The Importance of Getting your Ass Kicked

I shall confess (as if it were a Sin!) that I have been reading a lot by TB lately.  Which is some circles is probably unforgivable. But I don't really like circles anyway.  I'm more of a polygon kind of guy.  A lot of the recent postings have dealt with what seems to be ongoing issues relating to the RPA group, hypocrisy, the PC movement in paintball etc. 

Let me come right out and say I don't agree with everything Mr. TB has to say, but that doesn't mean he isn't worth reading. If an MA in Anthro studying Iraqi war refugees will teach you anything, it is that you need to collect data from every side of a story before you even begin considering making judgement calls (and that you should make your kids study IT or engineering, in Chinese).   I don't have a dog in the fight, nor do I have sufficient information about the specific events and movement in question to make any judgement.  But I will say the posts have provoked thought, which I believe to be one of TB's main goals, and which is in stark contrast from a voice that is trying to dictate thought.  And provoking thought is very different than simply provoking... ie flaming, trolling, baiting, being antagonistic for the sake of conflict etc etc.  He would like people to think,  to consider his argument, not agree with him, just consider his point of view. And while he is sometimes defensive, I suppose he has every right to be, if he feels he is under attack. These nudges of thought have been going on for a few months now, and I thought it was time to let them out. This is not the most coherent pb post I've ever done, but so be it. 

My family doesn't have a lot of traditions, but one of them when I was young was to watch 'The Princess Bride' at least once a year.  I would postulate that TPB and Calvin and Hobbes had more effect on my intellectual development than any amount of schooling.  You could obviously jump on that as a 'weakness' or 'a pity' or 'very telling' but I wear it as a badge of honor. You can learn a tremendous amount about a healthy approach to life from those two sources alone. 

One of the telling quotes from TPB occurs when the princess has been kidnapped by a pirate and they are having a discussion while they flee their pursuers.  The pirate at one point turns to the Princess and says, 

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."   LINK

This concept is one that I think America in particular has forgotten, or wants to ignore.  I believe many of the 'problems' in paintball are systemic to our society, not just the sport/hobby/LARP etc that is the many-faceted passion we all share.  For the sake of this blog I will try to shy away from larger issues of politics, economics, etc, and focus on impact of these problems on paintball.  But first point people should take away from this is that I generally don't trust people who are selling something. Hunter S. Thompson called America a country of 200 million used car sales-men, and the older I get, the more I think this is applicable. It is not that everyone is a lemon-dealer... but many of the loudest voices are.  And one of the surest ways to know if someone is a lemon-dealer is to see how well they stand up to investigation, criticism and differing points of view. 

The true believer simply and strongly believes. He or she does/markets/say/sells whatever with conviction and therefore they don't usually rise to defend their 'thing' from an emotional position, but rather from one of facts. If you say their product is inferior to X (product can be anything from a gun to a field to youtube channel to an idea to a philosophy), they will want to know specifics about your complaint and they will answer these back with measured responses.  You may still disagree at the end of the day, but believers will go on believing and working towards their goals and when they feel they have addressed your concerns professionally, they will just move on. The believer understands there are many roads into the future that could be beneficial. They have chosen the one they are most passionate about and leave open the others for pursuit.  They will take criticism in stride, leave dialogue opportunities open and conduct themselves reasonably. 

The Lemon-dealers of life jump down your throat almost immediately at the first sign of criticism. Their goal is to silence you or relegate your opinion to the background.  Lemon-dealers do not take kindly to criticism. They know, consciously or subconsciously, the lack of true value in their product and thus their primary concern is quelling all inquiry into that value. They are insecure in their position.  Want to know if someone is selling you something? Criticize it rationally and if you get an emotional response in return, your lemon-dealing-alarm should go off immediately.  If they can, they will draw on any and all support necessary to ensure they discredit your opinion. The Lemon dealer wants to corner some piece of the product market (again, material, geography, ideology) and use it for their own benefit. And don't let them wave their success in your face as testament to anything. Untold millions of dollars have been made, scammed and stolen by lemon dealers in every industry ever.  Money just means they are a successful con artist, not a worthwhile human being (Convincing you to reframe what you value in life is a blog for another day).

This is why, after spending several days digging into TB's world I feel that yes, he can be a dick, an asshat and a bit superior at times, he is also not selling anything. And since I trust that he is not selling anything, I am more inclined to at least give his opinions the time of day.   And it would also seem he is deep into it with various groups that may or may not be Lemon-dealers threatened by his message. There are many people I have met who hate TB for a variety of reasons.  Playing Scenario game rules to the hilt/letter of the law.  I understand their frustration, but I also understand where he is coming from.  There are people who just don't like losing paintball games. That's too bad, because life is full of loss and if you can't handle a paintball game, then you can't handle life.

Which brings us to the the second and probably most important quote from the Princess Bride, one that was a mainstay in our house...  "Get used to disappointment."  Link




I'm going to open this up now into a series of posts about LOSING paintball games, why the games were lost, why losing and coming back from loss is important and why I feel somewhat inclined to agree with TB and his 'ilk' about the problems with the PC movement, shameless self-promotion and other issues. 

