So I was reading this article on Games for Windows titled: Don’t Call Me Catass by Jeff Green. It’s not posted online (yet?) as this is part of the October issue. It’s an interesting article about gaming addiction and there are some things I wanted to share.
Early on he introduces some terms I’ve never heard of:
They do not want to nurture or encourage the sad legion of poopsockers and catassers and pasty-faced, three-chinned zombies profiled on shows like 48 Hours and The Tyra Banks Show for having lost their jobs and families because of their inability to stop gaming. Nor do I want to be one of those people. I laugh at those people.
Honestly, I’ve known a few people who had fallen behind in college and even dropped out due to gaming addiction. One of my friend’s parents even drove all the way from Southern California to Berkeley after he got put on probation and took away his Sony WEGA TV. I personally was never a big fan of MMORPGs, but those who are say it’s very easy to get addicted to.
Having no idea what catasser or poopsocker meant, I decided to check them out on Urban Dictionary:
catass
Some one who plays a Online game and excludes everything else. Often used to describe when some one has a lot of time to spend in a online game.
Came from a article in a newspaper on Everquest. The player they interviewed played so much Everquest he forgot to change his cats littler box, leading the reported to comment his house smelled like “a cats ass”.Not every one has enough time to catass foir items in Everquest.
That guy is such a catass, he has been at the same spawn for 9 hours straight.
The explanation of poopsocker is actually rather gross, so if you’re eating, I’d recommend you skip the next section.
poopsocker
In reference to players of MMORPG’s that instead of taking a break to go to the bathroom, they take off their sock, defecate in it, and throw it aside for later disposal. Refers to someone who stays up all day and all night to play an MMORPG.
“Steve, how’d you make lvl 50 already? You were just lvl 45 a couple days ago. You friggin poopsocker!”
Ungsunghero questions why it’s not called a sockpooper instead, as it would sound more correct as the -er usually modifies the verb, which in this case is “poop”. People would recognize what sockpooper means pretty much immediately. Poopsocker just sounds like someone how socks poop, which also brings up a disturbing image nonetheless.
Anyway, it appears the original term was poopsock, so maybe that’s how the term poopsocker came about:
poopsock
1. A sock that is used as a temporary contained for faecal matter.
2. A vital part of any dedicated EverQuest player’s equipment. A poopsock eliminates the need to go all the way to the bathroom, which wastes valuable levelling time.
3. An insult used to refer to an obsessive MMORPG player who gains an unusually high number of levels in one day.SpawnSlayer13 is such a poopsock. He got from level 1 to 60 in the space of a day.
Near the end of the article, he talks about the game Peggle which Hjo3 and Ungsunghero introduced to me recently. That game is addictive, but thank god that it cost $20 for the full version, so I stopped after the 1st 3 stages.
And that’s not all. I have bailed out on important social events because I was “busy,” only to spend that entire time trying to beat Peggle.
Speaking of which, I picked up Halo 3 and Blue Dragon today. God knows when I’ll actually play them, but for $25 a pop, I thought it was worth it to add to my collection.