I’ve got to believe that my guild is not the only one that’s experienced this phenomenon: The Emo Tank. I’m going to believe that because the other explanations are too horrifying — we as a guild are somehow attracting these nutbars, or, worse, we are the cause of said nuttiness.
Some background. Once upon a time, we were allied with another guild for raiding purposes. Their main warrior had this habit of doing a stream-of-consciousness play-by-play commentary for every single boss fight. Something like this: “I’m at 80 health, gonna need a heal soon, ok, got a heal, thank you whoever that was, now Onyxia is at 95, I’ll need more heals, knockback!! ok got a heal, I’ll try to find a good spot to stand, we’ll have phase two when it’s time, I’m at 70 health, 65!!! ok got a heal, thanks again, think I found a good spot, I’M TAKING SERIOUS DAMAGE HERE, ok healed …”
Oh ya, it was hilarious. So I did an impression one night of his Ventrilo play by play. My impression was very popular and spawned many other variations for everyone’s amusement. HE, however, was not amused. I got yelled at for being a dick and I apologized. (Between you and me, it wasn’t a sincere apology. That shit was funny — he was being too sensitive.)
As I’ve told you before, that alliance ended the one day and that was the end of our first Emo Tank encounter, although we hadn’t coined the term as of yet.
Fast forward a few months and we have this secondary tank in the guild — some would call him the primary offtank, the #2 warrior. Basically, he’s the guy that offtanks the second most troublesome add/guard in a boss encounter or he’ll tank the boss itself if the MT (that’s Mr. Main Tank to you kids!) loses aggro for some reason.
This new emo warrior would regularly descend into self deprecation and long-winded apologies whenever the boss fight or the raid didn’t go well, which was really annoying because he’d need reassuring for 15 minutes and he’d have to talk to a guild officer and he wanted the MT (that’s Mr. Main Tank to you peons) to evaluate his tanking skills and on and on until no piece of uberness could ever be worth dealing with that shit.
Exhausted of this love-me-now routine, I rebuked him one night, by telling him to “Save it for your Myspace, man”. And, out of that rebuke, a running bit in /gu chat and Ventrilo about The Emo Tank and his Myspace was born.
“Dear Myspace, I screwed up the Razorgore kiting today. I need a hug.” “Dear Myspace, I disconnected during the Skeram fight. I’m so ashamed.” “Dear Myspace, I think my guild wants to /gkick me. I feel so alone.”
OF COURSE, his feelings were hurt and I got yelled at for being a dick. Again.
He left the guild after a time (no, not because of The Emo Tank stuff), and one little side benefit of his departure, so we figured, was no more Emo Tank — how wrong we were.
