than they were in my day).

I seem to remember teenaged boys becoming intoxicated with the power of 'bad' words and would use them without regard to meaning, context, or spelling.

I'm reasonably sure this is why 'lezbeans' was scrawled on the back of my school bus.

I don't want misrepresent the Sergeant though. Maybe it's a family name.
posted by device55 at 8:37 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

You know, lighthearted, fancy-free? Mothers, lock up your daughters, Sgt. Sodomy is on the town!
posted by electroboy at 8:38 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I get the cheating thing, but why is it such a bad thing to have coloured avatars? Are they racist against the Na'avi?
posted by mippy at 8:39 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

device55, I meant more in the sense of them being here, queer and the rest of us can get used to it. It'd make a great performance artist name.

In my home town, someone had sprayed 'LESBIANS' on the shutter of an ironmonger. I was never sure if it were speculation or just a friendly reminder of the existence of practitioners of Sapphic love.
posted by mippy at 8:41 AM on March 21, 2011

I've never played xbox, but I know that on a PS3, I made it about 15 seconds before I went bying for the mute button on gamer talking...between the one moron with hip-hop blaring into his mic and three others making farting noises and randomly screaming "fag," I don't know how anyone listens to that shit.

Maybe it's better on xbox and you can choose your rooms, on the PS3 it's mostly random unless you have a gang you always play with.
posted by nevercalm at 8:41 AM on March 21, 2011

Some funny stuff in here. Non-generic response pwnage.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:41 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

I was never sure if it were speculation or just a friendly reminder of the existence of practitioners of Sapphic love.

This is why graffiti needs footnotes.
posted by device55 at 8:43 AM on March 21, 2011 [7 favorites]

I like how the community mods have no qualms about whipping out "because you unlocked 725 achievements on 5/23/2010" in response to claims of "I didn't do nuttin!"

Maybe it's my job or all the damn kids on my lawn, but I've been getting more and more cynical when it comes to teenage protestations of innocence. "That laptop I borrowed was broken when I got it!" "So you sat for four hours with a laptop that had been doused with spilled coffee and didn't say anything?" "I thought it would dry!" "And what about the dripping coffee cup in your hand?" "So...?"
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:44 AM on March 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

nevercalm, it sounds like CB radio to be honest. CB radio plus Teletext. If I found my old rig and break 19 whilst playing Bamboozle, it will be JUST LIKE Halo.

If Halo existed in 1991.
posted by mippy at 8:45 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

'Sgt Sodomy' sounds like a corporal punishment service

I see what you did there.
posted by me & my monkey at 8:46 AM on March 21, 2011 [7 favorites]

mippy -- the colored avatars aren't in themselves an issue (except in that they deny Microsoft the theoretical revenue they would have gotten from charging someone for the privilege of coloring their avatar thusly), but in order to color said avatar a user's xBox has to be modded. Whereas 'modding' on the PC generally means software modding (for a comparable instance, user-added player reskins in TF2) 'modding' in the context of consoles usually entails messing around with the system's hardware and firmware.

Thus, in order to recolor that avatar, a user would have to take the same steps as a user who wanted to, oh, cheat at multiplayer games. Hardware issues matter more on consoles because many console multiplayer games are run peer-to-peer, instead of client-to-server as on a PC, there's no central server that can easily check for cheating.

That's (part of) the logic, at least.
posted by cjelli at 8:50 AM on March 21, 2011

Maybe it's my job or all the damn kids on my lawn, but I've been getting more and more cynical when it comes to teenage protestations of innocence. "That laptop I borrowed was broken when I got it!" "So you sat for four hours with a laptop that had been doused with spilled coffee and didn't say anything?" "I thought it would dry!" "And what about the dripping coffee cup in your hand?" "So...?"

It gets better when you have one or two of your own.

And by better, I mean mental health services allows you greater access to quality drugs.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:50 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

You were suspended because your bio was talking about using baby blood to paint a house.
posted by Casimir at 8:50 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The English word "gay" has been effectively redefined by homosexuals so that it no longer means "happy and carefree".

