"Stop Having Fun!" Guys

""No, you can't play with it. You won't enjoy it on as many levels as I do.""

- Professor Frink, The Simpsons, "The PTA Disbands"

The gamer equivalent of the Arrogant Kung Fu Guy. He's a Hard Core gamer, plays in all tournaments, and knows everything about how to play. He knows all the secret moves (even the glitches), the most effective strategies, and the quickest ways to completely destroy his opponent. He's completely "above" the mantra of casual play: He doesn't play just for fun, he plays to win. He's good, and he knows it. There's nothing wrong with that.

But he's also extremely arrogant. He's completely intolerant of play styles other than his own. If you challenge his beliefs, he'll automatically call you a Noob, a Scrub, or something similar. As far as he's concerned if you don't play like him you have only your inferior skills to blame, because obviously you would if you could.

Yep, that's right, he's the exact opposite of the Scrub...

...but just as annoying.

This kind of player takes the "pro" mentality to an annoying extreme, generally giving other tournament players a bad name (while his counterpart, the scrub, takes the casual mentality to an annoying extreme and generally gives other casual players a bad name). In the real world, there's room for both, and game companies generally try to put something in their games for both Player Archetypes.

In the end, what makes a "Stop Having Fun!" Guy isn't the rule-setting; it's the attitude. While regular competitive/tournament players simply like playing to win, the Stop Having Fun Guy believes that this is the only right way to play the game.

The SHFG is a specific subspecies of Fan Haters, who dislike/condescend to "casual" gamers who don't play the same way they do. It also overlaps with Complacent Gaming Syndrome, where the players use only one or two characters/strategies/levels to make winning easier.

See also: Scrub, Serious Business, Fan Dumb and Internet Backdraft. The larval form of the SHFG is the Munchkin. See It's Easy, So It Sucks for the mentality that sometimes results from the single-player form of this.

Meta

 * This xkcd strip is the Trope Namer.
 * Destructoid's Ten Golden Rules of Online Gaming is a satirical how-to guide on becoming the stereotypical online gamer, including many elements of the SHFG and/or Scrub mentality.
 * Several years back, a former tournament-level player called David Sirlin, who's now working for Capcom, wrote an article called "Playing To Win", which contrasted Scrubs and Tournament Players with little middle ground. The article made some good points, but the tone made it the poster-child of "Stop Having Fun!" Guys for years. More recently, he followed it up with "Not Playing To Win", a limited defense of casual play.
 * Expect to receive grief for even lagging in online video games. How dare you not pay for the most expensive internet connection, even if it isn't available where you live, and how dare you be using a wireless network that's prone to going on the fritz or randomly burping? There is no excuse for not having the best internet out there!
 * Do you play on anything that isn't part of the glorious PC Master Race? Well, you're wrong, and a terrible person for having fun that way.
 * If you're a PC gamer, do you dare to play any game with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse? You may as well have just raped a baby.
 * Again, PC users...did you buy a pre-built PC? Do yourself a favour...'DON'T. EVER. SAY. IT. Admitting it is like saying you like to poison babies with LSD.
 * Do not request CD patches for a game. Ever. Apparently if you wish to play the game without the hassle of swapping discs then you're a baby eating child raping thrill killing monster.
 * Nintendo takes a similar view on emulation. Doesn't matter if you have an old cartridge of Super Mario Brothers, they would dearly like to make the use of old, out of stock games punishable by death.
 * Try to chat with people about anything other than the game. "You're here to talk? Go join a chat room!"

