Trash-talk
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Trash-talk is a form of boast or insult that is common in sports and other competitions. It is usually used as a way to intimidate the opposition, but can also be used as humor.
Often, a rivalry or cross-team competition is the source of trash-talk. When trash-talk is used in a humorous way, there is a common etiquette. Typically, it is not appropriate to engage in trash-talk if you do not have an interest in the item being trash-talked. For example, talking trash about a fan's team when one doesn't even follow the sport crosses the line from being trash-talk to being an insult. Devolving into personal attacks or attacks on your opponent's family is inappropriate. Trash-talk should be done with respect to others on a personal level. Respect to others should come foremost in all forms of communication. Being disrespectful to others and labeling it trash-talk is known as self hiding or infant cover-up. It is much like insulting someone and trying to mask it by saying, I was just kidding.
Trash-talk is also commonly used among video game players, especially with the advent of voice chat such as is found on Xbox Live or in such games as Battlefield 2. In the case of video game trash-talk, insults tend to be focused on the player's game-play skill level, but are also commonly in the form of racial, ethnic or sexual slurs. Where players once had to stop playing in order to type their insults on the keyboard, now players can easily just talk trash as they play. One side effect of this may be that players once shrouded in anonymity now inadvertently may reveal their age range by virtue of the pitch of their voice, thus allowing older more mature gamers to detect the children among them, and avoid playing with them in the future.