Better buckle up. 

On SPBTV
First, a note of self-awareness.  In this post I will get critical of e-celebs.  Now it would be easy to accuse me and the other members of SPbTV of wanting to be e-celebs. We run a youtube channel. We talk about stuff and share games.  But the e-celeb movement is far greater than just paintball and is a sad commentary on our digital age.  I consider it a part of the 'reality' movement and I think it is detrimental to many aspects of society. I also can argue that SPbTV is not an e-celeb platform at all. We are, as Monty Python put it, more of an anarcho-syndaclist commune that enjoys paintball, does not mind getting more people to play (will get into this later) and happily shares vids on the internet whether you watch them or not.  Most of our 'fan base' is a few hundred people that know the contributors and thus most of our views come from the northeast region, Sweden, and the southern seaboard where Doc gets his kicks in. We don't make a penny from channel (I think we actually have made about $1.87 from google click throughs since 2009. We're gonna buy a boat, motherfucker).

We aren't using the channel to make money or to make any sort of serious soap-box stand. We just film paintball, occasionally drink and talk about paintball, and live our merry lives. It helps keep us mercilessly free of the political meatgrinder and allows us to enjoy the hobby/sport at our leisure.  In short, we are believers who aren't selling anything. We are just creating and sharing as we feel moved to do so. You can criticize if you want, but in the end we will continue doing what we do until we don't want to do it anymore... at which point we might stop... or not... but we don't have much of an agenda other than enjoy ourselves and entertain the small but loyal fanbase we have who know us as the humorous, hard-playing nutjobs that we are.

Panel 2... said no SPbTV member, ever*.
*Sober

Now let's get into it. I'm going to discuss losing, but frame it around some other important issues I have watched arise in paintball in the last few years, VIP, NJNAM, issues of sponsorship, what I am calling the MVP vs MSSPP (most successfully self-promoted player), the argument over quantity of players vs quality of games and a few more things as I write them out. Sit back and enjoy.



VIP EVENT 2008
I've only been on the field with TB once, at the shitshow known as the Viper VIP I event in 2008.  This game was rife with all kinds of problems but it taught me an immense amount about the dark, political side of paintball, the danger of self-promoted teams, the uselessness of forums, and who is worth their salt in a gunfight when the chips are down, versus who wants laurels for showing up/can't handle an unfair world.  To be fair, I have no grudge against Viper and have enjoyed his games, but again, this might be one of the perks of being a player's player and staying in the periphery of paintball as much as possible. In regards to TB, I will say prior to finding his blog a few years ago, I only knew him through the demonization on the forum prior to VIP one, where numerous people painted all kinds of dark and evil pictures of him. I chose to listen to Barney who said TB was an extremely proficient commander and not someone to underestimate. Barney is usually a sage about these things.  I managed to shoot the 'ever so evil' Mr. TB in the back of the head on the stairs of the castle at VIP, an act I was particularly proud of given the amount of propaganda we were fed in advance. (Again, he is far from angelic, but I certainly think he has an unfair bias against him) We flipped a table up to block the stairs to the tower and hit him as he came up. He argued with the ref that the rules explicitly stated that moving bunkers was not allowed and we counter argued that the table was not a bunker until we had moved it. The ref thought we had a valid argument and let it slide. touché, rule lawyers, touché.  And we got our ass beat and everyone hated him more.

But then in listening to Cilio talk about him in the years that followed perspectives change. But this was, until sifting through his writings, the extent of my interaction with him.  It will suffice to say that I bear the man no ill will, as he has never done anything against me.  The people I respect in paintball, while perhaps not fans of his, have at least a healthy respect for his capabilities as a General. Clearly the inner circles of media, industry, production, field ownership and long time veteran players have YEARS and years of bad blood between each other. And as previously stated, I lack sufficient data to justify any final judgement so I'll keep my focus on things that I know and experienced and localize judgement to those games/incidents, not on individuals, their companies, the company they keep etc.  But I think the TB forum has seen a lot of discussion about politically correct paintball movements, movements that want to be all inclusive and honor ppl for participating and this is something I have my own opinions about, and if reading the writings of 'the Evil TB' have triggered thoughts, they still deserve consideration.

Prior to the VIP, I was completely in the dark about the larger scenario world. The game was an invite-only grudge match and 'anybody who was anybody' was vying for a slot on the roster.   I won a spot on the list through sheer physical on-field performance at EMR that impressed the Professor of Ambush Alpha. He mentioned the upcoming game in Indiana and I wrote to him to see if there were any slots left. There were two, which he gave to me and my brother, solely on the merit of my performance at EMR and the promise that we would bring our A game.  This is to say we had no street-credit, no sponsors, no money, nada.  We were nobodies, which in hindsight, was greatly to our advantage as we had no 'face' to lose at the game. But we treated the opportunity to go to the game very seriously. We ate rice and peanut butter for 2 months prior to the game to save up the funds for the journey. We trained like hell. We had told the Prof that we would bring it and that is exactly what we intended to do.  We showed up to the game with an A5, a LAW, maverick pump and two 98C's. We bought one case of paint to split between the two of us. And we brought it harder and played more intensely than many who showed up with trailers, armories and a nascar list of sponsors. 

