The Curse of a Sore Loser
Your senses are focused, taking in all that you can of what’s going on and what your next move is going to be. You’ve decided to spend a bit of your free time playing one of your favourite games online for a little friendly competition, if not because you have nothing better to do with yourself for the rest of the evening. Anything to stave off that horrible feeling of sheer boredom before finding something a little more productive to work on. You rest a moment; The round just ended. You lost this time, and already you’ve gotten through several attempts in a short amount of time. It’s been up and down the whole way, in fact, and you’ve counted them; you know that you’ve lost as many rounds as you’ve won – but who’s keeping score anyway? Never mind, the next round is about to start. This will be the tiebreaker and then you can call it a day. Back into the game. You fight for all your worth, but your opponent is just as motivated. Each of the moves you make are precise, deliberate. So are his. The struggle seems balanced, but you know things look dire for you. You can’t afford to screw this up. Not now.
But you do.
One minor fault is all it takes. Not to cost you the game, oh no – the game isn’t over yet. With enough effort you could probably fix it and still win the game, but at that point you couldn’t care less. In your sheer frustration at the mere onset of failure you forfeit the game prematurely, then hastily shut down your system so your rival doesn’t get a moment’s chance to bask in the glory of his one point lead over you. You hit something hard, no matter what or how expensive it may be, and cuss out loud. You fume and rant and curse and grumble. You’re not sure what to blame it on, so you just blame it on everything but yourself. You begrudgingly turn on your system again, starting to feel rather petty in the way you acted. Anger gets replaced by embarrassment and even a bit of regret. In hindsight, it really wasn’t that bad. A little focus and the mistake could have been fixed. You probably still would have lost, but that’s generally the desired result when you play badly. Regardless, it’s just a bloody game in the end. What was the big deal anyway?
It’s always the same story. When in the hands of the professional Sore Loser, a casual little match quickly turns not-so-casual on the slightest nuance of victory. It really doesn’t matter what context it’s in. As long as the Sore Loser experiences any form of a good performance in game, they will instantly turn rabid in their pursuit of complete success, and nothing short of it will suffice. Even second place will seem like a complete failure, and will quickly be ensued by no shortage of temper tantrums and other forms of unbridled frustration.
Although Sore Losers may seem like the worst kinds of people who deserve to be banned from playing games ever again, I can say from personal experience that this is rarely something the individual is proud of. Being a Sore Loser is almost always a source of embarrassment, shame and guilt. The way such people act is very much an involuntary response; something the person does not do entirely on purpose. I say “not entirely” because being a Sore Loser can easily be described as a habit. A habit that is very much comparable to things such as smoking, overeating and alcoholism, if not quite as serious. In other words, it might not be something a sufferer directly chooses to be, but something they can choose not to be.
After the incident today that inspired this little article, as well as many others that came before it, I have every intention to break this terrible habit of mine once and for all. Perhaps in doing so, I may be able to enjoy the hobbies I love so much without being hindered by the petty, shallow and constricting fear of failure – and I don’t just mean gaming. If I find out any effective ways to counter this curse, I will be sure to post them here – but I can promise you all from now that none of them will be easy.