Other [Issue 34] My Life as a Reporter: Ups and Downs

[Kevred 1,586]

 

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This article was NOT inspired by PeaceKeeper99's (now UCareFull) "Life as a Forum Moderator", however I know no one will believe me so I might as well give him credit.

 

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The path of the Reporter is a difficult one. High procrastination skills, irrefutable love of chicken, 5-star puns and banters, quality sarcasm, let's just say the bar has been set high. Wait. That little tingling in the back of your head. Those eyes staring into nothing-ness. Those relaxed eyebrows. You’re thinking about how is it possible being a Reporter has disadvantages, aren’t you? No? You’re dreaming about hot chicken instead? Oh :mellow:

 

Assume you were thinking why there are ‘downs’. If you want a Kev-style explanation, read on. If you want a Fen-ish mathematical formula based on the theory of Archimedes, look down.

 

 

 

 

That avatar sure has been busy. My online life has, simply put, been shaken to the core. Facebook received an inactivity of three months, whilst Skype beneficiated of a sudden spike in interest. Don’t get me started on the forum, or you’ll be here for the next two centuries.

 

 

El Forum

 

So much for not getting me started, eh.  Evidently, the most changed part of my life was my forum situation - that goes without saying. My number of posts quadrupled whilst my profile views doubled, which overall gives a ratio of 2:1, from which we can then get the theory that every two posts gives you one profile view, which in turn... *muffle* 

 

K. When I was accepted as Reporter, I was simply astounded. It wasn't my dream to become one, I didn't train hard every day, and I never sent tons of PMs to the Reporter admins in hopes of them looking favorably upon me (referring to some certain player). Nope, none of that. Consequentially, when I got added into the Skype conversation group and given access to the Newspaper Material topic, I might have gone a bit out of my head.

 

I'm not going to go into the details (mostly because my dinner will make a reappearance if I do), however if someone ever offered to delete my previous posts from...say, 2 months for one million crystals, I'd gladly accept. That should give you an idea. (And there goes the unintentional reverse psychology; I bet my chicken everyone's going to go to my profile and search my oldest posts).

 

My natural personality shifts very often. Usually I'm the jack-off-all-trades, master of none, serious when needed, happy and joyful when playing, overly bored when parkouring. During other times, I go over-board with good humor. Flip the coin and my  dark side emerges. In any case, in my opinion, my "virtual" personality is somewhat representative of my "real" personality, though they do have their differences. and my upvote streak is still going hehehe

 

Let’s look away from the past and into the present. Currently, I've made myself at home in the Canadian Conversation Club (or the New Troll Nation, NTN), unfollowed the Q&A topic (500 notifications every morning), found myself a parkour club even though I hate parkour, and used up more than 75% of my messenger, mostly with useless one-word PMs. Typical life, you may say.

 

Something worthy of mention is the fact that I almost exclusively post in the Off-Topic section, along with a few escapades in Ideas&Suggestions and Forum Games. In fact, it's been a month since I last checked the General section.

 

 

La Gameplay

 

I have a confession to make. I often have the feeling that I play Tanki Online more for the community than for the game itself. If I wasn’t a Reporter, would I still be playing this game? No one knows. If I'm a Reporter, but my computer lagged so bad it was unable to support Adobe Flash Player, would I still be “playing” this game? Definitely.

 

Moving on to the in-game experience, battles were little to not changed, which I am perfectly happy with. However, sometimes fate took a break from sleeping, looked down upon me and those times were when I experienced wonderful moments that I knew I would remember forever.

 

 

Many of these escapades had my Reporter paint as reason. Surprisingly, several Warrant Officers knew about it (and people call them noobs ). Even though know I usually wear my Tundra (partly because having a Tank that looks like it got covered with toilet paper doesn’t draw fear into the heart of your enemies).

 

 

El Skype

 

The Skype group is either hilarious or serious (omg that rimes omg omg). Even though ever since Goldy left the amount of puns, banters and jokes have somewhat decreased, it’s still the place to go for a quick writing break. At the very beginning of my “Reporter career”, once again I made a fool of myself. Getting my first ban, spam-commenting, being the stereotypical immature childish kid, you get the idea.

 

Fortunately Hog held me at gunpoint during a dark and windy night of November/December, and, combined with chicken blackmail and less-than-decent singing hypnotizing, set me back on the right track. Along with some others, I quickly acquired the art of keeping my mouth shut in certain occasions. After a few breakouts here and there, I learned the ropes of adult social interactions, and everything is running along as smooth as my FPS.

 

With the recent addition to our Reporter stock, half the comments have become suggestions on articles, as such I now tend to prefer Halo 3 for short writing breaks. (2 minutes of writing, than 45 minutes of coffee break).

