These bitter words provide a valuable insight, because they are spoken by a man who knows both the world of airsoft and the "other side of the mirror", the military. He is known from a series of videos where, during the skirmishes, it eliminates other players one by one. He criticizes attitudes that offend him as a soldier, and with which many of us have also encountered. Here is when he has to say:
When we started to play airsoft, it was loads of fun.
We were looking for some kind of an endurance sport that would be different from others. And we decided to start playing airsoft. At the beginning, we needed little equipment, mostly some small things. As we are soldiers, we already has all the equipment - uniforms, helmets, vests, etc. We only had to buy some kind of face protection and replicas.
We ordered what we needed and we went to a local meeting.
The local guys were happy that real soldiers in active service wanted to play with them. They made fives with us, they said that it was great to see us and that we would join them. We even recorded videos from these games that you can find, among other things HERE. We really go into it. Mainly thanks to great fun and satisfaction that came from it. However, over time, we began to see strange and disturbing things.
We met more and more people, behaving as if they belonged to a special forces units, and on top of acted as a know-it-all. They criticized the equipment and tactics of the other players. They instructed people where they should mount pouches for their equipment. They tried to use military tactics in "fighting" with toy weapons.
As soldiers we do not see the reason why we should use real tactics during the "pretended" firefight. Running and assaulting is much more fun. And, as you can see in our films, its also much more effective. Personally, I do not have anything against anyone's style of playing airsoft, because it's their business how they want to play. However, the problem with these guys is something else - they are arrogant and look down on people. They blame every defeat on a scapegoat. They always do everything perfectly, so they can not be blamed.
In the end, it became more and more clear to us us how woeful and just plain bad thing many of these guys do. We did airsoft for relaxation and entertainment. We did not want to have quarrels and mutual grudges provoked by toxic people. We could not understand why so many of them treat this hobby without any distance. Airsoft is a game similar to paintball, with participants wearing military uniforms and equipment, just the BBs are smaller.
There is one more thing that sets them apart - some of the airsoft players when to be more soldiery than real soldiers. Fakes that want to pass as the real deal at any cost.
In particular, those who are very concerned about deadly seriousness are the leaders of this kind of attitude. It does not get through to them, it's just chasing around using replicas shooting BBs. They consider it as almost real maneuvers on a military training ground. Airsoft has absolutely nothing in common with a real firefight. Maybe it look similar on photos, but that's it. Something dies inside you when you look at these "commandos" - how pathetic, embarrassing and childish they are at times.
Thanks to ASG I also met many wonderful people. Some have become my friends. All of them treat airsoft as fun activity. And that's what it's all about, because only here you can pretend to be a "specialist" when you can not really run 3 kilometers. Only here - no matter if you call it airsoft or a mil-sim - no one will blame you when you make yourself a commander from the get go. You may even be a complete ignorant in the subject of command and no one will mind, because you organized the game. Only here you can be a fat bearded man in his thirties and behave like a veteran.
It does not change the fact that for everyone around you will be just a big kid playing with toy guns.
Playing games with people at local meetings was really great, because it was just fun for them. But if you approach airsoft quite seriously, why didn't you go to the army? Because you are too weak and you have to increase your small ego while wearing a uniform and behaving like a soldier?
Such people ruin this great sport. This is what most normal players complain about. This is also the reason why we started to detest airsoft.
The longer we played, the more absurd situations we saw. People wearing decorations that they did not deserve, wiping their mouths with the word "reenactment". Well, being a reenactor, you're recreating the chosen unit just because you want to. Nobody forces you to behave like a soldier and build authority by using vague stagements. If you do this, you pretend to be the heroes and rob them of their due glory.
Once my pal got angry, because he saw a special unit patch on an arm of a random mil-sim player. This was the unit to which was then admitted for selection. This patch is not an ornament. You have to earn it. Wearing it by 15-year-old teenager will not bother anyone, but an adult guy wearing an insignia which he has right to is completely different.
During the airsoft games, you may be approached by such a dressed up guy who will give a lecture on how to properly aim a rifle. Of course, your argument that it is only a game and you do not have to compensate for recoil will fall on deaf years. It's the type of person that eats MRE for no apparent reason and after a while will ask you why you do not have a scope on a toy gun with 50 m range.
Sometimes you feel if you came from another planet. It happens that you are just stunned by some of their statements, because you can not argue with such a level of ignorance. A guy, a "veteran", one of those airsoft "specialists", a turbo-professional, after 10 years of attending mil-sims and shooting friends with plastic BBs, commented on the entry by the Ministry of Defense, informing about my colleague who was decorated for not shooting an unidentified target in a densely populated area. He did not see the assailant, so he decided that to return fire was too much of a risk to civilians.
And this pro-ultra specialist of mil-sims spat out a comment in which he called my friend a "weakling" and blamed for not identifying the assailant. When reading such nonsense, you boil with rage, but you know - anyone can write a comment. A 10-year-old child or an adult guy with an IQ lower than his age, too.
And bout kids. Almost all of them behave rude towards to the adolescents, who also came to shoot some BBs. Well, children and young people love to play with toy guns. It's completely normal behavior and you can not blame them. So the problem is probably somewhere else.
You know what, in my opinion, is far from normal? The fact that an adult person gives himself a military rank and forces others to turn to him using such an invented rank. Some games are full of 25-year-old self-proclaimed "ensigns", "captains" and "colonels." If you like the army, but you have not enlisted, at least show some respect. Adoring oneself all these patches and ranks is just disgusting.
The sight of guys, who think of themselves as experts on the army, because for the past 10 years they have been running in a forests with toys guns, and try to look haughty and dignified, it is difficult to describe differently as a grotesque and, at the same time, depressing sight . If something goes wrong and they loose badly, it's hard to believe how terrible they can get and what insults they use. Just underneath a tough guy, there is a plain coward that can not cope with real life. This is what makes these people so repugnant. By the way, with this attitude is destroying this genius sport.
In any case - there are a few reasons why we do not go airsofting as often as before. Soon, we will appear on several games, but certainly not this year, because we will spend some time on missions. We will probably go to Borderwar 2020, but only because of our friends and the atmosphere.
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A REMARK: I would ask you to refrain from making comments that a colleague from Slovakia is this or that. As we known - usually cool and positive people play airsoft, but we can not pretend that such people, as described above, do not exist. They are few in number, but a very characteristic and striking group of wicked individuals, compensating for some kind of life defeats in all kinds of ways (in any case, such people exist in all hobbies).
I have met with few such individuals in the past years, but usually these were memorable encounters - for example, on one of my first game, two "Americans" wanted to explain to me that some smirk with a cheap replica had no right pick them off so easily. Fortunately, there was a closed door between us, and a few other players behind me, so it an attempt to breach the door, insults and threats. Well, probably everyone has a similar story to tell.
Simply - do not pretend to be someone you are not and remember that airsoft is ONLY fun. Sometimes demanding and difficult, but only fun.
The original video is HERE. We are interested in your comments.
