Trash-talk, talking smack or whatever you want to call it is, for better or worse, an integral part of competition. This isn’t a wholesale endorsement of it (the headline should be the first indicator), but rather an acknowledgment of reality.

It happens all the time in life, at parties, in class, at work, etc. But in these scenarios when people are seriously verbally attacking another person (directly or indirectly), it is called bullying. Regular people (read: not jerks) usually frown on such behavior because they recognize that it’s not nice to treat people in that manner.

But as soon as it moves from the realm of daily life and into a context where competition is involved, it not only becomes acceptable but encouraged.

Which is something I have little qualms with. Regardless of your choice of game or sport, some friendly verbal jabs at your opponents is all a part of the experience. It certainly can add to the competitive aspect of the event and motivate or demoralize depending upon its usage and who is using it.

But people during competition can get aggressive, emotional and angry, leading to fights; across all levels of play.

When this happens, lines are crossed and the game stops being fun. Of course, physical violence is only one way competitors lash out at one another.

In my little bio, you can see that one of my biggest passions is video games. I’ve been playing games longer and more frequently than any of my other hobbies. To demonstrate how much time I devote to games or how enveloped I am with the culture, when not playing games I usually sit down on the couch and watch videos of other people playing them or go to conventions and websites dedicated to them. (Not an addiction; I swear I could totally quit any time.)

Given my competitive nature and a perfect outlet for it, you’d think that I would hop on Xbox Live and trash-talk foes as I rank up and earn new unlocks.

Wrong.

If you haven’t played an online game say, in the last 10 years or so, let’s just say that like other areas of the web, it’s filled with truly awful and disgusting people, the likes of which were previously thought to be legend.

The perplexing nature of this is that, for a considerable time, the gaming community was often criticized and shunned by the mainstream. Old folks in D.C. didn’t understand it — some wanted them banned. Others across the nation and globe figured it was just another thing “geeks and nerds” do because they are “weird” or “different.”

Now gaming culture is at the forefront of pop culture; movie adaptations, advertising during major events, game-branded soda and chips, and the single largest-grossing entertainment launch in history. It is abundantly clear that gaming has arrived on the national stage.

Unfortunately, a few bad apples have managed to survive long enough to taint an otherwise open and accepting community.

“This is a community that’s, you know, 15- or 20-year-olds and the sexual harassment is part of the culture.” These are the words of prominent fighting game figure Aris Bakhtanians. And it doesn’t even begin to display the ass-backwards mentality that he and others like him share.

The most disheartening thing about it is that it isn’t exclusive to fighting games or this small subset of a community.

In a word, this behavior is pervasive.

You can’t launch a game of “Call of Duty,” “Battlefield” or “Halo” without being inundated with racial epithets, sexist remarks and homophobic slurs.

The proverbial line isn’t just crossed, it’s been spit on and trampled over.

You don’t have to be gay nor a woman nor a minority to be called these things either, but if you are and it becomes known, rather than taking a step back and adjusting their speech it will only make things far worse.

This is a uniquely online problem — as usually tempers, if not common sense, will remedy such behavior quite quickly in real life.

Yelling and screaming over such trivial matters as a basketball or football game (much less a game that takes place in a land of fantasy that 10 years ago would’ve earned you ridicule from your peers) is beyond idiotic. It’s silly.

A large number of you are guilty of just this; even I in my youth said some pretty stupid and nasty stuff. There was no excuse then and certainly not now when we’re expected to act like adults in all other aspects of our life.

Actor Wil Wheaton uttered what now has become “Wheaton’s Law,” a rule for gaming and life in general: “Don’t be a dick!”

Sadly, too many do not heed such sage advice.