Au contraire!
posted by me & my monkey at 8:52 AM on March 21, 2011

Ah, cjelli, so it's basically akin to the rule at my school that hairdye wasn't allowed, even if it were a natural colour, because then we'd get all kind of crazy ungodly haircolours in class.
posted by mippy at 8:53 AM on March 21, 2011

Ah, cjelli, so it's basically akin to the rule at my school that hairdye wasn't allowed, even if it were a natural colour, because then we'd get all kind of crazy ungodly haircolours in class.

If it were possible to use hairdye to cheat on exams and gain A+ grades instantly without having to work for them like everyone else, then yes.
posted by Servo5678 at 9:01 AM on March 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

mippy- modding is banned because there is an entire host of problems it can cause on the system, including hacks that alter gameplay, open the system up to viruses or spybots, and generally hinder the overall safety and fairness of the network. Of course, on the financial side, modding also lets you play hacked games by bypassing the CD reader, overriding software safety checks, etc.

FTFY, XQUZYPHYR.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:03 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

And also if the school was selling its own branded hairdye that was GodApproved(tm), but not letting you purchase from anyone else.
posted by cjelli at 9:04 AM on March 21, 2011

How did you fix that, IAmBroom, when the other items he mentioned also apply? I know you think that the piracy is the big thing, and he's not side stepping that, but it also allows arbitrary code to enter the multigame experienc and potentially shit all over the network.
posted by cavalier at 9:06 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

EA Terminates Another Dragon Age II Player Account
posted by homunculus at 9:09 AM on March 21, 2011

FTFY, XQUZYPHYR.

Having things like speedhacks, wallhacks, and other things that cause server instability are a lot more financially devastating than a few people stealing it because nobody will ever want to play the game.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:13 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I remember some pretty miserable periods in Counter-Strike's history where hacking was making public games pretty much unplayable—one speedhacker would take a game from being Terrorist vs. Counter-Terrorist to being Speedhacker vs. Everybody Telling Speedhacker To Go Fuck Himself, Seriously, What Are You, Twelve Years Old.

It's impossible to remove the anti-piracy motivation from this stuff and it's reasonable to note that, but hacked clients fuck up multiplayer games in bad ways that have nothing to do with profit motive and everything to do with player experience and game balance.
posted by cortex at 9:20 AM on March 21, 2011 [6 favorites]

In every interaction I've seen between players and Xbox moderators, the moderators come across as downright antagonistic.

It's not moderation, it's slapping knuckles with a ruler.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:20 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

You were suspended because your bio was talking about using baby blood to paint a house.

Those babies were the enemy. And that's what we do, cover the walls with the blood of our enemies here in this 1st person shooter.
posted by rough ashlar at 9:29 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Those babies were the enemy. And that's what we do, cover the walls with the blood of our enemies here in this 1st person shooter.

I still want to know what the hell happened during the development of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs: The Game that resulted in that baby blood painting level. That shit was right fucked up.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:34 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The admins here have turned into guards in the stanford prison experiment.
posted by nickrussell at 9:34 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

You know, from the banning reasons I've seen from XBLPET Juliet, she seems a bit like the Jessamyn of Xbox. A lot of the reasons break down to "We banned you and your asshat because you were an asshat or acted in an asshat-ish way. Hope that clears things up!"


I like it. I like her. I approve of this sort of this.
posted by piratebowling at 9:40 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

Yeah this is why you don't pay for a service you can be arbitrarily denied.

I say as I write another check to Comcast.
posted by clarknova at 9:41 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have to darkly admire any MSFT unit that lets its director go out to Jonathan Coulton/ Paul and Storm/ etc. extravaganzas and present things like this.

(Full disclosure: I've met Stepto a few times. Art is correct that the XBox team is... not like you'd expect.)
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 9:42 AM on March 21, 2011

This blog is pretty funny.

FYI the avatar skin colours that people are banned for having are impossible to obtain by methods other than modding. It's not that Microsoft want you spend your MS Points on "blue avatar skin". There is literally no way to get blue avatar skin other than modding, and modding is against the Xbox Live T&Cs.

