Don’t know where gamers get their reputation for poor sportsmanship? This guy certainly deserves a share of the blame—and should be handing out free earplugs to his opponents.
Brian Nihill of Team High Society appears to be the hysterically competitive Call of Duty player whose throat-shredding tournament outburst was captured in a video clip by Zach Shelton, who goes by the YouTube handle RINGSHOUSE, but it seems safe to say he’s starved for validation. Why else would he stand up every few seconds to shriek over his screen at a team that’s already losing the virtual battle? Understand, this isn’t trash talk: it’s just formless noise.
The whole incident is difficult to watch, which is why it ended up at the top of Reddit’s /r/cringe forum, but the clear highlight arrives at the 11-second mark, when Nihill’s normally almost-masculine roar instantly glissandos up about four octaves to become the banshee wail of the grotesque alien from John Carpenter’s The Thing. If fire alarms sounded like this, we’d have no trouble getting people to evacuate during drills.
Shelton has deleted the original video, but you can still see it via the always uncompromising WorldStarHipHop.
Once the match is won, of course, he continues to chest-thump as convincingly as a pimpled console geek ever could. His boast that “You’ll never beat me! Ever!” might be meme-worthy if it displayed an ounce of imagination. From the smirking expressions of those observing the victory dance, however, it’s clear he lost face by giving vent to his guttural angst.
Time to step into my work... If my boss says something about the vid I'm walking out straight to my car and kms
— b (@HS_Briann) December 13, 2013Photo via WorldStarHipHop