Fighting Games

 * The biggest, and perhaps most goofy of all fighting games' SHFG goes to the entire Super Smash Bros series. Despite all the ways that this game can be played on both the goofball mess fests and serious 1 on 1 duels, a lot of the serious players seem to heavily focus on the Tournament Level, which focuses on not using items and playing very static stages. While there is nothing wrong with this style of play, it isn't how everyone likes to play, per se. None the less, a quick stop to any Smash Forum and asking up the idea of "how do you play" is not really a good idea... This is lovingly drawn out in this LegendaryFrog comic. The Tournament scene is arguably more well known for its Hatedom than anything else. Despite this, it's hard to find Brawl games that do allow items and break the Abridged Arena Array.
 * In Street Fighter II series, you'll have those who sneer at players who chose Ryu and Ken, because Akuma (who is banned in most tournaments) is "So much better."
 * Inverted by players who prefer "old" Sagat (also extremely good) over Akuma, since Akuma is banned in tournaments—and that means that many people don't find it "useful" to practice against a character you aren't going to play against in tournaments anyways.
 * Guilty Gear fans will often scoff at you for not knowing basic blockstrings and combos, even though many of what they term "basic" require a fair amount of practice (ideally on a home system) to get down pat.
 * You're a Scrub if your Ranked Match team in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 consists of anything but Captain Commando, Psylocke, Cyclops, Cable, Magneto, Storm, or Sentinel. Now that the game has been released for Xbox Live, don't you dare complain about seeing the same five or six characters over and over.
 * MUGEN has a lot of these guys running around. Due to just how much ground the MUGEN fanbase covers, you are bound to find every type of this imaginable. For every helpful fellow willing to show you the ropes and help you learn how the engine works, you have a hundred angry vets calling you a noob. For every kind soul that offers to guide you to better versions of the characters you like, there are a ton of snarky folks yelling at you for not knowing better. Then there's the fact that nearly every franchise with characters available in the engine has solid fan base and hate bases, so you can expect a lot of controversy in that regard. Finally and probably most aggravatingly, there is the elitist fighting game Fan Boy who will laugh at you and despise you if you show so much as a passing interest in MUGEN. Because clearly enjoying a fighting game engine means you know nothing about fighting games, right?
 * The first requested faq on any Smackdown vs. Raw game? "I want a CAW of last year's John Cena, and 2009's Cena, and 2008's Cena, one with a hat, one without a hat, one with a singlet..." The second requested faq however is "lol what are all the unblockable Gamebreaker moves? I go tke my 98 level CAW to pwn all u noobs cause i'm so l33t lol."

Role Playing Games
"It was actually really cool to see how much these kids love Pokemon. I've been so into it recently that I think I'd forgotten I should be having fun. With my pages of hand written math and charts of carefully plotted out EV training regiments I actually felt sort of dirty. These little kids were showing me teams comprised not of statistically optimal Pokemon but of their favorites."
 * Mass Effect has a notorious amount of SHFG. Didn't kill the Rachni queen without metagaming? You're retarded. Didn't keep the Collector base? You deserve to die. Saved the Council? Get off the forum!
 * Also, if you don't play on the hardest setting "Insanity", then as a rule, you're no better than a scrub, because according to the BioWare forums, Insanity is apparently "the difficulty the game was meant to be played on."
 * Usually inverted on the popular Mass Effect threads on 4chan's /v/ board., though with similar responses. Kill the Council? What are you doing!? Save the Collector base? You're gonna doom the galaxy! Romance Tali? Bad move! Kill off Wrex and Grunt? Get out right now.
 * Penny Arcade has the story of how Gabe took the mickey out of a larval-stage SHFG. Also a follow-up post showing why if you are a parent of a young child, you should never, ever let him or her attend an officially sanctioned tournament.
 * It also seems that the kids made him recognise the start of potentially similar traits:


