Been sick. Also been making icons. In fact, I still am sick and making icons. Between them the two things basically account for the radio silence here for the past few days. Also, wk_awakenings finally dragged itself back from the dead thanks in no small part to the fact I actually sat down and sodding wrote something for it, so that's also been activating and keeping me away from my ranting for a bit. Either way it all comes down to I Have Been Absent and that comes down to wanting to backdate.

So, as I don't want to clutter anyone's friendlist with this, that means it's high time that I posted my expose of Gaia Online's most prevelant, baffling and ridiculous virtual fashion trend. I'd like to introduce the Gangsta N00b.

So, you are probably not asking yourself, but let's pretend you are, what exactly is a Gangsta N00b, laila, and why are you bitching about them?

Well, it's really very simple. A Gangsta N00b is a Gaia user who thinks that it is cool to look 'street'. There's only one problem with this, and that's the bit where the average Gangsta N00b is a white kid from Wichita, Kansas whose mother would ground them for the next fifty years if she caught them leaving the house wearing an entire pawn shop's worth of gold jewelery with their pants around their knees. So, since they can't look 'street' in real life they decide that the next best thing is to pretend they're 'street' online and hope that someone out there might actually buy it.

The major problem with this is that they're trying to keep it real on Gaia Online of all places, and if there's one thing that's certain about Gaia users it's that they are not even remotely 'street', because if they were they wouldn't be wasting their time playing around on Gaia Online. They'd be out doing whatever it is you do when you're keeping it real, a process which I - aging lily-white nerd that I am - find utterly baffling even when it doesn't involve hanging round in Gaia Rally trying to get pixelated chibis in pixelated hooker shorts to type 456 for hott cyber action. The end result are the Gangsta N00bs - a group of pixelated posers desperately trying to out-thug one another on an avatar site for middle school girls. Yes, it really is as stupid and pointless as it sounds.

So, how do you recognize a Gangsta N00b? Well, thankfully it turns out that they have their own uniform. All Gangsta N00bs, from the virtual Croesus to the pixel-beggar, look pretty much alike:


Yeah. I guess Gangsta N00bs really like being able to instantly recognize one another across a crowded forum.

Gangsta N00bs are tan, but often don't want their avatars to look dark enough to actually look black. If your Gangsta N00b is a girl, she'll most likely have black or brown 'Terra-Twist' hair , or, if she's being really daring, black or brown hair in the 'Gentle Curls' style; usually she wears hot pants, a belly shirt or both, and seems oddly keen on sticking a doggy tail on her virtual butt. Male Gangsta N00bs are slightly more adventurous when it comes to hair, but almost all have pixelated tattoo sleeves and favor the same three pairs of baggy black pants. Rich Gangsta N00bs, male and female, will wear flamboyant scarves, fake-looking 'demon wings' on their backs, fluffy slippers and panda backpacks. And absolutely all the Gangsta N00bs love their virtual bling. Lots and lots of tacky virtual bling. If they can't get it they'll fake it, settling for cheaper huge slippers or animal backpacks, and even gold tennis wristbands. Just as long as they look the part, though why this should involve clown noses nobody knows.

Though the Gangsta N00b look is ridiculously easy to replicate, even here Gaia users prove daft enough to get it wrong. Take the girl third from the left in the fourth row down, who has clearly become a bit confused and hasn't realized that Gangsta N00bs wear either red or blue to show their gangsta pride. No true Gangsta N00b would wear red and blue, unless the blue is restricted to the Gangsta N00b's jeans or hot pants.

Which is all very well, but it does beg the question of what on earth is so 'street' about cute animal backpacks, doggy tails and fluffy slippers, anyway.