I'm not losing any sleep over idiots who want to cheat in online games being banned.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:52 AM on March 21, 2011

I'm OK with someone calling himself Sgt Sodomy. Sgt AnalRaperz, not so much. But really, truly, the gamertags (WoW mostly) that piss me off? After the Dragonball Z and Sephiroth derivatives, it's the Paladindudes, Thecoolrogues, any ASCII characters, and spelling your tag Redwarrrior because of course, Redwarrior is already taken.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:53 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Day9 plays a game with goofy Starcraft player names: Ancient Philosopher, Pokemon or Pharmaceutical Brand Name?
posted by empath at 9:59 AM on March 21, 2011

I work in a similar capacity for a service with lots of young users, so this site makes my happy parts warm and tingly. The little ones are especially fond of using "But! But! I didn't do it! It was my sister/brother/friend who did those things!" to which I get to reply "Well, now you know how to blame for getting your account banned."
posted by dantsea at 10:03 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Harsh?

Yeah, that's pretty lame.

the avatar skin colours that people are banned for having are impossible to obtain by methods other than modding

Wow, so these idiots are basically ratting themselves out? That's… exceptionally lame.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:04 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

"As you are not self-identifying, your use of the word *** was offensive. Next time, just say, 'I am ***'. That way there is no confusion."

LAWL
posted by effugas at 10:15 AM on March 21, 2011

there are an awful lot of parents writing in for their children. i find it interesting that they don't care what their kids are doing online even though they're funding it until their kids get banned.
posted by mlo at 10:17 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

'Mtn Dewer' is sexually suggestive? Do they think he wants to fuck mountains?
posted by delmoi at 10:21 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Insquequo omnis exulatus fuissent.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 10:23 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

'Mtn Dewer' is sexually suggestive? Do they think he wants to fuck mountains?

I think it was his profile that had "profanity", not his gamertag.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:25 AM on March 21, 2011

Mount and do her.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:26 AM on March 21, 2011

'Mtn Dewer' is sexually suggestive?

Mount 'n do 'er.
posted by Elmore at 10:26 AM on March 21, 2011

You can't really police what adults say and talk about.

What? I don't think these people are adults. Second of all, what are you even talking about? Do you know what XBOX Live is?
posted by delmoi at 10:29 AM on March 21, 2011

In related news: Ugh, DNF should have just remained forever on the vaporware list.
posted by kmz at 10:29 AM on March 21, 2011

Stepto used to be the voice of MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center). We joke that he finally found the one realm in security where there's actually accountability.

The banhammer! It exists!
posted by effugas at 10:41 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

One thing I've learned from listening to Major Nelson's podcast as well as entries here and on other similar sites (like this one) is that apparently Uno is a hotbed of creepy people on XBL. Who knew?
posted by kmz at 10:44 AM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Reading these is like eating potato chips, with bonus schaudenfreude.

And five'll get you ten that maybe 10% of these dumbshits are under the age of 25.
posted by ten pounds of inedita at 10:50 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is why graffiti needs footnotes.

Going off-topic here, but the best graffiti I ever saw in my life was in the engineering building of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock about holy Christ twenty years ago.

It was over a urinal in one of the men's rooms, and it was a series of equations that someone had used to calculate the speed of the water (and other liquids) going through the urinal's pipes.

Better yet, below that was another set of equations with an arrow pointing back at the first set and a note: "YOU NEGLECTED LAMINAR FLOW HERE".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:53 AM on March 21, 2011 [21 favorites]

there are an awful lot of parents writing in for their children

Or children writing as their parents writing in for their children. Unban me or I'll get my dad!

What mystery spice is this "25-year-old chef" talking about, anyway?

i had this in by bio "you had me at ***" now what this mean is the spice "***" not the sexual word. [...] what i mean is if there was "***" the spice in food i would automatically like it

posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 11:00 AM on March 21, 2011

But there are a million people calling other players fags and niggers all day long on voice chat and nothing ever happens to them.

No, no, no -- that's the meta-game, man. See, everybody thinks the objective in any given multiplayer match is to out-kill the other team, or to capture the flag, or defend the generator, or whatever. That's wrong. You can start off doing that sort of thing, sure, but usually pretty quickly, the real objective becomes clear, and it's this: stop at nothing to ruin the game for whoever is using slurs the most. Spawn camping? Team killing? Whatever the most unbalanced weapon/character/tactic is, and using it repeatedly, on nobody but the offending player? All fair game. And I keep with it, match after match, until he quits. Basically, I grief people who deserve it.