 

 

Los Friends Online

 

My friends in TO played an important role in my…well, life (I need to find a synonym for that soon). Reporters and mods aside, the first real “online” friend I ever had is @bdouble0. I met him in battle, we chatted, shared emails and have been in contact until he quit the game and gave his account to a certain Peter (a much less friendly individual). I then became acquainted with @Truthteller, although he always lags, so we rarely get the chance to play together. Then @deadtoyou joined the ranks of Kev’s Fantastic Chicken (KFC), followed by @jokersus.cava (to this day still no one knows why he posts in Canadian Convo).

 

It must be said that online "friends" cannot be called friends. Despite matching the definition of a "friendly person", you often don't know their real name, their appearance, their location, and sometimes even their gender! Is that someone you can call your "best friend"? No matter if you spend two seconds or three years chatting with him on Facebook, he is not your friend. A friend is supposed to be someone you can trust in times of personal crisis, someone who is there to help you, whilst wanting nothing in return. He should understand you better than yourself, know what you need when you need it. He doesn't follow you blindly, but admits when he is wrong and you are right.  He will sometimes sacrifice himself for your good, and you should do the same. He stays by your side when facing danger.

 

To this day I know only three persons. My parents and my little sister.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Las Studies

 

Being a reporter surprisingly did not affect my studies too much. In fact, you can even come to say it had a positive impact on them. Here’s a mathematical formula to explain that: *general groaning from readers*

 

Before --> Tanki Time= 1 hour= Playing = Nothing good for the brain

Now --> Tanki Time= 1 hour= ½ playing+ ½ writing= ½ good for the brain

 

Okay, that formula made absolutely no sense. Doesn’t matter, besides, humans will have calculator implanted in their brains in the future, and no one will need math anymore.

 

However, on the other side of the coin, of all my academic results, my English notes are the lowest of them all (85% compared to 95% on average). Maybe Mr. Logic was on vacation, maybe the odds were not in my favor and I ended up with the meanest teacher known to civilization, the world may never know. What I can say is that the reason is definitely NOT Tanki-related (You hear that, mum?).

 

 

 La School

 

There used to be a big gang of newbs in my grade playing Tanki all the time during recess. Obviously no one sane would abstain from showing off their gleaming avatar and M1 combo, which is exactly why I’m crazy. Sadly, despite my discretion (screaming out loud in 120 decibels), word got out and somehow eventually people started calling me the “generalissimo”. That’s when I found out the purpose of the “Broken telephone” game.

 

Fortunately for my ego (which was on the brink of exploding), the school principal announced that Tanki was getting “slightly addictive, able to influence grades”, words somewhat non-representative. In my opinion, “screaming in the class, plastering posters in the guys’ bathroom, fighting in the hallways over who had the best garage, etc is punishable by death” would be better. In any case, the technicians banned Tanki on school computers, and students were forced to secretly play on their phones and plaster posters in the girl’s bathrooms instead.

 

And me? I barely noticed, since I spent most of my free time writing or reading, aka nerd  ._.

 

 

Los Real Friends 

 

Picture yourself this: your 12-year old best friend comes up to you with a smug smile on his face, then tells you he’s got an online job. Your either not going to believe him, or think it’s probably just a small tiny insignificant job de rien du tout. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened, and no matter how I try to convince them my buddies just don’t seem to give it much importance. I’m used to it know, and nothing changed. Well, my ego inflated just a weeny-bit.

 

Plus, when you’re Chinese and don’t swear every time you open your mouth like the cool kids, saying “I’m a writer!” isn’t exactly the best way to attract girls. 

 

(If anyone needs me, I’ll be drowning myself in the corner.)

 

 

La Family

 

*Goes to mum and declares: “Tanki Online is awesome”*

*Mum replies: “What’s Tenkee Ounleene?”

*leaves*

 

 

 

El Future

 

And for the future? Quite obviously, I’ll keep writing, procrastinating, making unintentional puns and not understanding sarcasm, just like I always do.

 

 

I have a feeling I gave out too much information :mellow:

Feel free to completely forget everything I wrote in this article, it’d be highly appreciated. As for now, CYA!

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Hexed

[hogree 4,179]

This is brilliant...

[Penguin40 1,714]

*Goes to mum and declares: “Tanki Online is awesome”*

*Mum replies: “What’s Tenkee Ounleene?”

*leaves*

That made me laugh a lot. The topic was pretty serious though, but the school part was fun. Good job making such a good topic, Kevin. ;)

 

 

(Why can I see this post blackened on mobile? Meh, copy pasting, what about a shortcut game?)

