Journalistic Essay~~Treading the Unknown Waters

“Shut up!”
“Leave me alone!”
“Hello, kinda busy here!”
“I’m trying to watch the screen!”
“What are you even doing here?”
The voices of the nicest kids around enveloped me like a safety blanket…if it was made of thorns, that is. Who would have guessed that a game of Super Smash Brothers would make the audience watching the epic battle become so aggressive? Where does the madness end? Honestly in my opinion I found it absolutely silly. Really, all I was trying to do was figure out what in the heck was going on and I was getting yelled at for asking simple questions.
I struggled out of the mass of kids who had their eyes glued to the TV like anxious five year olds waiting for SpongeBob to appear on the screen. When I finally managed to make my way to the back of the crowd, amazingly not angering somebody a single time, I let out a huff of angry breath. Exactly who did they think they were? Truth be told their evident addiction to this game I had no idea about was sort of creepy.
Instead of braving the crowd again and risk losing my head over a small, “Who is playing with which character,” I decided to stand at the back and observe their behavior. It was like watching a herd of animals interacting with one another. They were pushing and shoving trying to get the best spot that was closest to the screen. It reminded me of wild African animals fighting over the best drinking spot at the watering hole. They were pressed so tight together that I’d be surprised if a stick figure could squeeze through the cracks if they didn’t want him to. In that sense they reminded me of a herd gathering tightly in order to protect one another from any potential predators that might try to harm them. Though I might consider these people slightly more civilized of course.
“You had him!”
“Come on that was easy!”
“Finish him off!”
And of course my personal favorite, “Failure!” were the main conversational phrases that they managed to spit out hurriedly before returning to their trance like state. No one bothered to speak to one another, no matter if they were friends or not. Psshh, who would want to talk to someone when you could be rotting your eyes out? It almost felt like there was some unspoken rule about you couldn’t interrupt the quiet except in cases such as those, and even then you only had 10 seconds to yell out whatever expression you chose. It was a new country ruled by a dictatorship and the person in charge was Silence himself.
Once you got past the eeriness of not having any noise you could look closer upon the throng. There were so many different types of people. Boys, girls, short, tall, skinny, chubby, tan, pale, long hair, short hair, nerds that looked like nerds, nerds that didn’t look like nerds at all. It was amazing. In fact it was almost enough to give you a sensory overload. All of these different people come together in one group because they had one similarity: their love for Super Smash Brothers. My eyes roamed over their physical differences; I was used to seeing cliques that had the same physical features. This was new to me and I kind of liked it. It opened a whole new world of possibilities.
Normally cliques concentrate around having the same appearance on the outside, and having the same personality on the inside. Somehow though, it seemed these kids had learned a way around that. They didn’t all dress the same, have the same hairstyles, or any of that. They just dressed how they wanted and it seemed that as long as they were bound by their love of the game being played that was enough to hold them together. Could it be possible that any number of random kids could do that at any point in time? I began to believe so and if that was true then the entire social order could be reconstructed!
When you looked even closer you also could notice a similarity that they all shared with facial expressions. As I watched their faces would fall into a grimace together, raise into a smile together, their fists would clench and unclench almost as if they were one living breathing organism. When I looked at the small TV screen all I saw was two characters fighting back and forth. I had no idea who was winning, who was losing, or even how you went about winning in losing. Evidently I was the only one with that problem. Even though I had no idea how to digest the graphics on the screen, I always knew when something good or bad happened to one of the players by studying their facial expressions.
I eventually gave up on my crowd watching from close up and I returned to my normal group of friends that were sitting nearby. Thinking that maybe they might answer my questions I proceeding to ask my friend Zack exactly what the heck was going on. I was shocked by his reply.
“Would you just be quiet? Some people are trying to watch the game here. “
I stared at him in awe. The two of us had a very odd relationship with one another, saying mean things perhaps, but always meaning it in a joking way, but this time he was being absolutely serious.
What in the world was this game doing to people? I scowled in his direction, “Umm, you want to tell me exactly what made you so cranky today? Because last time I checked simple questions weren’t exactly illegal.” He just shook his head in my direction not even bothering to look away from the game as his did so. It was incredibly nice to know that watching that TV screen was much more important than talking to me.
Shaking my head and deciding that starting a fight wasn’t worth it I turned to my roommate, Caitie, and Zack’s roommate, my other friend, Derek. I was hoping that maybe from them I would finally get some answers that didn’t involve telling me to shut up. My hopes were quickly shattered by the fact that they were to absorbed in a card game called Speed. Who knew that in my quest for knowledge I would be left so alone?
Deciding that maybe I would try one more time to immerse myself in the group of zombie kids crowded around the television screen I learned that my earlier failure had been nothing. I made the mistake of walking up to the biggest guy in the group. He was very skinny, but he was also very tall compared to me. Before I had time to back out I spit the words from my mouth. “Who’s winning?” He gave me the worst look in the history of bad looks. He stood a good 6 inches over me and when he looked down at me his eyes were filled with what could be pure rage. I took a quick gulp. “Ummm, never mind, thanks anyways.” Within seconds I was back in my seat cowering behind the backs of my friends. I had just learned the epitome of the phrase “epic failure”.
Suddenly there were excited woops of laughter. Fists began punching the air and a steady chant of, “You’ve got him! Finish him off! Yeah!” filled the room. I could only assume that someone was fixing to win the challenge. Suddenly Zack jumps up and begins to join in the frenzy. His sudden actions scare me enough to almost make me fall out of my chair and flat on my face. Even Caitie and Derek look up to see what’s going on, an amazing feat in itself since they had been in their own little card world just minutes before.
I learned later that the game had been won…FINALLY. The cheers and random fist pumping seizures had been in honor of the winner. Amazing that I could guess that isn’t it? Maybe I’m physic or something; yeah let’s go with that one. Yet finding out who the winner had been wasn’t exactly my biggest priority. I still wanted someone in the darn group to tell me exactly what had been going on. I mean seriously I had gone through heck to figure out what in the world Super Smash Brothers was, how you played it, what the objective of it was, and all I got were mean comments, evil looks, and the ability to know that no matter how loud my voice may be I can be ignored if people really want to.
Finding my courage one last time, I walked up to a previously un-talked to groupie that I had seen watching the game with an intense look about him. If anyone would know what was going on I figured it just might be him. I walked over to him, “Hey ummm, I was just wondering if you could explain what the big deal is about this game. You guys seemed pretty into it and all and I have absolutely no idea about it.” He stared at me momentarily then with a big smile on his face gave me a reply that I had defiantly not been expecting. “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s not that great at all.” Then he walked away to leave me there with my jaw hanging open. After all that I had been through for this one game, this was how the story was going to end.