illusion of Skill

funny story from something like 9-10 years ago in starcraft that illustrates what I loved though

basically you had a hierarchy of teams. on the top you had the actual good teams. below these teams you had the bad teams that thought they were good. mostly everyone in these teams had a strong tendency to be total fuckwads. below these teams you had teams that consisted of horrible players that barely played, but that were generally nice guys.
I was one of those players that was actually good. one day, I decided to smurf and I saw some guy that was a member of ~KoC~ (Knights of Camelot) and he looked lonely. so I asked him for a tryout. ~KoC~, as implied from the clantag AND clanname, was one of the bottom tier teams, but they had enough members that people knew of them, and thus that they were bad. the guy I played against was nice, but obviously no match, so I could join. wanting to sound like a big newbie, I took a name appropriate for a newbie and called myself ~KoC~BURGER.

now there was another team filled with villains. they were called the Philosophers and used Phi- as a clantag. these players would today probably be sitting around 2000 diamond league if you want to compare their sc to sc2 skills, but here's the key: if this was on SC2, they would know that I had a good 700 points more than them with a shitload of bonus pool, thus they would know that I was a much better player than them, and thus, because these guys were fuckwads: they would be sucking up to me. their true personalities would not be revealed to me, rather I would be left with the impression that "oh boy these guys sure know how to make a guy feel welcome! :-) " and I'd be none the wiser. in fact, whenever these guys saw me on my regular nickname, sucking up would be just what they did. occasionally they'd ask me for games and thank me for being nice enough to decline rather than just ignoring them....

entering their channel with the nickname ~KoC~BURGER however, what was basically a name SCREAMING and YELLING I AM BRONZE LEAGUE for all to hear, my welcome to their channel was less welcome. I ask for a game, I largely get ignored, but eventually one member throws out that I am a newbie and that there's no point in asking cause I'd just get raped. this is essentially an invitation for me to increase the level of trash talk, and sure enough eventually I sucker one of the mouthiest motherfuckers into playing.

now, long story short: I rape the guy 7-0 while his friends and teammates are watching. and here's the fucking beautiful part; his ego was so bruised and shattered that despite losing 0-7, the guy was still retarded enough to keep insulting me and saying that I was a lucky newbie. while losing 0-7. if I had been on my regular account, the guy would be throwing ovasions and thanks towards me for being willing to spend my time on a measly average player like himself.

sometimes innocent, nice guys would fall victim to bnet trolling like this, but at least for me, I'd actually end up being nice towards the guys that were nice, although I am certain not everyone did this. nice guys being saved from assholes is a positive benefit of this.

however, this aspect of people not knowing whom they are being retarded towards, and thus being allowed to pick and choose whether they are can treat their opponent with respect or disgust depending upon whether he has a high or low rank and thus higher or lower status than themselves, works to conceal the genuine assholes out there, the ones that pretend to be nice (rather than what I was doing - pretending not to be nice), and thus allows this behavior to continue. that is one of the major failures of bnet 2.0 - it's way harder to discover that someone is actually a humongous prick not deserving of my time, because everyone is nicer to people that are clearly better. and suddenly, the world loses an awesome pedagogical tool.