I think I have to be one of the only people for miles around that owns an Xbox 360 but doesn't actually have Xbox live. I did used to have it a few years ago however, but I simply never renewed it and have kept away from it ever since. There were a few reasons I had for doing this such as schedule conflicts, lack of variety (I only really played halo 2), a little bit of addiction, but it was primarily due to the sheer amount of sore losers, back chat, and slagging matches that sort of took the fun away for me.

One of my first experiences online was whilst playing odd ball or rather after it, in the lobby. I one the game by getting the most points with the ball which is the objective of that particular mode. but some one found the need to start calling me all the names under the sun because he thought that he should have one because he got more kills (the most annoying thing was that he sounded about 8 years old). i had many more similar experiences such as complaints about lagging or "noobs" and it just irritated the hell out of me. the straw that broke the camels back and caused me to stay away from online play until present day was an incident during a game with some americans. One of the players (on my own team) decided to start hurling abuse at another player because they weren't as good and kept getting killed. I decided to try and calm the situation by saying "calm down its just a game". The player then began to mock the way I pronounced the word game, saying that it sounded stupid. I told him that as I was from England and the language we were both speaking was English that it was more likely that he was pronouncing it incorrectly (not quite as politely as that though).

Don't get me wrong, I can give and take smack talk as well as the next guy (just ask your mom ;D) but being called an F-ing C word by a 10 year old child you have never even met just seemed a little Unnecessary to me and it was frustrating that I couldn't show them the back of my hand to teach them some manners.

Nowadays I prefer the company of friends and maybe a few beers or something for multiplayer. I still get the back chat but its more like friendly banter because we know each other. If I called a person on the street an F-ing C word, I would get the snot kicked out of me by everyone in a 5 meter radius.

I think if I were to go back online, I would probably have to stick to playing with my mates rather than randoms. its just more fun that way if you ask me. It's only a once a moth or so kind of deal though as we usually go out to a night club somewhere instead plus I don't really see them that much while I'm at Uni.

MSN is the same sort of deal. It started out great, say hi to your mates and see how they are doing etc but again I decided to pack it in after a while. One: people you don't like always talk to you the most and when you block them, their mates tell them which makes things rather awkward. Two, the majority of conversations are extremely dull and go something like this:

: hi
: Hi
: How are you?
: Im good thanx, you?
: im good
: What you been up to?
: Not much really, you?
: same
: g2g now
: k, cya
: bye xxx

Three: the abbreviations became so ridiculous, you needed to literally ask what they mean which defeats the whole object. A few of my favorite examples include; wuu2, lol, lmao, lmfao, rofl, g2g. the list goes on, there is a website somewhere that gives a list of hundreds of them but I cant remember it. And four: those god damned Emoticon things that people download along with every virus under the sun and then the instant they use it in a conversation, they transmit them to you. So yea, I stick to my phone if I need to speak to someone.