Teabagging and Halo 3 — An Anthropological Study

The Muffin Buffalo stalks through the corridors and crevasses of The Narrows map on Halo 3. Quietly he roams, picking his targets and releasing them from their mortal coils. He has done this many times before and is good at his job. Out of nowhere, a fellow warrior named SheepandVelcro69 jabs Muffin Buffalo from behind with the butt of his shotgun. Muffin Buffalo lurches forward and then lifelessly drops to the ground. This has also happened to him many times, business as usual, the cycle of death repeats.

But wait, SheepandVelcro69 is not leaving his corpse; does he feel remorse for the act he has just committed? Is he taking a moment of silent reflection to realize that body could just as easily be him lying on the ground? No, our shotgun equipped friend creeps up to Muffin Buffalo’s head, centers himself above the corpse’s cranium and proceeds to drop his crotch up and down on the motionless clump of pixels . This is teabagging, an all too common and disturbing way to defile the corpses of fallen Spartans.

The above depiction is just one variant of teabagging. There is also power-teabagging in which the victor leaps into the air and then comes crashing down upon the fallen player’s head with all of the power and fury that an armored scrotum can muster. Teabagging is not just a solo exercise either, oh no. The author has witnessed instances in which the perpetrator of this heinous act has called upon his comrades and what followed was an orgy of crotch-dropping desecration. On occasion you will see teabagging turn into a threesome, in which one player will assume the position at the head of a corpse and the other will choose to pleasure themselves in a cowgirl or reverse-cowgirl position over the mid-section of the slain body.

What we must try to comprehend is why a person chooses to engage in such necrophilia. At first glance, one might assume that it is merely an act of victorious celebration meant to humiliate the crushed opponent. I hypothesize that something much more nefarious and twisted drives this homoerotic behavior. Some of the instigator’s of teabagging are just children. Children! How does a child come to discover such an act? It could be that he has seen his parents or older siblings act out the fleshy ritual and seeks to emulate them. It can also be surmised that he has learned this from a less-than-savory peer at school. One thing is certain, be it a twelve year old or a fifty year old, the victim feels just as violated.

And just what becomes of the victims of this crime? Many times, the victim will show no signs of psychological damage and will return to the game as if nothing ever happened. Other times, victims may respawn and then migrate to the nearest corner and crouch down; quivering in fear and defeat. Sometimes, the image of a slowly descending nutsack can be too much to handle and the victim will choose to leave the game before his time, forcing his teammates to fight on, outnumbered and outgunned.

I write this paper not for academia but for the lay person. Every man, woman, and child should know and understand that teabagging is wrong and socially unacceptable. If it were just happening in the virtual world that would be one thing, but this despicable act is spilling over into reality. Several weeks ago in the quaint town of Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey a group of boys ravaged their school in a series of random acts of teabaggery. When and where will this all end? How could this be happening to us in the real world? And finally, won’t someone think of the children!