That Guy, Yeah, You Know The One

So, I’m happily PUGing my way through Old Kingdom (and by “happily” I mean “OMG get me out of this place”) when a female BE mage whispers me and tells me I’m hot. Now, being as I’m female and I play a female BE paladin, I immediately guess that the female mage is played by a guy and thank him for the compliment. As it turns out, the player is indeed male and proceeds to tell me he wants to friend me. I tell him that’s fine – after all, despite how much I hate OK, we’d had a really good run and I geniunely liked everyone in the group. In fact, everyone decides to stay together and do VH next, so I head to Dalaran with this guy whispering to me that he “really likes talking to me” and that he hoped he wasn’t making me uncomfortable with his “friskiness”.

“Frisky”, come to find out, is apparently another word for “my annoying need to make crude jokes about my penis”. Seriously. He whispers me little “3”s and “<“s and “-“s to make a picture of his penis and laughs about his “morning wood”. When I fail to responds to these whispers, he asks “no comment?” to which I reply “were you looking for one?”

I don’t understand this behavior. I’m a girl, I play WOW – this is not an excuse to harrass me with porn jokes and be upset when I don’t jump on the bandwagon. I’m there to play the game. There are very few people I have long, whispered conversations with mostly, because – hey, guess what – I’m actually playing the game. My main, my very first character who I adore to bits, is 78 so I’m preoccupied at getting to 80 and feeling the results of all my hard work. I have no desire to validate this guy who, for some reason, thinks all his lewd comments should somehow embarress me or get a response out of me.

I’m not embarressed. I’m indifferent. I don’t care about you and your manwhore attitude. You’re a good player, I value you for what you bring to a instance but I could care less about the little symboly penises that you whisper to me. I’m not going to respond to those whispers because A) I’m busy and B) I don’t care.

I logged on early this morning to try my hand again at the Valiant Argent Tourney dailies. (Is it just me or do those Valiants try and lure you outside the ring so they can abruptly yell “I WIN!” when you go too far? The bastards…) Mr. Penis Guy whispers me again asking how I am. Okay, this is a good start. I say I’m fine but I’m sleepy. He says he’s the same and for a moment, I feel a welling of relief that the conversation is over and it was amazingly normal.

A minute later he adds “and I’m frisky lol”.

Can I say that I hate the word “frisky”? I mean, what is he, a puppy? Who says “frisky”? I don’t respond to this, obviously, because it’s annoying and I’m getting jousted right off my feathery little bird. As always, he whispers again a moment later and says “no comment?” Now I’m even more annoyed that he’s trying to get a response out of me and I reply with “it’s too early” to try and give him the hint that I don’t especially want to talk. He laughs and I give up on jousting for the moment to vent my frustration on wandering Scourge nearby (because dangit if I’m going to log off without a Valiant mark).

I’m sure I’m not the only female in the game to experience this behavior from a male player and that thought is really depressing. The game world reflects the real world, however, and if you’re a “frisky” asshole in real life, chances are you’ll be one in-game as well. I’m really pulling for Blizzard to institute some sort of option for your friends list to turn on/off whether or not your friends can see you online, sort of like AOL Messenger or MSN. There are times when I’d just like to do my dailies in solitude and it would be nice to have the option to make it look like I was offline.

Especially when someone is feeling “frisky”.