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To: Norm Lenhart; KC_Lion

Sean Smith killed at Benghazi was a gamer. From reports at the time:

On Tuesday, Sean Smith, a Foreign Service Information Management Officer assigned to the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, typed a message to the director of his online gaming guild: “Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.” The consulate was under siege, and within hours, a mob would attack, killing Smith along with three others, including the U.S. ambassador.

In his professional and personal life, Smith was a husband and father of two, an Air Force veteran, and a 10-year veteran of the Foreign Service who had served in Baghdad, Pretoria, Montreal and The Hague. But when gaming with EVE Online guild Goonswarm, he was a popular figure known as “Vile Rat,” and alternately as “Vilerat” while volunteering as a moderator at the internet community Something Awful. Smith’s death was confirmed on Wednesday morning by the State Department and reported widely in the news media. But the first people to report Smith’s death were his friends. Their reaction was shock and mourning.

“My people, I have greivous [sic] news. Vile Rat has been confirmed to be KIA in Benghazi; his family has been informed and the news is likely to break out on the wire services soon,” wrote Goonswarm director Alex Gianturco in a message mirrored to Something Awful at 11:21 EST. “Needless to say, we are in shock, have no words, and have nothing but sympathy for his family and children. I have known Vile Rat since 2006, he was one of the oldest of old-guard goons and one of the best and most effective diplomats this game has ever seen.”

According to his friends, Smith had emerged as a key leader for the community, and was known as a senior guild diplomat who helped engineer the destruction of Goonswarm’s chief rival, the Band of Brothers. He let his guildmates design his tattoo. On Wednesday, Gianturco posted an obituary for his friend of more than six years. “He was on jabber when it happened, that’s the most fucked up thing,” Gianturco wrote. “In Baghdad the same kind of thing happened – incoming sirens, he’d vanish, we’d freak out and he’d come back ok after a bit. This time he said ‘F__K’ and ‘GUNFIRE’ and then disconnected and never returned.”

Next, media reports began circulating that the consulate in Benghazi, and the U.S. embassy in Egypt, had come under attack. Gianturco, known in the EVE Online community as The Mittani, “freaked out.” Gianturco wrote that he was “in shock” and felt dead inside.

“I’m not sure if this is how I’m supposed to react to my friend being killed by a mob in a post-revolutionary Libya, but it’s pretty awful and Sean was a great guy and he was a goddamned master at this game we all play, even though a lot of people may not realize how significant an influence he had,” wrote Gianturco. And that “if you play this stupid game, you may not realize it, but you play in a galaxy created in large part by Vile Rat’s talent as a diplomat.”

At Something Awful, Smith was a long-time member — more recently a moderator — who posted about football, politics and working with the Foreign Service. Forumers are now leaving messages in Smith’s memory, and others are doing similar at the EVE Online forums. Gamers are now also re-naming virtual space stations after Smith. EVE Online, which takes place in a simulated galaxy, center around the digital stations as bases for trade, socializing and fighting. Smith’s username “was a name you could mention in any conversation about the pointy end of EVE, without needing to explain who he was,” posted developer CCP Greyscale.

Forumer SpaceGirlArt wrote that Smith had “been part of my internet presence for a decade, right back to the old #ce [IRC] channel. I can honestly say that I never expected to feel this gutted over the death of someone that I never met in real life. This is unbelievable.”

One forumer expressed concern that Smith’s death would be politicized by the media during an election year. But, “Through the bullshit media circus, we will know ‘That was Vilerat, and he was actually way awesome.’”


27 posted on 09/10/2014 3:15:11 PM PDT by KC Burke (Gowdy for Supreme Court)
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To: KC Burke

It won’t be long before a gamer ‘faction’ rises up against the libs. People doubt me on that as many libs are gamers themselves.

Virtual reality is the last bastion of anything resembling freedom. Many gamers ‘live’ for lack of a better term online since they have had every normal pursuit destroyed in reality. They have given up on trying.

Once libs take over the gaming ‘world’ or try to, they are going to be surprised at the backlash. They are trying now as more games are being targeted for ‘social justice’ action. And they are making progress.

But when ‘they’ finially push these people too far, they will find that half of their own team leaving the field and joining the other side...us.


29 posted on 09/10/2014 3:21:33 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart (How's that 'lesser evil' workin' out for ya?)
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To: KC Burke; Norm Lenhart; Lazamataz; Republicanprofessor; SoFloFreeper; LucyT
Those are some Great Facts about Benghazi there KC Burke.

Very Informative.

There is just one small problem with it....

Since this compromised Ubama's Regime, it proves you and the Post are Racist!

And will be Reported to the People's Police

44 posted on 09/10/2014 6:46:37 PM PDT by KC_Lion (Build the America you want to live in at your address, and keep looking up.- Sarah Palin)
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