And then I report them.
posted by Amanojaku at 11:01 AM on March 21, 2011 [5 favorites]

Or children writing as their parents writing in for their children. Unban me or I'll get my dad!

I'm beginning to realize that, although now I'm wondering how I got sucked into reading WWIB? posts for an hour!
posted by mlo at 11:03 AM on March 21, 2011

What mystery spice is this "25-year-old chef" talking about, anyway?

They're trying to make you believe they were just using an alternate spelling for "cumin".
posted by kmz at 11:12 AM on March 21, 2011

'Sgt Sodomy' sounds like a corporal punishment service

It sounds like a major pain in the ass, to me.
posted by Decani at 11:15 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

No, no. He's a non-com.
posted by Burhanistan at 11:17 AM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

I searched and can't find a simple answer -- is "Lobby" what XBOX refers to as an instance or server?

It's been a while since I played online, so please forgive me if this is inaccurate, but a lobby is where players of a specific game find servers to play on and players against whom to play. There is usually a chat function in the lobby, which makes it a prime location for spewing nonsense to the largest group of unwilling participants.

As far as I can tell, a "15th lobby" is a lobby hosted either for the purpose of racking up achievements/prestige/honor quickly, to enable the more advanced game options that come along more quickly, or else it is a hacked lobby that enables all of those things for players who can get into them, usually via a modded console.
posted by Errant at 11:29 AM on March 21, 2011

What mystery spice is this "25-year-old chef" talking about, anyway?

I love this. Not only do I have no idea what the 3-letter spice could be, but this kid's idea that people identify themselves by age is hilarious. As though the mods are going to say "oh, you're 25? Nevermind then, that's all grown up so I guess you can do whatever you want like grownups do."
posted by Hoopo at 11:56 AM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Great, now I have a crush on XBLPET JULIET. That can't be healthy.
posted by the bricabrac man at 12:17 PM on March 21, 2011

I suspect it's an abbreviation for cumin.
posted by Xoebe at 12:37 PM on March 21, 2011

kmz, in this one case, I would approve of a game mod, and one that propagated via virus; it would re-skin the female dancers as men in the style of Tom of Finland [staggeringly NSFW]. And it wouldn't be the NPC that got picked up and spanked, oh no sir.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:19 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Those moderators are rude and annoying (Juliet sucks). The banned gamers are stupid, rude, and annoying. I guess mods win.

I had been knee-jerkingly anti-moderator for years until I came here. On the one hand, the job is punishing and stressful. I was a moderator on an American Idol board, I get that. I ended up getting...banned. On the other hand, many of the people who are attracted to moderating these communities are exactly the kinds of people you want to avoid at all costs.
posted by Danila at 1:37 PM on March 21, 2011

I suspect it's an abbreviation for cumin

That's even better. "I always call cumin 'cum'. I was like, 'waiter, take this hummus back to the kitchen and tell the cook it needs more cum in it'. I hate that restaurant's hummus, don't you? I mean, would it kill them to add some pep and a bit more lem and gar? It's always so bland!"

Do people really abbreviate 5-letter, 2-syllable words? That would save almost no time or effort. Also, having worked in a few kitchens I can tell you anyone using the first three letters of "cumin" was not referring to cumin. It was usually some dirty joke told by a coked-up assistant kitchen manager. Not even working in a factory or warehouse have I ever heard the sort of language I did working in a kitchen.
posted by Hoopo at 1:38 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Do people really abbreviate 5-letter, 2-syllable words?

Unless I missed context where this was clarified, it might be a mistake to assume that "***" represents a redacted word of exactly three letters. This would not by far be the first time I saw a Bad Word Filter use a standard number of asterisks to replace any redacted word, regardless of length.

