Lethal Leisure (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

**MrBallen** (0:00)
Today, we have three stories about people who found a really amazing pastime that they thought had changed their lives for the better.
But they would come to realize that this new pastime actually changed their lives for the worse. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark & Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place, because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to put new windshield wiper fluid in the FollowButtons car, but actually just use motor oil. Our first story is called The Gamer.
One night in November of 2009, a man named Mikhail looked down a sniper scope at this dusty street that was running in front of a tan brick building. Through the scope, he saw a man who was wearing black tactical gear come out from around the corner. And immediately, Mikhail trained his sights on this man, and he pulled the trigger. Immediately when the round impacted, there was a spray of red pixels and a chime, like an audible chime that sounded to tell Mikhail that he had just scored a kill. So, Mikhail was not a real soldier out in the middle of a real battle. He was a gamer, so he was a virtual soldier. And right now, in real life, he was sitting at his computer at home in the city of Cambrai, France, playing a video game called Counter-Strike, like he did virtually every single day. So Mikhail loved this game, Counter-Strike, because it was like his escape from the real world, which in the real world, you know, he basically had all sorts of stressful things going on all the time, like bills and work and family conflicts. But whenever Mikhail booted up this game, it's like those problems disappeared and he vanished into this virtual world. So Counter-Strike, which even today is still like this unbelievably famous game. I mean, millions and millions of people play this game all the time. It's very popular. It is an online military game where two teams of live players from all around the world, they face off against each other for these short rounds, where they just basically try to kill each other or carry out various missions. But it's like a real time first person shooter with random people across the world. And so Mikhail, after coming home from work, something again he sort of hated, he would immediately boot up this game. He would match up with whatever group of strangers from around the world that he was going to play with, and they would automatically get grouped into teams. And then Mikhail would spend hours and hours playing well into the night, just playing with these strangers. And they, you know, new people would come on, people would drop off, but there was a steady stream of people, again, all strangers, that Mikhail would be interacting with because he had his headset on. And, you know, there was some camaraderie there, you know, whether it was he was talking to people on his team to, you know, hey, take cover or I got the shot over here. Or if it was like talking trash to the people on the other side, like the interaction on the headset was like a big part of this experience, you know, for a minute. It was not just that he was, you know, looking down his digital scope and taking shots where appropriate. It was like for a moment in time, Mikhail really was like immersed in this digital world. Like he had a whole community of people that were right there with him. And so now on the screen, Mikhail controlled his character as the soldier, the digital soldier ran through the map, taking out one enemy after another. Like he's on this massive kill streak, like better than usual. He's having a great run. And at some point, after basically wiping out the whole other team, and like in his headset, he can hear the people that were on his team that have died, but they're still chiming in. They're like, oh, you're doing great, man. Keep it up. Like, win this for us. He realizes there's one more adversary left on the other side of the map. And so Mikhail, you know, he channeled all of the skills he had learned from playing this game for so long, and he maneuvered through the map, and he could see the other guy was like trying to, you know, outflank him. But at a certain point, Mikhail, he got the jump on this last lone enemy, and Mikhail actually didn't have any ammo left. He had used it all to build up this huge kill streak. Basically, when you die, it resets your ammo, and he hadn't died yet. And so he's out of ammo. He's got this one guy left, but he's got his knife. And so Mikhail, he positions himself just right, he leaps around the corner, he surprises this guy, and Mikhail, in this game, digitally stabs the lone enemy, kills him, and they win the game. It's like this amazing moment. Mikhail's the man, his team's thrilled, and the guy who got stabbed, he's also on his headset, and he's so mad, he's so frustrated. He's like, you're not even that good, this is garbage. He's just so mad that he got killed. But this was like a moment of elation for Mikhail. I mean, this is sort of like the peak for him and this part of his life. And so this was a great night for him. After this round, Mikhail actually jumped out of that lobby, and he ordered some food, and he ate some food, then he came back, and he continued to play Counter-Strike for a few more hours. But he never had another generational run that culminated in sort of an iconic stabbing like he did in that last round. But he played well, it was fun, and then eventually he went to bed. And in his mind, as he drifted off to sleep, he was just thinking about how amazing he did. This was like his best day ever on Counter-Strike.