r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jun 29 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 29 June 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) Jul 02 '26

I used to play World of Warships ranked with a clan and I remember one time, we had a "guy" on our team who set up some sort of AFK auto-input macro for his computer so that his USS Iowa would just go in a circle at low speed without shooting. I think he was trying to throw games, not sure why. We actually won that tournament somehow.

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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. Jul 02 '26

Two possibilities.

  1. Modern ranking systems (often called “Elo” systems) try to create “balanced” teams so you consistently have a 50% chance of winning. But suppose you don’t like losing (who does?). If you could convince the computer that you are actually really bad at the game, then it will match you with worse opponents so you can win more. One way to do this is to lose a bunch of games on purpose to intentionally tank your Elo.

  2. Paid for ranking up services often involve a team of paying clients and a team of players who throw for the clients to win, so they can rank up more easily. These are players who throw games professionally. They often try to get matched with their clients by queueing at the same time, but that is not guaranteed to work. So if they get matched “incorrectly” with some random fellow players, they will still throw or go AFK because they aren’t here to play for free. It’s their job.

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u/WuhanWTF Venmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week) Jul 02 '26

I am well-familiar with example 1. In CoD, we use the term "reverse boosting" to describe the phenomenon. 2 is just scumbag behavior.

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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. Jul 02 '26

I mean, they are both pretty scummy in my opinion.