Zaipipa: Model of Internet Maturity

I didn’t know who Zaipipa was until recently, when I participated in the Weapons of Mass Gaming Magic the Gathering tournament. Curious as to what WMG was all about, I decided to peruse their partner channels. Obviously my opponent Daisho was a pretty interesting fellow, and he’s got a lot of interesting Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 footage.

I was excited to see that one of their commentators was Zaipipa, who apparently plays a lot of Mortal Kombat 9. I hadn’t been able to pin down many players with solid insights into the game on YouTube, so I thought I’d see what the Z had to offer.

Off the cuff, his gameplay was all right. He knew some pretty nice combos, but dropped a lot due to lag. Happens to everyone. His commentary was only slightly grating, with a few funny quips interspersed among a sea of derisive comments aimed at his skilled and inept opponents alike. We all trash talk constantly from time to time, so whatever. Some of his opponents put up a good fight, with inventive mixups and corner traps, while others pretty much got destroyed. In some matches, Zaipipa makes fun of players for choosing Ermac, then goes on to play as “Easy Mac” himself and laughs at the noobs he demolishes.

You know the saying… “If you can’t beat’em, copy them and pretend it’s not hypocrisy!”

In a few matches, the big Z even comes across players who disconnect on him as his imminent victory approaches. It’s a shitty feeling, but at least in MK9, the player who stays gets credited with a win while the scaredy-chump takes a rank loss. How does Zapipa respond? With style and class, of course. Check out his reaction at 2:14 into the fight:

Hahaha! Did you see that? “Scrubby fagboy”! I bet that guy went into a corner and cried at the thought that Zapipa inferred he was a homosexual, and one unskilled at a video game to boot!

But really… what’s the point of this article? Does it exist purely in the hopes that a phrase like Zaipipa is a jerk or Zaipipa is a homophobic bigot will rise to the top of search engine results for the low life Zaipipa? Of course not; that would be a juvenile abuse of what little power these words might have!

Instead, I submit a simple plea: when in doubt, don’t Zaipipa. Don’t let the trolls, the disconnecters, and the haters get to you. Don’t sink to their level and ignite flame wars that, let’s face it, aren’t going to change their behavior anyway. And while you may have an inclination to associate being gay with sucking at videogames, science has yet to make any such correlation. In fact, multiple recent studies have only been able to conclude that using “fagboy” as an insult is the only trait that’s connected with being a person with no redeeming human value.