It’s common knowledge these days that Forums are a great place to visit and see humanity at its worst. The trick to reading them is to develop a mental filter to keep the shit clinging to the actual information you may need away from your precious brain. Any comment, no matter how brief or neutral, is capable of starting a wildfire, and asking for video games cheats is a great way to poke the hornets’ nest.

I only really grumble about cheating if you brag about it like it’s as valid a way to beat a game as doing it the way the developers’ intended. If it allows you to enjoy the experience more, I say go ahead. Just don’t try to hide it and claim you played the game fairly; People will get suspicious when the numbers don’t add up. Obviously cheating in multiplayer is pathetic, as it ruins the experience for the other players; And you have to have some concern for their experience if you want to keep playing with other people. Besides, most X-Box 360 games can’t have cheats because of Achievement Points. X-Box Live has done a good job of turning me honest that way.

Asking for cheat codes on a forum is only something you do if you have a thick skin, and for fuck’s sake only ask once. Responding to the legion of 1337 trolls that come out of the woodworks to belittle you only starts the downward spiral. They love the opportunity to brag about how they finished it on Extreme Rectal Hemorrhaging Difficulty without cheating. Proper procedure for asking for cheats (or basically anything else, really) is ask, look for a yes or no, and close the browser. Any acknowledgement of the fuckwads only bolsters their believe in the validity of their opinions and makes them worse. Don’t even point out you don’t care what they think, because they’ll interpret that as you trying to cover for the fact that indeed, they did ruffle your feathers. Truth is, if you put in the effort to even type, “I don’t care what you think, I just want to know if there’s any codes.” (2.1 seconds at my typing speed) it means they did get to you, as if they truly didn’t matter you wouldn’t think to acknowledge them.

Seriously, alter your perspective a bit, reading Zack Parsons’ articles at SomethingAwful.com helps as a start, and sift through forums as a study of modern human interaction. They become a kind of cynical comedy routine as you watch people turn into frothing madmen over what brand of sticks Neil Peart uses. The same can be said for some bLogs (none I’ve got linked, duh), and the “Discussion” sections of Wikipedia articles.