So my guess is he actually had "cummin" in all those spots, not an abbreviation of any sort.
posted by cortex at 1:51 PM on March 21, 2011

Why are you correcting me? I'm a 33-year-old chef!
posted by Hoopo at 1:55 PM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

Nice try, buddy, but I'm one of a pair of 47-year-old sous-chef conjoined twins, so we think I know what we're talking about.
posted by cortex at 2:06 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Maybe it's my inner 12-year-old, but I find the possibility that a professional chef put, in a publicly available profile, the info that he liked "cummin" in everything he cooks hilarious. Very, shall we say, Fight Club.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:43 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

A personal favorite.
posted by contessa at 2:44 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm reasonably sure this is why 'lezbeans' was scrawled on the back of my school bus.

Actually, it was more likely an erudite but slightly misspelled reference to 16th century French aristocrat Comte Phillipe Marie de Les Beans.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:38 PM on March 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

Metafilter does like to, how you say, overthink les beans, non?
posted by kmz at 3:58 PM on March 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

GAMBIT, the video games research center at MIT, is investigating racism and hate speech in online multiplayer gaming. The results are not particularly surprising, but I'll confess to a morbid curiosity as to what a gamer would hear playing Halo: Reach under the gamertag PROUD_2B_MUSLIM, GayPride90 or Black_N_Proud90.
posted by ServSci at 4:07 PM on March 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Heh. This thread has resulted in the creation of a new achievement at Gamefilter! Huzzah!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:51 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm also pretty surprised the company is allowing them to do this - esp with exposed player names and mod names. Making fun of your customers online just seems like a risky and dumb thing to do.
posted by jopreacher at 6:06 PM on March 21, 2011

When the 'customers' are publicly and blatantly breaking the terms of service to the point of being punished for doing so, the contract has already been broken, jo.
posted by flatluigi at 6:55 PM on March 21, 2011

Back in the Internet Stone Age, circa 1989 or so, I got online for the first time with my friend's dad's Prodigy account. We could only be online for a bit at a time, because it used the phone line and his dad would get pissy if we stayed on for very long.

Anyway, we found some primitive chat rooms and were being obnoxious teenagers, cussing left and right, very typical stuff. About a week later, my friend's dad got a letter from Prodigy saying, in effect, Please refrain from using foul language in chat rooms; here are the objectionable words we noticed from your session: shit, piss, fuck..." Now that was some serious monitoring of the Internet.
posted by zardoz at 7:37 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's really ridiculous that they are trying so hard to fight the inevitable movement of dialect. You aren't going to train the entire country to stop communicating that way. These kids use those words all day long with their friends, it becomes their way to express thoughts, and then you're asking them to automatically self-censor into a sanitized 1950s-era mode of speech? Are some fundies behind this? Or are they just catering to the conservative middle-America parents who won't buy the devil's console unless they can be sure all the bad words will never be seen or heard by little Johnny (who hears them at school all day and on TV anyway)? Absurd.
posted by TreeHugger at 7:57 PM on March 21, 2011

When the customer's choice is "play these games or don't", that also narrows somewhat the customer service risks. The major console online gaming market isn't exactly bristling with options.
posted by cortex at 8:36 PM on March 21, 2011

Or are they just catering to the conservative middle-America parents who won't buy the devil's console unless they can be sure all the bad words will never be seen or heard by little Johnny (who hears them at school all day and on TV anyway)? Absurd.

I don't think not wanting to see racist, homophobic and misogynist crap in an xbox profile is a conservative impulse.
posted by empath at 9:23 PM on March 21, 2011

Sort of tangentially related...

Perennial vaporware candidate Duke Nukem Forever is slated to be released in May. Multiplayer will feature, among other things:

"In 'Capture the Babe' when you grab the other teams babe sometimes she'll start to freak out as you take her back to your base, so you have to give her a gentle smack to quiet her down"
posted by nevercalm at 11:10 PM on March 21, 2011

You were suspended because your bio was talking about use baby blood to paint a house.
posted by Brocktoon at 11:14 PM on March 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I dream of a world where no one thinks of the children.
posted by jeblis at 3:11 AM on March 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

"When the 'customers' are publicly and blatantly breaking the terms of service to the point of being punished for doing so, the contract has already been broken, jo."

"When the customer's choice is "play these games or don't", that also narrows somewhat the customer service risks. The major console online gaming market isn't exactly bristling with options."