 * Go to the general board of any Pokémon game in Game FAQs, and ask for advice on which moves you should teach to your freshly caught favourite. There will always be someone who will (a) tell you that this pokémon is not suited for competitive use, and point towards better pokémon who outdoes yours in every possible aspect, (b) a variation on the first, suggesting an ineffective moveset because your pokémon does not deserve the good TMs, or (c) copy-paste a Smogon moveset, even if it involves chainbreeding.
 * Smogon movesets in particular are rather useless for normal play - the average Smogon moveset requires not only chainbreeding, but also pulling the Pokemon up to 100, EV and IV training every stat from the bottom, and using one-use, hard-to-find items. Also notably, most tiers in the game are based on the rest of the metagame, and only one Gym Leader in any game (Roark's Geodude and Onix in D/P/P, which he puts aside for the rematch) uses Stealth Rock. At this point, they aren't even for cartridge play. A lot of them involve giving the pokemon in question a specific Hidden power type, which is impossible in the actual games. They're all really only meant for Shoddy Battle, Smogon's Gen IV battle sim. This in turn means that they totally ignore the idea that some players don't do competitive battles or like to keep things simple.
 * It isn't just Game FAQs. Pretty much anywhere the Pokémon fandom hangs out you will find really obnoxious "Stop Having Fun!" Guys. There may be more than even Smash Bros. Wi-fi and YouTube videos are dominated by them, so much that you can't find a casual battle anywhere unless you play with friends. And the worst of all is Smogon. Whatever you do, don't go to Smogon if you're a casual player.
 * In fact, pretty much the entire competitive Pokémon community is the epitome of this trope. If you’re one of the poor fools who dares to raise your Pokémon without horribly and cruelly abusing/biologically mutating EV Training them, you are going to be called a Scrub and be publicly humiliated. And if you even think about thinking about mentioning that it’s actually a physical possibility to play the game without regard to the endless amounts of soulless numbers and statistics, prepare to be mercilessly flamed until absolutely nothing is left of you.
 * Heck, just having the "wrong" moveset can cause the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys to look down upon you. And to put it further, having the wrong nature, stats, and whatnot is also frowned upon.
 * Speaking of "correct" teams and moves: one war story has the teller losing five widely-used competitive Pokemon before sweeping with one normally ranked in the second-lowest tier, to the complete surprise of both players. The hilarity is best appreciated in the original thread (complete with chat-log).
 * Do not mention you use "Uber" Pokemon. At all. Even if you're just a casual player (IE: Not very competitive) the more hardcore gamers will accuse you of using nothing more than "Game Breakers" or "Relying too much on over-powered Pokemon to win battles". Heck, just having an "Uber" on your team and not even using it counts.
 * Two words: Action Replay. Hardcore Pokemon gamers will frown upon those who use "cheat codes" to obtain certain Pokemon (mainly Event Pokemon), even though it is technically legal to do so.
 * Your Mileage May Vary on this - plenty of Serious Business players are well aware Pokemon in-game isn't meant to be taken seriously, and are happy to let people mess around. Scrubs playing with their favourite-but-mostly-useless Pokemon on a competitive simulator, however, tend to draw unwanted attention.
 * You're not allowed to run from a battle in a JRPG. Ever. It doesn't matter whether the enemy's kicking your ass hard and it's been hours since you used a save point, you're in a real-life hurry to get to a save point, or the enemy is so weak that there's no point in fighting it for what little spoils you'll gain. If you run from battle, you are a complete RPG Scrub.
 * God know how you're supposed to advance in Suikoden 2 then: one of the character recruitments requires a certain amount of battle retreats. SHFG's tend not to be big on logic or exemptions.
 * Apparently, you're supposed to enjoy Level Grinding as well. If you don't, then you just don't know how to have fun in an RPG.
 * Averted/Inverted somewhat in Final Fantasy VIII—level grinding makes the game excessively harder,
 * And then played straight, as actually playing the game with the Experts of FFVIII will give you a very bizarre Solve the Soup Cans kind of logic in how to "properly" play the game. Said way tends to involve either playing Card Games or trying to Card Them All! Which actually is even longer and more complicated then normal Level Grinding.