What is really important to know is that our team, this composite of all these 'awesome' scenario teams from the East got its ass kicked mercilessly by Hawk and TB. 

I've had several years to reflect on this. It would be easy to chalk it up to factors 'beyond our control' and in so doing, pass the buck/blame/responsibility.  Certainly there are advantages that the other team had.  They had TB and his command experience, as well as members of Thunderstruck, but we also had quite a lot of time and opportunity to recruit. However,  Hawk and TB recruited effective teams for winning the game... which is different that recruiting loud, self-promoting teams who feel they are entitled to a spot at the table. These teams had experience playing on that particular game field (something that most of our players did not), which certainly helps, but we arrived a day early and had ample time to recon the terrain. Nearly all of our players had to complete a 10 - 17 hour drive to get to the field. But so did several of TBs teams. These are factors that certainly played a role, but I think we lost for much more specific reasons for which we, as a team, were accountable. 

1. Recruitment of 'well-known' teams does not equal recruitment of a winning team.   

Admittedly, the VIP event was supposed to be a grudge match between the best of the East and the best of the MW/W. The problem with scenario paintball is that there remains to this day, no good way to determine who the best scenario teams are.  Worse, a team may have an excellent player, but the rest of that team may be deadweight.  I say deadweight here because this was a grudge match, a competition. If you enjoy paintball, self-promote, have a few sponsors and attend a lot of games, in the current world you have the ability (as opposed to the right) to claim you are somebody in the scenario paintball world.  The problem is that in a competitive scenario game, none of those things matter.  And a team with a single good player should send that player, not bring along 6 other guys as the coattails. To be invited to such an event and expect to be useful, you need to be either very smart, very fit/proficient  or preferably both (if you look at say TB/Cilio you have a good commander who isn't really cut out for repeated field sprints and a straight killer, so things balance).  Simply because you have a banner and sponsors doesn't make you the best. But this mentality was rife on the private forum used to plan the match.  A lot of bragging. A lot of posturing. A lot of people thinking the game was already won simply by the 'merit' of the teams who were attending.  I gained a lot of respect for some teams at this event, and I lost complete faith in other teams and could not read their postings, websites or promotional material afterwards without a smirk. This was a watershed wakeup for me and I'm glad I went through it, even if it was quite literally physically painful. Internet warriors abound. Real ones are few and far between. 

In the end, over 30 people didn't even bother to show up. In a game that was designed around 150 vs 150 and in which months of planning had gone into deciding who would be responsible for which zones on the field, this had a serious impact. To those people who stayed home at the last minute, I have very little respect. Short of a family emergency, which I could understand, you had every reason to be there. You took roster slots away from people who would have gladly gone to the game and then shorted the rest of us. When I say we ate nothing but peanut butter and rice to afford the game, I mean it.  We sacrificed for what we thought would be an opportunity to play in an epic paintball game with the best of the best and we were left hanging on game day.   But still, ~120 vs ~140-150 ish is not enough to justify getting mauled so badly. I've had better fights with 3:1 odds against. There's more to this. 

2. Too many cooks.
We had a LOT of excellent commanders recruited for the game. Prof, Barney, Decker, Herc just to name a few. The problem is that I could go on naming names. I'd have to dig out a team list, but we had at least 10 people who have commanded games. These people were assigned as group leaders for the zone control. This created an issue when things started to go south.  Imagine a room with Patton, Bradley, Eisenhower, and half a dozen other Generals with only a loose understanding of who is really the decision maker.  With too many General officers we had too many shifting thoughts on tactics and movements. In a 150 player game you need more reliable shooters than you need field-grade commanders. And every commander that got recruited wanted to bring along 'his' guys that he trusted and vouched for. We ended up with a very top heavy team structure. A 150-player game is an Army company, it's 4 platoons and an HQ. At most, you need 2 field grade commanders and good comms with your FCs/PLs, who are adept at leading, but not necessarily picked from the General-caste. We had a General, 2 XO's, 5-6 FCs (also former generals) with their 2nds, the comms units, dedicated roleplayers, Team and Squad leaders and on and on etc etc. It was fun, of course, because everyone had a 'role' and felt important. But tactically it was a mistake. When you break it down, over 25 people, more than 1:5 or twice what an infantry line unit would field, were in leadership positions or redundancy leadership positions. The HQ needed to be slimmed and the rest of the force needed to be shooter/tactically heavy, with people who could take initiative and have the fitness and shooting skill to win paintball while the HQ set forth clear, concise objectives.   This is not what happened. At all.

