Most of the time, we think of cheating as despicable. Cheating is what lazy people do. It’s the easy way out. Calling someone a cheater is rarely a compliment, and being cheated is never a good thing. Some may justify it, others proudly proclaim it, and others will deny their cheating vigorously, but it’s a common activity. 

First of all, let us all face it. Everybody cheats… in everything! Your tax payments, your exams, your time cards… and yes, even in sports and games, such as AIRSOFT!

Now, imagine you found a way to cheat in an airsoft tournament, let us say you have a way of “masking” your hits so that the marshals or the spectators won’t see it. Your method is absolutely foolproof, and no one but yourself would ever know. Yeah, yeah… I know a dishonest avenue of this sort would never exist, but suspend your disbelief for a while and let us tackle this theoretically.

Would you do it? Well, let’s see:

If you don’t cheat:

• Everyone believes you are totally honest

If you do cheat:

• Everyone still believes you are totally honest (remember, it’s foolproof!); and
• as a result of the above, any advantage you get on game day is attributed directly to your skills
• you get tons of congratulations from everyone
• you achieve a measure of fame amongst other airsoft players

The only caveat is that you have to be able to live with yourself.

This is how close we all are to cheating. If you tell me you could entertain the scenario above and still decide not to cheat, you’re a liar. Humans are funny. We’re like priests fighting to see who steps off of an elevator last. Who can be the most humble? We take pride in taking the least pride, we’ll take a dishonest road to be considered the most honest. Like I said before, we’re too addicted to the good feeling we get from being considered honest, to the fuzzy bit of joy we garner from our ability to claim an almost virginal innocence from cheating, to ever cheat.

If we could ever cheat and still maintain that feeling, then we’d all be screwed.

There is nothing more dangerous than a cheater who can still believably claim to be honest. You see, cheaters aren’t the scum of the earth—they’re the guys willing to take the 80% shot, the ones who won’t wait for the sure thing. In a world with such harsh consequences on one’s reputation, you’d figure they’d hesitate a little, but hey... C’est la vie. In a nutshell—cheaters aren’t any more dishonest than you and I. Their judgement just isn’t as good.

Tit-for-tat?

Whenever airsoft players talk about zombies and zombei-ism, it is evident that these “cheaters” are viewed in the most despicable manner. Some even implies that they are not good enough players to finish a game honestly, or that they just want an unfair—and unearned—advantage over other players. However, interviewing airsoft players on why and how they cheat (if they do), I discovered that, much of the time, zombie-ing in a game actually implies that the player or zombie is actively engaged and “concentrated” on a particular scenario and wants to do well, even when their team loses.

Sorting through the replies I got from various airsofters worldwide, I was able to identify four major reasons why players zombie in a game: adrenaline rush, some other player zombied on them, they are bored with the game, or they simply are just being a jerk. The overwhelming reason most players “become” zombies is adrenaline rush. Most contend that it was an “honest oversight” because they cannot feel any BB hitting them. In tournaments, where this “adrenaline rush” usually prevails, a player altogether ignore the hits, giving the marshals the burden of calling them out, which shouldn’t be the case.

The next most common reason is that they’re just playing tit-for-tat. More often than not, this has become a never-ending cycle—someone zombied on one guy, prompting him to do the same, who is then found out by another, who follow suit, etc… etc… There are cases where “being honest even if others are not” is very hard to do.

Third, players sometimes get bored with games. But as with an annoying novel, they still want the option of flipping to the last page to see how things turn out. In some scenarios, we may find the fighting tedious; or in bivouacs, the storyline dreary, but we still want to see the conclusion of every game.

And finally, some people just can’t resist cheating others. We want to overwhelm others, not just defeat them. We’ll violate every rule in the books (if there is one)—we blindfire, we hitcall, we play ‘possum, etc…

In such situations, the value is found not in the cheating itself, but in our reaction to it.

There are a couple of things that can be done to either stop this sort of cheating or make it a positive aspect of game play. In airsoft, we encourage, nay LIVE a culture of non-cheating, making cheating not cool. Most commonly, airsoft communities take an active role in eradicating zombie-ism and other dastardly acts, unbecoming an airsoft “gentleman”. Moreover, behavioral scientists believe that when playing games, if players aren’t allowed to punish others they suspect of cheating, the game community falls apart. So figuring out ways to keep the airsoft community involved in dealing with zombies can keep the group engaged in ways that “regular” airsoft games might never allow for.

On the other hand, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, zombie-ism can sometimes be good for you to some extent. It can keep you active and involved in every game, conscious of your own behavior on the game field. But, the best part about “not cheating” is that you will be able to claim that you are totally honest, and have people believe you, with 100% certainty. If you never cheat, you can be 100% sure that you will always be able to do this. The best part about “not cheating” is that, under the scrutinizing gaze of a million fellow airsofters, you come up smelling like a rose, and you get your due for whatever accomplishments you have achieved. You are able to keep any praise you have garnered, and there are no footnotes or addendum embedded in those praises. It’s a good feeling, like a truckload of endorphins.

Now, get off your ass and do something…

Look back through this article. There’s no moral here, no bit of advice that you can put to any practical use. I don’t really have anything constructive to say on the subject because I’m just as confused as anyone else. If I know something about life, the universe, the twists and eddies of the human psyche, breaking the rules, and the sharks that come swimming when we do, it isn’t much. If
I’m wise, it’s because I alone know that I know nothing.

You think you and a zombie have nothing in common? Don’t presume too much.

We’re fascinated with zombies and the various amalgamations of it, simply because it could have been us. Disgusted with it because we don’t want to admit that it could have been us. We’ll talk about it until the sun goes down.