Today’€™s 9/11 only here at The Blog Herald. At first I thought that I’€™ll just stay put until tomorrow, since I’€™m Swedish and not that emotionally involved in the 9/11 terror attack. Then again, it has changed the world we live in which of course touches my little country as well.
So this is my 9/11 post, a view from outside the States.
I was playing Counter-Strike online, which itself is sort of ironic. The chat console started to show messages of something going on in New York. Soon it became obvious that it was a terrorist attack, so I switched on my TV and glanced at the coverage on the Swedish channels, a mix of domestic news reports (all regular programs where cancelled in most channels) and CNN news.
I’€™d reckon most of the world realized what had happened at somewhat at same time. I was still in Counter-Strike, which certainly showed people from the worst side. Or how about this:
- A few changed their names to Usama bin Laden or similar.
- More than a few changed teams to Terrorist, from Counter-Terrorist.
- The language used became very harsh, not all wanting to be part of this change of play.
I stayed in Counter-Strike a while longer, appalled but also curious about how people act in various situations. It didn’€™t get better, and I soon dropped the game when I realized that the worst of the players weren’€™t going to claim that they where joking or even apologize to the participant that took it bad.
Whenever 9/11 comes up I think of this. It’€™s not the big thing of the event of course, not even that big of a deal really, but it really felt weird to see these reactions. Of fear, bad taste in jokes, or just real bullshit? I don’€™t know nor care, it was just weird and nasty to see.
Of course 9/11, and the events that followed, had a much larger impact on Sweden as well as me than immature (?) Counter-Strike gamers. But this event told me something about how insensible people can be. Luckily, my post about the terror attack on my Swedish gaming website (yes, it was totally unrelated to our content) brought mostly condolences in the comments, as well as serious questions and such. It was nice to see that not all gamers where behaving like a piece of shit.
My respects to everybody that is having a tough day today.