With everyone stirring the pot and having their own ideas, we lacked a necessary clarity of purpose. Tactics were constantly shifting. The FC's were pulling people out of zones for missions. Things got confused. The airdrops were a disaster.  Viper has gotten a lot of flack about the helo-drops over the years. I understand what they are trying to simulate but their execution has always been somewhat lacking.  But the opposing team used theirs very effectively, so I cannot say we lost the game do to the helo-drops.  But the mis-use of them contributed. We would be lined up and annihilated and have to wait another 30 minutes while Cilio and his boys ran amok on the field knocking out missions.  As a Player's player, there is little more frustrating than having to sit on the side-line because you got helo-dropped into an open field for the 4th time in a row.  I don't know what happened at the command level, and I respect most of the men who were there in positions of leadership, but too many leaders was a problem. 

3. Not being able to handle Loss.
Hemingway said that a true Man can be destroyed, but not defeated.  Interesting concept.  Hold that thought. 

 We started losing the VIP from the first hour.  The Zone my group was assigned too was supposed to have 40 people. We had 7. We were given the same task. Take and hold the zone.  Obviously this didn't work. However, since the 7 of us that did show up had been recruited for recon skills, we fought a decent guerilla action in our area all day long, hiding and sniping, harassment only.  We managed to get Paco because he was talking to a ref about using a sniper card, so we knew he was a HVT when we opened up on one of our ambushes.  But that was about all we could do. The group commander with the command radio fucked off to join the mission team and left us with nothing but our inter-squad coms. We were left to our own devices for the entire day and if we survived the suicide helo-drops, when we got back to our zone, it was always overrun.  We picked a hilltop as our rally point and would put out skimirshers just to slow down advance and prevent tapeline runs, but without comms, things got so confused during one cat-and-mouse skirmish with Damage Inc that our own command initiated an assault on the hilltop where we were hiding and shot several of us in the back. There was massive failure going on all over the place. This is not to say that many players brought it as hard as they could, but as we started to lose, morale began to plummet and we needed to reorganize, not come apart. Some of us did that in small ways, but other ppl bailed.

This is where the Hemingway quote becomes applicable.   My brother and I only spent one hour of the entire scenario game play off the field voluntarily (which is to say, when not dead).  The rest of the time we were always in it, trying to at least do the job we had been assigned to do (day 1).  I have heard from reliable sources that 2 hours after the game started, significant numbers of players on our team were threatening to pack up and go home. they were in the parking lot to this effect, while the rest of us were getting mauled in the woods.  We opted for destruction over defeat. It was quite obviously that we were losing and badly.  But this has happened to lots of people in history. Thermopylae, Bastogne, Ia Drang. I am not comparing the scale and importance of those events to a backyard wargame in Indiana, but rather what people chose to do when in those situations. Admittedly, they did not have the option to pack up and go home, their choices were fight or die, but in a paintball game, there should be no excuse for not double-down and fighting on, rather than trying to pussy out and then blame XYZ (producer, field, other general, cheating etc etc etc) while you pack your bags. That is defeat. 

4. The Danger of Hubris

Perhaps this ties back to the big name teams that were recruited and the shit that was talked up before the game. They set the bar extremely high (we will roll over them in the first hour), they talked it up to all the 'lesser' teams who weren't going (WE are going to the Invitation-only VIP event and we are going to kick ass), and they believed in their own hubris (I think I am awesome therefore I am). When we got our teeth kicked in in the first hour these narratives began to come apart. Not only would we have to fight very hard to make any semblance of a comeback, but there was a very clear possibility that we would lose and that they would have to return to their various operational theaters, bearing the shame and blame for a crushing defeat. People seemed much more inclined to excuse what was happening than admit we were playing an inferior game of paintball, face that fact and try to overcome it. 

Josh and I, and Tack & EOD, had very little to lose. We were the riffraff, the unknown dregs that nobody knew. We came to ball and we intended to do it. So we did not feel this pressure. But I pray that wherever I end up in paintball, I never reach the point where I am packing my bags and thinking up excuses to leave so I can slip away.  Your life is never at stake in a paintball game, only your reputation, which is not helped by exaggeration, self-inflation, pre-game smack talk and then running away with your tail between your legs because things didn't go your way.   At the very least, if you fight an honorable fight until the bell rings, you can redeem some measure of respect.

The night game rolled around.  This was supposed to be an all-nighter. These were, after all, supposed to be the best of the best. Josh and I stood down for the dinner break, put on dry, dark clothes, rechrono'd and were ready to go. At the start of the night game, we had maybe 30 players at the spawn point. 30.  the other 100... parking lot, sleeping, doing whatever, but not playing this game that they had talked about, promoted, bragged and hyped for months.  Enough said on that point. I don't know how many the other team fielded, but it was more and they brought it. 