Just because someone broke the behavior code on xbl does not absolve M$ from their responsibilities on their separate privacy contract.

Also, it's not just about xbox, M$ is a big company with a ton of products. If jonny boy plays xbox he is likely to look fondly on M$ for his OS needs in the future. Not so much if he found his assumed 'private' conversation with a M$ employee on an internet site built for the sole purpose of mocking him.

I mean if Mefi made a sister site called BanFi that did this, you can't tell me that Meta wouldn't blow up in a minute. If it's not ok for us, why is it ok for M$?
posted by jopreacher at 5:51 AM on March 22, 2011

Ok, wow. I just realized that these are all from a public forum, not from account related emails. /facepalm Awesome idea Microsoft.
posted by jopreacher at 5:55 AM on March 22, 2011

So every so often over on Reddit someone starts an outraged "Why was I banned from Steam?" thread. 9 times out of 10 the poster eventually admits using some kind of hack or messing about with their account in some dubious way, but still insists they were banned for no reason and everyone should be outraged.
posted by Artw at 6:16 AM on March 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think these are hilarious, though the content would be far more interesting to me if more of the posts had a screencap of the offending profile so I knew what they were talking about specifically instead of just generic "You violated the code of conduct for profanity" over and over again.

It's also an interesting study in what i find to be one of the more interesting conceits of immature mindsets; the sense of incredulousness at actually facing a consequence. It's a snapshot of an underdeveloped intellect that cannot fathom that his/her emotions and their severity don't amount to much outside of their own head, especially galling in the face of the binary nature of right and wrong within a system. The language is telling: the bargaining (I'll pay you money! I'll buy a new account!), the reasoning (first amendment! I didn't mean "faggot" in a bad way!), the threats (my dad's a lawyer! I'll boycott M$!), the cognitive dissonance (I'm not a cheater! I don't cheat or use mods! I would never do that! Ever! I mean it was only once but COME ON!), the overall desperation to say or do just the right thing to put one over on the powers that be and avoid punishment for their actions.

It's amusing in this case because it's so inept, but look around you: this conceit is everywhere, some people are just better at it. Keep your banhammers at the ready.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 7:37 AM on March 22, 2011 [5 favorites]

Just because someone broke the behavior code on xbl does not absolve M$ from their responsibilities on their separate privacy contract.

I'm not absolving Microsoft from responsibility for their behavior and I agree personally and professionally with a lot of the critical comments made here about the ethics of moderation. I kind of figure this would go without saying.

That said, my response was prompted by your comment mentioning the "risk" involved in the XBL mods' behavior, which I read as speaking to the potential business costs of backlash.

And "you shouldn't do that to your customers because it's an ethically questionable thing to do" is a very different statement than "you shouldn't do that to your customers because it's a bad idea from a biz perspective". When you're one of the only huge players in an ecology whose players are wrapped up to some degree in brand loyalty, exclusivity deals, social codependency, and misc. platform inertia, the risk associated with treating them poorly is a lot less than it would be if there were anywhere at all for them to go. There's not really an "I'll take my business elsewhere!" option if the service you're shopping for is Playing Game X That's Only Available On Platform Y.

And that's setting aside the question of what proportion of the genuine dongs getting up to misbehavior in the first place have gotten to the point of having the financial independence and/or moral stoicism to respond to a "you were rude to me when I made a fuss about you banning me for being a dickass" with "...and so I will no longer play on your platform, whatever the financial and ludic sacrifices that means I must make".
posted by cortex at 7:55 AM on March 22, 2011

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE MODERATES SOMETHING!

(The answer is not, for once, Hitler)
posted by Artw at 7:58 AM on March 22, 2011

Is the answer Ghostbusters 2?
posted by Gronk at 9:42 AM on March 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

Graphite?
posted by electroboy at 10:17 AM on March 22, 2011

These are some of the dumbest ban reasons I've ever seen. Gay is not profanity. Wet is not profanity.
posted by tehloki at 5:19 PM on March 22, 2011

In the same vein, don't miss Fat, Ugly or Slutty?
posted by yerfatma at 9:50 AM on March 24, 2011