Editorials

The dark art of tea-bagging

February 2, 2012, Author: Digital Gigolo

Tea-bag or not tea-bag, that is the question. A question that every dedicated Halo player has asked themselves at one point during a game of Team Slayer. We’ve all been there. After an excruciatingly tense scuffle, your opponent lies vanquished at your feet. The delirious relief of victory, after coming so close to death, induces primitive behaviours to resurface. The urge to defile their corpse is overwhelming, and so you manoeuvre yourself accordingly and proceed to dunk your armour-clad genitalia on their head. Over and over again. The dark art of tea-bagging.

If you’re the unfortunate recipient, the blood-boiling rage is impossible to suppress. ‘Faggot, cunt, motherfucking cocksucker’. A barrage of foul-mouthed abuse issues forth. You take note of their gamertag and make it your sworn duty to return the favour. Only a revenge tea-bagging will placate the fury that burns in your chest, but the all-consuming anger impairs your judgement. Try as you might, you simply cannot notch up another kill. Every time you hit the dirt, you know what’s coming next. There’s only one way to break the cycle. The most shameful thing a Halo player can do. Rage quit.

So you see, not only is tea-bagging a delightfully cruel way to humiliate and dominate your opponent, it’s also an unsportsmanlike tactic. Enrage your rival until they lose their mind.

Where exactly did this gloriously mean quirk originate from? Well, actual tea-bagging is a sexual act in which a man places his scro… you get the idea. It’s kinda like dipping a teabag into a mug of boiling water.

In Halo Reach, the act of crouching has two distinct advantages: Increased accuracy when crouch-shooting and radar-invisibility while crouch-walking. Halo players added the third, and it’s become so popular that when the Alpha build of Reach prevented the downed player from seeing any potential tea-bagging, a swift fix was implemented.

In fact, the humble act of tea-bagging has transcended gaming and seeped into the very fabric of popular culture. Season 20, episode 19 of The Simpsons shows Homer and Marge tea-bagging a dead body in what appears to be Halo 2.

So, there you have it. The next time you decide to corpse-hump a fallen enemy, take comfort in the fact that you’re in very good company.

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