The 30 of us that played, I think, enjoyed quite possibly the only few hours of success that the team had at VIP. People had brought generators so we lit up the area around our base like a state prison. I had cut out about 15 'Ivans' from Pizza boxes, head and shoulder silouhettes. We put them in the windows of the base so it looked like there were more people inside than there really were.  Repeatedly during the night refs were asked to go into the base and check players who were actually Ivans that had been shot up. This was probably the one tactical stroke of genius I contributed at all to the game. At one point there were only three people defending our base and the Ivans drew sufficient fire to keep them alive as well as pissed off and sewed some doubt into the attackers. 

We also rigged LEDs on the hill in the back that was our rally point and defended the tapeline against incursion.  I don't know if the mission team got anything done, but I do know that at night, it was truly a battle in the sense that there were smaller number of dedicated players on both sides (we were still pathetically outnumbered through fault of our own sides laziness) who got to duke it out. Respect to everyone who played that night. I had a good time. Stressful but solid. And I was pissed when we were told to stand down only a few hours after it began. So much for fighting the hard fight.

The next day people began to leave, saying they wanted to get an early start on the long drive home, so we had even less people while the other team was starting the morning fresh and riding the wave of success to the win.  We linked up with Tack, collected all the LAW cards and just ran around breaking things with rockets.  We had fun. We channeled our rage and got things done There were issues of wiping by the enemy that we witnessed, but no doubt, people on our side wiped too. Our squad played a relentless and brutal second day, brought it every hour and left everything on the field.  In the end the score was something like 20000 - 600 or some equally pathetic spread. 

We went to the game with high hopes and expectations, buoyed by the bravado of teams who said they were somebody.  We got our asses kicked and watched as many people gave up when the going got tough. Even this I can maybe let slide. No one enjoys being shot up day in and day out, but this is a risk we signed on for when we committed to the game.  It was after the game when the excuses began to flow that I really became angry and that is an anger I have sat on for years. We lost because the other team was better, because they took advantage of opportunity that we failed to capitalize on, because we compounded our errors and because people on our team did not have, within them, the skills, determination and grit to earn a win.  Excusing this away afterward always angered me. It was not done by everyone, but the loudest voices were the voices of rationalization.  This anger that was fueled again at NJNAM 09 (with some of the same characters present) and one that I think is not helped by the PC movement, the one where participating is winning and everything is friendly. Trying to insulate oneself and others from Losing is a terrible idea. You don't learn anything from getting a purple-thanks-for-coming award. That just teaches you to show up.  You also don't learn anything by expecting the win on a silver platter based on your 'record,' 'name' or sponsor-list. Life, paintball, whatever, doesn't owe you anything.  I have seen what hard work produces. You want to see hardwork? Find a game that Dave Cilio is playing, find Dave and try to keep up. Try. And after you have been run ragged, outmaneuvered, outshot, base-dropped and destroyed the other team, tell me that you still think it is fair that a 15 year old who did such-and-such deserves to be rewarded or told they are the best?  If you tell some little kid he is the best, he is going to believe you and then you know what happens? Stagnation. 0 personal growth. Why get better when you are already awesome?!   

MVPs are Earned on Game-day.

The few times in paintball I have won an MVP I didn't even know it was happening. Two of those awards have been at fields in foreign countries where I knew NO ONE and did not speak the language the game was being conducted in (Russian and Finnish aren't my forte). In Finland, I didn't even have a gun since it was held up in customs. But I lost myself in the game and ran my heart out as a medic and at the end of the day I got a nice trophy and some recognition for those efforts and that was awesome. However, I also didn't go to those games expecting to win anything. I just went to play and it just so happened that my style, effort and commitment got seen and recognized. But having also Generaled, I know that there are anywhere between 5 and 50 people at a scenario event putting in that same level of effort.  It is bad enough to have to try and single out one of them if no clear 'best player' emerged.  To further insult them by handing it out to someone who didn't do any work OR to hand it out to someone who was just a lapdog for the general all day is ridiculous enough. Now we want everyone to feel like they accomplished something. And this is somewhere where I agree with the 'denizens' of the TB world. I have run with Dave, with Tack, with Barney... I know what the top players are capable of and I know how much they put in to it and when they receive recognition it is recognition that they earned through deeds done on the field. Dave dropped a base in the middle of the night after falling off a cliff and slicing his leg open! MVP EARNED. In blood. 

You're all Dead!  Now... take me to the ER. 

... and at those same games I have seen other ppl emerge from their cars halfway through the morning expecting that they will get an award because they talked a lot of shit on the forum or because they just feel they are awesome or because they graced the field with their presence in the 11th hour or for a dozen other reasons.  Every kill they make they run back to the general and recount the story while the game is in progress. If you have to tell someone you're the MVP, you're not the MVP.