 * There is only one party setup worth using. Every other combination of characters is absolutely worthless. Unless you specify otherwise, everyone will always assume you're using that party.
 * Very true in the Final Fantasy Tactics series. Using a Gadgeteer/Tinker? You're an idiot for using a "garbage" class. No matter how much you try to defend your decisions on what classes you use and how you use them, the "expert" players will just lecture you on how the other classes are so much better than what you use, despite the fact that Advance and A2 are pretty easy to beat with almost any class set up you use.
 * At the other extreme there's a set of Scrubs who will sneer at anyone who's crappy enough to "need" all the best stuff to win, in effect declaring Self Imposed Challenges the only valid way to play. Apparently if you're not playing through the game as a level 1 solo Joke Character without equipment you suck and have no business playing it.
 * On that note, do not mention Break HP Limit to any Final Fantasy X. Ever. Otherwise, be prepared for a paragraph of text on how stupid you are for even thinking of using it, and another paragraph on how you're supposed to be fighting "Insert Bonus Boss Here". Like the FFVIII example, it tends to be a Solve the Soup Cans! Logic that probably involves just as much work to find all the parts that you need. Figures.
 * A perfect example of what happens when you mix this with Fan Dumb is shown here. Beware the "Tyranny of Fun"!
 * Do you want to have fun playing RPGs? James Raggi considers you inferior. "Inferior" is perhaps too nice a word; "the scum of the earth" is a more accurate way of putting it. He even put up an followup to the article insulting anybody who was linked to it from this wiki.
 * Try playing Fallout 3 without using VATS much, or by actually playing as a good guy. Prepare to have people yelling your head off.
 * Even if it's not a competitive game, don't you dare admit to using certain perks, like the ones that increase your experience gain or reveal all the map locations, because you're a Noob who needs to level up faster to play the game to win.
 * Actually, don't even bother admitting to playing or liking Fallout 3 even if it's the ever-buggy PC version. There are many a SHFG who whines endlessly about their dislike for the game and will not allow you to enjoy it on those merits.
 * When faced with a party of Munchkins, a game of Dungeons and Dragons can turn into this very quickly. Woe to you if you happen to have a character who is not min-maxed up the arse. Even if you want to make a character who fulfils a role that the party needs, you're still a worthless maggot because you aren't multiclassing/are multiclassing/aren't using a cleric or druid.
 * It can be a real problem in some editions if characters are at different levels of min/maxing: the game balance can be shattered. A character min/maxed by a pro and a character made by a person new to the game can have such a gap in power and survivability that anything that would be a challenge for the min/maxed character is likely to destroy the new person's character in one round. A certain amount of balance must be struck in this case where the DM either reigns in the min/maxed character or helps the new player min/max their character somewhat, or a combination thereof. What makes the "Stop Having Fun!" Guy is he will be unwilling to either tone down his character or help the other player beef up his, instead deciding to berate and insist that his character is not the problem at all and expect everyone to play his way.
 * Exalted has a similar problem. Unless all the PCs put some effort into being combat-capable, anything that can even remotely challenge the combat-monsters will shred the non-combatants before they can blink.
 * There was a time in Adventure Quest ' s history (before a lot of the new quests were released with scaled level versions) when they were all one difficulty. Then Fire War was released, a low-to-medium level quest against the fire mage Drakkonan. This was immediately followed by a string of level 80+ content. When people complained that they couldn't do any of the new content they were told in no uncertain terms that low-level players had been given one special event and that was enough. Some particularly Egregious arguments insinuated that even giving low-level players one event amounted to insufferable persecution of hardcore fans.
 * Disgaea 2. Do you use monster classes for anything other that Magichange? You are noob, humanoids are way better. The best class is Samurai Magic Knight. And God help you if you teach healer any attack magic.