 

Edited October 8, 2015 by Penguin40

[deadtoyou 2,502]

LOL :D

 

(By the way, I was surprised to see that you didn't use your BBC flamethrowers somewhere in that article. :lol:)

[RamzanTheGreat 471]

Nice :lol: :lol:

[Cor7y 13,862]

Reporter paint looks like toilet paper ? LOL

 

Isn't Peacekeeper's name ?

 

LOL they banned Tanki in my school too, but I discovered that I can play on Firefox :ph34r:

[Penguin40 1,714]

(In my school we're not allowed to use Internet. I only ever used Internet once in school for Earth Day 2015 with a friend of mine)

 

Haha. That school part was funny too.

[qinwan9 125]

It  was a great joy to read your article and to know about a reporter's life  :D

 

*Goes to mum and declares: “Tanki Online is awesome”*

*Mum replies: “What’s Tenkee Ounleene?”
*leaves

 

This was the funniest part  :lol:

[jazz20 1,181]

This is brilliant...

++

 

Nice article Kev :)

[Fire_From_Beneath 5]

Poor Kev just got "friend zoned" :P Gotta love Chinese parents :)

Edited May 1, 2015 by Fire_From_Beneath

[tanker538N 394]

I ro cover my tank in toilet paper ;3

[jokersus.cava 1,503]

gud 

[Darren4Turbo 4,913]

Good Job @Kevred  ^_^ 

[genak138 950]

This was awesome! :D

[liverpoolaum 811]

nice

[CombatCat2 248]

 

 

Los Friends Online

 

My friends in TO played an important role in my…well, life (I need to find a synonym for that soon). Reporters and mods aside, the first real “online” friend I ever had is @bdouble0. I met him in battle, we chatted, shared emails and have been in contact until he quit the game and gave his account to a certain Peter (a much less friendly individual). I then became acquainted with @Truthteller, although he always lags, so we rarely get the chance to play together. Then @deadtoyou joined the ranks of Kev’s Fantastic Chicken (KFC), followed by @jokersus.cava (to this day still no one knows why he posts in Canadian Convo).

 

It must be said that online "friends" cannot be called friends. Despite matching the definition of a "friendly person", you often don't know their real name, their appearance, their location, and sometimes even their gender! Is that someone you can call your "best friend"? No matter if you spend two seconds or three years chatting with him on Facebook, he is not your friend. A friend is supposed to be someone you can trust in times of personal crisis, someone who is there to help you, whilst wanting nothing in return. He should understand you better than yourself, know what you need when you need it. He doesn't follow you blindly, but admits when he is wrong and you are right.  He will sometimes sacrifice himself for your good, and you should do the same. He stays by your side when facing danger.

*cough cough*

 

 La School

 

There used to be a big gang of newbs in my grade playing Tanki all the time during recess. Obviously no one sane would abstain from showing off their gleaming avatar and M1 combo, which is exactly why I’m crazy. Sadly, despite my discretion (screaming out loud in 120 decibels), word got out and somehow eventually people started calling me the “generalissimo”. That’s when I found out the purpose of the “Broken telephone” game.

 

Fortunately for my ego (which was on the brink of exploding), the school principal announced that Tanki was getting “slightly addictive, able to influence grades”, words somewhat non-representative. In my opinion, “screaming in the class, plastering posters in the guys’ bathroom, fighting in the hallways over who had the best garage, etc is punishable by death” would be better. In any case, the technicians banned Tanki on school computers, and students were forced to secretly play on their phones and plaster posters in the girl’s bathrooms instead.

You're lucky, practically nobody plays TO at my school, and the few who do are M0s.

 

La Family

 

*Goes to mum and declares: “Tanki Online is awesome”*

*Mum replies: “What’s Tenkee Ounleene?”

*leaves*

More like this for me:

*Goes to dad and says: "Tanki is awesome""

*Dad says: "No it's not. You need to stop playing it so much"*

*I respond: Just because I'm better than you doesn't take away the awesomeness. And no, I'm going to keep playing"*

*leaves*

[Mr.I3oSS 557]

Lawl

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

:lol:

[rene6 2]

nice  :ph34r:  :wacko:

[Truthteller 4,204]

Nice job  :)

[Quarks 2,255]

This is HI larious Kevin, be prepared to never be referred to Kev again, now that we know your real name. Great article, hilarious.

:)  :)  :)  :D  :D  :D  B)  B)  B)

[Firenze_PRO 80]

I can't stop laughing! :D  :P  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  great writing! I like the family part xD

[fightermalikio20115 374]

great article kev

 

 

next time show me the real photo of yourself you pictured to cc *evil cackling* then*spluttering*

 

 

[Daniel898 327]

A mixture of humor and writing, I like it ;)

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

Your opinion about the system of "parkour clubs".

 

What do like about this system and what not, what do you think about the way players use it, your opinion on some common rules in parkour clubs, common problems and solutions...