'Promoting the 'Sport''

Now I differ from many in the TB camp because I don't mind that people encourage others to play the hobby/sport. Yes, I understand the difference between a big game and a true scenario and I understand that by upping the numbers, you water down the 'gaming' experience and put more money in the pockets of industry, field reps and producers. I get that, I get the business motivations behind it as well as the desire to have a mentally stimulating game that is held in by the true scenario players. But I also think that if we want to reach any point where paintball has enough credibility to actually have sponsorships, media coverage outside of paintball specific press and wider acceptance, then for the time being, bringing more people into the hobby/sport is good. It generates revenue and public interest and that in turn can foster research and development, investment, new products and most importantly, genuine interest by non-paintball-focused tech companies (which is where we need to go anyway to get better quality 'scenario').  So  I have no problem with people promoting the hobby/sport... but I do have issue in how they do it.  Getting friends and coworkers to come out and try it is one thing, even using social media (youtube/facebook) to advertise paintball. But having loyalty oaths is something out of Catch-22. Claiming to be the one voice, or the one way doesn't jive with me.  I hate absolutists. I really cannot stand them. The world is a giant gray mess.  People sell absolutes because they are comforting and easy to understand.

This concept that everyone is a winner is an absolute type of idea. And it's not true and it's harmful and it robs credit (and thus incentive) from people who do real work on the field, people who are knowledgeable and skilled and can teach other players to (GASP) BE COMPETITIVE.   That's right. Competitive. As in winners and losers, boys and girls.   So yes, I am against PC movements in general, and especially if they are absolutist and/or exclusionary and/or don't tolerate dissenting opinions.   People like to blame my generation for being lazy, coddled, entitled etc.  First up, we aren't all that way. And secondly, if some of us are, its because the previous generation made us this way.  Trying to protect and insulate kids from loss and disappointment is something I understand. Nobody wants their kid to feel like a loser or be disappointed. But we don't live in Utopia. We live in a painful, unfair, miserable world.  So a generation of boomers coddling their kids and catering to every whim is as much to blame for those kids feeling entitled as are the kids themselves to blame for their lack of motivation and personal accountability. We have a generation that has been insulated from consequences and is now blamed for not taking accountability, while at the same time these protective movements remain ever-pervasive and shield individuals from the marginal suffering and discomfort of first-world problems (like losing a paintball game or overhearing someone say a bad word).

And that makes me bad for paintball. 

Kids need to learn to drive through suffering, overcome difficulty, lose and get back in the saddle. 

Paintball is an EXCELLENT opportunity for them to do it. It gets them off their fat asses and away from the TV. It teaches teamwork, strategy, honor, stalking, shooting, courage, friendship, decision-making, risk-reward analysis. All kinds of awesome skills, both direct and indirect, can be gleaned from paintball.  And yes, maybe even everyone could and should play it (don't worry, they won't).  But if you want to use it as a life-educator (instead of simply recreation) then for god sake it has to mimic life. I am personally for setting up deliberately lop-sided games to test resilience. This can't be done yet, but if I get this field built in Italy, where they have no expectations, expect to see some creative weighting of teams.  Teaching everyone that they are just inherently awesome for showing up is detrimental, not to paintball, but to persons. You are not inherently awesome.  Ernest Shackleton was awesome.  Neil Armstrong was awesome. Michael Jordan was awesome. Cause they OVERCAME SHIT. And you know what else, MJ LOST A BUNCH. 

Here's a little quote from him I like:  "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

That's right. He lost. Imagine if he showed up and every time he lost people were like "Oh that's okay, the important thing is that you tried."   No. No one (at least certainly not enough ppl, thank god) said that to Michael. Not even Michael said that to Michael. He probably lost sleep, stressed and hated himself, esp after missing those game winning shots. You know how I know that? Cause he knows it was twenty six.  Not 'a couple', not 'several', not 'a few dozen.' Twenty six. And he can probably tell you the games, the score, exactly what was going on when he failed. And you know what, he kept going and improved and became awesome at basketball and is now a legend. You starting telling everyone their awesome and they'll start thinking they are legends inherently, and then the rest of us won't have anyone too look up to because the good players, the actually legends, will go put there effort into something else where Men are Men and Women are Women and we're not all singing kumbaya in the safety zone around the big binder of loyalty oaths. If you want to do that, go start an activity called 'singing kumbaya in the safety zone at paintball games around the big binder of loyalty oaths.'   This is a sport/hobby where the object is to outwit, outmaneuver and shoot your opponent, even sometimes in the face. It's pretty awesome just the way it is. Don't mess with it by trying to litigate or dictate the equality of winners and losers. Life isn't fair. Part of learning to live is to learn how to use the cards you are dealt effectively. Telling everyone that just 'how you play the game' is important is childish and juvenile, even if it comes from a place of good intentions. 

