I found this comic really amusing when I was younger

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/ptero

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHpDPuh8A2Q

Matthew "mgib" Gamerson

Honestly tf2 taught me a lot of important lessons about leadership and helped me develop important skills in stress and anger management. I also met and got to know a ton of super nice people and gained a lot of important social skills and confidence that have had a big impact on my life outside of the game. I also found a lot of new music to listen to through watching tf2 videos on YouTube, from various tftv threads and streams and of course my friends. Hanging out in mumble definitely made it easier to hold a conversation with people in real life for me at least. Most of all though tf2 was just fun way to spend free time and i found it enjoyable to watch, and to practice on order to become better at something whether it be jumping, dming, surfing, pugging or playing on a team.

When i was younger I struggled a lot with depression and had a very negative and bleak outlook on life in general. In high school i used tf2 and pugging especially in order to cope with stress and anxiety. Looking back on it now it was really more of an addiction than a hobby--i would use tf2 as a sort of fantasy world in order to escape from all my problems in real life and try to clear my mind. In retrospect this obviously wasnt a very good way of dealing with things and as a result my life became more and more stressful as my grades dropped and i lost motivation to do pretty much of anything in real life because tf2 was the only thing that could make me happy anymore. Or so i thought at least...

Many a night would be spent staying up till 2am pugging and I even remember staying up late gaming on school nights before finals because i found it so hard to sleep. My habit of playing tf2 late at night led to pretty severe insomnia but I learned how to cope with it and do things like reset my sleep schedule or just pull myself away from the endless cycle of playing "just one last pug"

There was even a phase when my parents would turn off the internet or unplug my ethernet cable to get me to stop playing all night. Even then i found ways to get around it by using my phone or changing my IP and when that failed i would just grind jump maps offline late at night and listen to music to feel better. I developed a lot of bad habits from playing too much tf2 but honestly I dont know what I would have done without it to go to, it was my kind of safe haven where I could always go to no matter how fucked up the rest of my life was with grades slipping and tensions with parents and depression et all. Once i got past my way of using tf2 to run away from and purposefully avoid dealing with my real life issues, tf2 became something to look forward to and it definitely helped motivate me to finish my school work--and then play. It's definitely good to get away from things, at least for s little bit, but eventually real life problems have to take precedence.

I was fortunate enough to play with mgib, ktb and spello in my first team and they somehow tolerated the angsty 17 year old me and showed kindness and support through my shenanigans (like when i stayed up all night doing jump maps and had a nervous breakdown before an open match). I distinctly remember being petrified with anxiety during the rollout of one of my very first esea matches when mgib told me that I didn't have to let my emotions rule my life--which i quickly dismissed as being obvious but after the match I thought about it and it had a profound impact on me both in and out of game. Later on I asked spello what was his secret to being positive gamer and his response resonated with me:

At the time I didn't have a clue what mindfulness was but after a late night of reading and watching youtube videos I tried to meditate for the first time and was blown away by it. As cheesy as it sounds I've found that through practice (both formal and informal) I have a gained understanding of how to better adapt and respond to stress and live life fully. I remember my parents and teachers saying it was like I was reborn a completely different person and I felt the similarly but felt that I was more myself. As I continued practicing I felt more and more comfortable in my own skin and 'found myself,' so to speak.

I remember at first feeling insecure and embarrassed to tell my real life friends about how I played a cartoon shooter competitively, but eventually through meeting and talking to so many people in the tf2 community online I gained social confidence enough to be open about my passion in tf2 and not fear being ridiculed by my classmates who played LoL or CS (to think at one point I worried about what a silver 4 CS player thought of me for playing tf2 lol)

This year i found many of the leadership and teamwork skills I learned through tf2 could be applied to "real sports" as well. For example in s21 IM grand finals we were down 3-0 on gullywash after a convincing first half and I had zero ubers and one drop. As cliche as it sounds I remained calm and resisted the urge to give up or get all demoralized and as a result we ended up coming back 5-4 in the last few minutes of the second half. Though I didn't exactly go running through the hallways the next day boasting about my accomplishment it did bleed over into my ultimate frisbee games where I had a newfound confidence and trust in myself. Funnily enough in one of our biggest game a similar thing happened where we immediately went down 3-0 and when I was tempted to give up I thought of tf2 and remembered the concept of outome independence. I was proud to see that in this game too our team was eventually able to recover from this initial deficit and edge out a slight victory at the end of a hard fought game.

