Online Chat: Not always a good idea

You know those cheap-o electronic toys you give to little kids that have voice recorder functionality?  Every time a kid gets one of these things he spends all day recording random crap just to hear it again.  The miracle of the microphone is a toy to them.

And it doesn’t change as we get older.  Case in point, I was playing a little Battlefield 1943 on XBox Live.  Out of habit, I connected the headset.  Not that I had anything to say, just that if it’s not connected all the voice chat flows through the main speakers and my parents don’t necessarily appreciate the foul language.  Also, if it gets obnoxious, I can always turn down the headset volume.

As a side note, Battlefield 1943 is really hard to play without an HDTV.  All the letters are really tiny, friendly icons are inconspicuous, and I can’t see a damn thing when I go into buildings (though that may be because the contrast is really screwed up on my set).

But getting back to my story, I was playing along with my mic muted because, well, no one else was talking and my folks picked those few hours to move stuff around in the basement so there would’ve been a lot of background noise.

About halfway through a match on Guadalcanal, someone logs on and decides to make a comment every time he gets killed.  And in the most colorful language, too.  Language that would shock me if I didn’t hear it from all the other 12 year olds on XBox Live, but still not something I’d want my little cousins to hear.

So after a few minutes of his rants and raves (I had hoped he would grow tired of getting killed all the time and log out, but that proved a typical pipe dream), I finally had it.  I turned on my mic and said “Dude, if you got nothing else to say, turn off your mic.”  Then I turned my mic off.

Of course, because everyone sounds the same on the voice chat, I don’t know whether the offender told me “Ah, shut up,” or someone else told him “Yeah, shut up.” 

Point is, that was the end of it.  I didn’t hear any X-rated rants from then on.

So my request to you all is: if you have a headset but have nothing to say, turn off your mic.  I don’t want to hear about it every time you get fragged or you’re asking your mom for five more minutes of play time before you have to take out the trash.  Hell, I don’t even want to hear your dog barking when the doorbell rings.  It’s really friggin annoying.

So stop it or I’ll bury you in a box.