E-Celebs and 'Sponsorship'

I talked about real legends, people who are good at the game. So let us segue here into the E-celeb bit.  We already know sponsorship really doesn't mean jack in paintball. They are great and fun to have, but they do much more for the company than the player and have become less and less about skilled players and more and more about lotteries and/or self promotion. This is not bad or evil to say, it is just the truth of paintball sponsorship. There are still great companies out there supporting good players and bad alike and I not trying to attack that system. It's too big and proliferated to think anyone could make a dent in the system, and it makes economic sense for a company to 'sponsor' someone they know, like and trust, or someone who makes them look generous and awesome, regardless of that player's skill. Little companies do it. Big companies do it. It just is and I'm just calling a spade a spade.  But unless a sponsorship is paying your bills, your plane tickets, your car payment, your mortgage, I really don't care about whose billboards you're whoring for.  There is Sponsorship, which would do all these things for people who have a demonstrated skill and prowess for the game and therefore 'earned' a sponsor.  Dave (player) and Barney (player/commander) are two of the few scenario players I can think of who I could see being legitimately sponsored/comped significantly.  The issues is that they both have full times jobs and lives beyond paintball so even they are not 'fully' sponsored.  Most everyone else out there preaching to high heaven about their sponsors is little better than this: 

They know it. You know it. I know it. No one wants to say anything about it because that's just the way things are but we all know they get a discount on the products in return for promoting them... and that's it. The deal may be a little sweeter here and there, but that is the basic gist.  If they have a youtube channel or a blog with significant reach, then they might even get stuff for free. This does not mean they are a good player, good for the hobby/sport, or even a good person. They get 'sponsored' because they harassed a company with how awesome they are, know someone who knows someone, impressed someone at a single game and/or have social media reach.  The problem is that reach is both fleeting and has no reflection on their skill as a player.   If you have been around for awhile and woken up to things, then I don't have to tell you much more, but if you are new to paintball and 'impressed' by people walking around preaching about sponsorship, don't be. There was a time when I too was immensely impressed, but paintball sponsorship is a vehicle for the industry to sell more stuff.  And unlike Redbull supporting this guy....

Bitchin'! Redbull sold me this spacecapsule for 15% discount and i might get 20% next year if I get my friends to buy it too!

.... the paintball industry doesn't have to shell out millions of dollars to put their name on a player or team, because the paintball culture is so obsessed with 'getting sponsored' that they will do it for a merchandise discount. It costs the industry a minuscule amount of profit margin, but the team/individual typically immediately feels validated, special, and superior. When someone comes to you and says they live in Malibu in a house that their paintball sponsorship helps pay for, you call me and let me know so that we can be impressed together. Til then, keep your grains of salt near to hand.

This is less of an issue in Speedball because I think speedballers are much more in tune with the industry and probably less prone to the fantastical self-aggrandizement and imaginations that people in scenario/mil-sim so easily buy into. Why? Probably because speedball remains focused on competition... in which there are winners and losers... in which hard work is rewarded and anything you say can easily be decided on the court. Your smaktalking can be validated in a matter of minutes in front of spectators and if you aren't as awesome as you say you are, everyone will know pretty damn quickly.  In addition, companies sponsoring speedball teams incur higher cuts to their margins. The cost of playing speedball competitively includes gear, training, practices, training camps, managers and coaches, much much more than just mask, tactical vests and cool looking 'woodsball' guns.  With greater cost comes the desire to ensure the sponsorship is money well spent, so speedball teams with a laundry list of high end sponsors are more likely to be talented and well trained than a scenario player with a similar list who 'gets excited' about their products in public instead of using them in tournaments streamed live and watched around the world.   Just remember that the scenario player listing all their sponsors probably still pays about 70 - 80% for their stuff and isn't being flown around the world on any company dime, and is incurring next to no cost to the sponsor. And also beware of the self-sponsorship. If I start a company called Awesome Industries and then use that company to sponsor myself and my team, there might just be a conflict of interest there. Just sayin'.
There are always a few exceptions, but those are reserved for either extremely skilled players or for extremely good self-promoters.

If you have been in paintball long enough to love it and have decided to stay with it because you derive satisfaction from playing, good. If you haven't reached this point of Zen yet, I will warn you that if you get obsessed with sponsorship, you will only get frustrated, even more so in the world with Youtube. Self-promotion works two-fold.  One, it helps the individual feel important and validated, and two, it generates reach, which is turn can be parlayed into discount/free stuff.  Again, none of this has anything to do with paintball skill. I would advise young/new players to avoid eating at the trough of the self-promoters, not because I have anything personally against them (I don't bother to care), but because for your own personal development as a player, you will not learn anything and you will only feed the problem.  You should go out and find players who are much better than you.  Here's a hint, most of them don't have a youtube channel.  Go out, find those players, and play with them, talk with them, LISTEN to them, watch them.

Here's some basic tips to help you out:
Your gun really doesn't matter. Keep it clean and shooting between 250 and 300.

Your mask really doesn't matter so long as it protects your eyeballs.

Your camo style doesn't matter if you learn how to move (so long as it isn't fire-engine orange... which could be a detriment).

Your style of play should be acquired through watching others and trial and error, not pre-determined or adhered to by agreement in advance. You hamstring yourself and your ability to grow and change.
Always be open to changing up your playing style and challenge yourself annually (Recommendations: pump play for a year, play with your non-dominant hand for a year, play with limited paint for a year etc etc)

Whether you are sponsored or not doesn't matter at all and has very little if anything to do with your skill as a player. Don't ever feel diminished by or inferior to a sponsored player unless your experience with them makes you respect them (which is actually unrelated to their sponsors... see how that works?)

