A Short Rant on Cheating

Nothing in the world is more frustrating than a cheater, even if he or she is on my team. You know who you are! Those people who decide that they’re simply too good for the rules, or, “If the ball only barely hit me, I’m not out!” What could possibly make these idiots think they’re better than anybody else? If anything, cheaters tend to be worse than people who play fair. And most often, they can’t even come up with a good excuse! One of the least creative sayings is, “It’s only a game, calm down!” By that very statement, this cheater has just solidified my position and ruined him or herself, yet refuses to acknowledge it and keeps on playing. The fact that it’s only a game proves people shouldn’t be cheating. If someone cares so much about winning that they’re willing to act like a total jerk just to get that oh-so-precious prize (oh wait, there is none!), maybe they should see a psychologist about their stupid egomania complex! I’m just trying to have fun in a challenging setting. The fact that some people can’t understand that and have some empathy is disgusting.

It’s something of a cliché, but guess what! Winning isn’t everything! Cheaters have no respect for their fellow player, or even themselves. This is evident in what is possibly the most annoying aspect of cheating: when the cheater will try to say that what they just did, in blatant violation of the rules that they personally agreed to, was legal. Dodgeball is a perfect example of this. If you’re any good at all, you shouldn’t need to cheat to have fun, and nobody even really cares who wins. When people end up cheating to win and then bragging about it, it is infuriating! It’s like a kid who won a most improved award bragging to a kid who got fourth place. The kid in fourth is much better than the other, but no, he didn’t win a medal, so he must be worse.

The utter hypocrisy of cheating is that it’s pointless, doesn’t improve skill, and in a fair world, should get you banned from the game. For whatever reason, people do it anyway so they can feel good about themselves. Now, when I say cheating, I mean actually breaking the rules and then lying about it. I’m perfectly fine with doing anything not specifically stated in the rules, such as squeezing the ball into a disk to make it easier to throw, but that shows initiative and intelligence. Cheating shows idiocy, lack of skill, and most likely a massive ego. My final message to cheaters is to stop. Stop now. Whether you stop cheating or stop playing doesn’t matter to me, but just stop disgracing the game.