From my experience it is really easy to get carried away and let tf2 become the most important thing in your life/ignore your real life day to day problems, but in moderation and with the right attitude it can have an enormous positive impact on life. I've found that something that I really enjoy most about tf2 is using it to decompress and practice jump maps, because over time it is very rewarding to hone in and concentrate on mastering certain specific skills and tracking your progression as you are able to complete harder and harder jumps.

I originally downloaded tf2 because it was free to play and something to do in the summer to kill time but I never expected to get involved in such an amazing community or to meet so many nice people both online and in person (courtesy of GXL and a small local meetup in boston last year). Even as i started playing competitive my goal was always just to have fun and i never imagined I'd even make it past ugc silver, not to mention esea invite. All in all I think tf2 has had an immensely positive impact on my life and though if I may have benefited from spending a little less time on my computer I don't regret any of it.

Edit: I wrote this mini novel on my phone appologies in advance for grammar/spelling errors

tl;dr: gained social + leadership + teamwork skills & confidence, discovered mindfulness & learned to better control my emotions & handle stress (in and out of game)

I used this for a while but stopped when I realized that my teammates would call things "the white hat scout is lit"

I feel like being intentionally toxic is a lot more of an accomplishment alder, usually it's just mindless negativity but there are some notable exceptions
I'd like to point out the common factor in this list is mustard overlord himself...

Though air did get humorously angry angry with you & the team in the preseason, he and the rest of eL cLaSsIcO agreed that playing with you was so unfun and draining that we cut the mustard mid season even though we were, as slin would say, ESEA-IM (7-0 in matches).
edit: grammar

kys my man

you dont really hace any ability to gague this kind of thing unless youve actually played with someone in game in a team environment
for example i think cloudmaker is an idiot brcaude of the stupid things he posts on tftv and says in game chat but until ive actually played on a team with him i dont have any grounds to say that he is or is not toxic in game
even pugging or ringing doesnt alloe you to really judge somebody in this way because people often act in entirely different ways when in a serious team environment
watching streams can give you a decent idea but even then people definitely do act differently in mumble in the heat of an important match when they know their comms aren't being streamed
my inclination is to say that aim is generally a chill dude but of course my experience is just from pugs, and I'm fairly sure he doesn't care what some random open players think of him
not to excuse what ever shit talk led you to believe he's toxic but you definitely arent seeing the whole picture lol

seems to me that this guy just likes hearing the sound of his own voice

super nice dude
he's the rare combination of a jumper, an mgelord and a pugger

muma was at gxl this year
http://logs.tf/1070363

usually im fine with him but it really pisses me off when people like him captain pugs they don't belong in

I don't normally scroll that slow but I did today and was startled and thought that something inside of the mouse was broken but it looks like its just the optical encoder.
It's a shame cause I have an old deathadder lying around but i dont like the shape of it as much as the zowie, wish I could just morph the two into one and take the good scroll wheel from the da and put it on the za11. Thanks for the help

for me its just that if i scroll slowly it doesnt register at all so the page stays where it is, but if i go quickly it will scroll normally

i think something's up with my scroll wheel because if I scroll slowly the wheel moves but there are no bumps and it doesn't register
if i scroll quickly (doing it up and down right now) it works fine
i remember reading before I bought it that the scroll wheels were bad
has anyone else had this type of issue before and is there any way to fix it, or do I need to buy a new mouse?

do you have -dxlevel in your launch options?

that can make your game take super long to alt tab out not sure about freezing and locking up tho