If I can barrel tag someone dressed like this, you don't need to spend $300+ dollars on [insert latest camo fad style] for this season.

Trust (just about) no one! 
Nothing that any of these talking heads is telling you matters (including me!), this applies to life, not just pb, but we'll keep it focused.  If you want to get better at paintball, you have to play with and against people who are better than you and focus on specific skills and techniques.  That means you're going to have to lose. No one ever got better watching someone else talk about how awesome they are. Nor did they get better winning all the time. People get better because we go out and problem solve and we figure out how to do new things to win.  So stop eating mental garbage and worrying about noise noise noise and just go out there, play, and get your ass kicked really really hard and then figure out what you did wrong.
I've seen Dave drop a base so quickly the other team accused him of cheating and had the game reset... and he dropped the base again in just as little time. That is physical skill.  I have watched Barney role-play and General his way to a dozen victories and remain above the political shitshow. That is mental skill.
I don't know what type of gun either of them prefers and it doesn't matter. Just take all those concerns and chuck them. Play with a goddamn slingshot. It will teach you how to sneak and make good decisions in a hurry.

This is oldskool. maaaybe 10bpm. And think of the money you'll save on paint! 

The most important thing you can do is learn to lose. To lose with grace, dignity, after a hard fight, and then get back up and try again. Don't ever feel entitled to anything you haven't earned and especially don't let other ppl get away with this ideology. Anywhere in life. It makes us lesser, weaker people, as a whole. You may have to adjust your youtube subscriptions or at least the mental lens you watch with, but it will be worth it in the end if you actually want to improve.




NJNAM 2009 may have been rigged. I don't know. Again, after any game the rumor mill spills excuses on to the interwebz to accommodate the losers and strip satisfaction from the victor (this is why you should probably reduce use of forums as well).  What I do know is that at one point Tack, Ricky and I stood with our feet against the command tent/spawn point shooting in every direction while Dave, Norbert, Paco and about 60 people from the other team stormed our base area.  Nearly every other player on our team ran from the field outside the tapeline. Fled. Routed. We're not talking a few people. Several hundred running through the tapeline like it was a marathon finish line. And this was the third time that game that Dave and his boys pulled this move.  Maybe it was because our General had pissed someone off. Maybe it was because we had 'been given all the walkons to make up for the difference in numbers' but maybe it was just because our team was sucking and couldn't figure out where to dig deep. Tack and Ricky and I stood there with our feet on the tent which essentially made us immortal and took shot after shot until we were surrounded and the game produced called it.  We fought both days and night until we were burger meat and then we never played against Dave again. But when the game was over and we had lost as team, the 5 or 6 of us who had stood there surrounded while everyone fled had maintained our dignity. We had fought a losing battle with honor and the excuses were for other people. If you must lose a paintball game, and statistically, that is going to happen to you, then you should not be among the excusers. Be among the ones bloody and ruined at the end who were beaten on the field, but not broken and beaten in spirit who slink away to take potshots on forums. There are no excuses that really justify leaving or quitting in a way that also allows you to 'win' or 'equalize' the events on the field.  You can decide to leave, and that is fine, it is a decision, but these come also with consequences and you must be able to live with them.  And if you can, fine. I've quit a few things in my life for good reasons and I live with the consequences. But you can't make an excuse for why you quit and then have 'ifs, ands, buts and caveats' to try and cover up the consequences, to try and dodge them. So don't try. If you can't handle loss, don't play paintball. And check yourself, because Life is going to knock you around something fierce.  



So I have wandered and drifted in my ramblings and rantings and I probably have more to say or could have done a better job but so be it. I didn't mean to offend anyone, but people really need to become more self-critical.  Criticism is healthy. It's like maggots eating dead flesh. It's gross and sticky, but in the end it is better for everyone than gangrene. Trust me. Been there.

So go out there. Play your heart. Play with what you have, don't worry about the next big thing. Your budget for new gear will get you to 2 years worth of games, and you will learn a lot more playing more games than you will playing one game with a new gun. Take your licks. Learn from your mistakes. Don't run your mouth (because then you give your opponent the opportunity to rub it in your face, a satisfaction that I never have allowed any opponent), Don't care about sponsorship too much, and don't eat at the pigsties of self-promotion when you can go out and play/learn from actual masters.


Your homework for 2013 

I want you to pick a fight.... pick a fight with a total stranger... and I want you to lose. 

Lose a game by a margin of at least 50% of the points while only leaving the field for paint and air for a rental-level or pump gun. It's harder than you think. You'll have to pick your team and event wisely (the game producer has to not bend the rules to buffer a losing team and your team will have to perform terribly). Write me an email when you've done it. 

/Rant

Benny Out