Rhythm Games

 * Honorable Mention goes to the various "real musicians" who tell players of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band that they should stop playing video games and learn a real instrument, ignoring the fact there are no Modern Warfare fans killing passengers at airports like the infamous No Russian level, or otherwise stop playing video games and join the real CIA. Most of the time, however, these people fail to realize that these games do not just emulate playing an instrument, but the entire rock star lifestyle, which would normally be extremely improbable to obtain in real life regardless of how well one can play a real guitar.
 * Harmonix have responded to these complaints by adding the more realistic Pro Mode for Rock Band 3, in which drummers get to use additional cymbals, keyboardists get to use the entire two-octave keyboard at once, and most anticipated of all, guitarists can use a new guitar controller with six strings and over a hundred buttons on its neck to more accurately simulate guitar playing, with a proper, fully-functional six-string controller on its way. This, in turn, has bred a new kind of "Stop Having Fun!" Guy, who insists that no matter how good a guitarist this game may make you, you're still a Scrub for learning to play through a video game instead of practicing by yourself.
 * Some actual musicians in bands have tried rhythm games and failed, simply because the controllers are different than actual guitars or drums, for a variety of reasons. One such example appears in Gene Simmon's Family Jewels, where KISS tries to play Detroit Rock City on Rock Band 2, but fails after only a few seconds. Such encounters often leads the game's fans to accuse the musicians of not being able to play their instruments.
 * Actually there are people wondering why anyone can have fun playing FPS and/or fantasy action games if the only proper way to have fun of shooting and fighting is, respectively, training at the shooting range/IPSC course or joining local medieval reenactment group.
 * One wonders if, for games like Command and Conquer, Medal of Honor and the like, Al Qaeda feel the same.
 * You're not allowed to play pop'n music with the Beat-Pop modifier. After all, if you want gray and blue notes so badly, why not just play Beatmania IIDX?
 * Dance Dance Revolution (along with its counterparts Pump It Up and In the Groove) have similar issues throughout:
 * When it comes to the safety bar, the players can be easily separated into two types: those who support their weight with it to achieve the highest score, and those who adamantly refuse to do so because they think it's more fun that way. Both groups are equally vocal and equally annoying. Some in the anti-bar camp will heckle or even outright smack the hand of any player whom they see reaching for the bar. Even if the player is trying to beat That One Song or play Oni Mode (where you have to play 5+ songs in a row without breaks, and missing 4 steps out of 300+ on any one song will fail you and end your game on the spot) or Survival Mode (instead of missing 4 notes max, it becomes a Timed Mission with only accurate stepping to keep the timer alive for the most part).
 * Similar but lesser hate can be directed as a player who uses speed mods or any built-in noteskins to make reading stepcharts easier, even if some of this noteskins are default options on some of the games. The only possible exception is the Solo modifier on older DDR arcade releases: due to a bug, if one player chose Solo, both players had to have it on.
 * For a while, the speed mod debate carried over to Guitar Hero. It certainly didn't help that in all Guitar Hero games so far but GH5, speed modifiers were filed under the cheats menu.
 * The online game JamLegend's score system awards most experienced players a golden "P" (pro) badge. Pray you don't end up in a multiplayer match made up of pros...
 * Besides that, most comments on the songs will simply consist of "FC" (Full Combo), sometimes followed up with "Too easy" or "Can't believe someone failed it". The moderator staff deleted them at first, but eventually resigned and let the SHFGs shout out their pride.
 * Homebrew Bemani games falls victim to SHFG traps, most stepcharts wind up in the vein of "It is supposed to be hard, learn to play" songs. Rather evident in StepMania and Osu!

Online Roleplaying Games

 * Ragnarok Online features a multitude of classes you can choose from, and because of the set-up for the stats and skills layout, you can have very unorthodox builds for any given class. Many classes are designed with certain builds in mind, but there is nothing stopping you from making a screwball build - Battle Wizard, Flee-Monk, Agility Crusader. God forbid you actually admit to working on one, especially to a guild that focuses heavily on WoE combat.
 * City of Heroes (and its counterpart game, City of Villains) have a couple of archetype combinations and maps that get used extensively by the twink crowd. In City of Heroes, it's Fire/Kinetics Controllers that are viewed as the most powerful, with two particular maps used. City of Villains is a bit more complex, but the popular choice is to pair an (area of effect emphasis)/Stone Armor Brute and a (area of effect emphasis)/Kinetics Corruptor (popular combinations are Super Strength/Stone Armor and Fire Blast/Kinetics). The map of choice is Battle For Television. They will then set up teams and farm it. While this is a very effective way to gain money, it is extremely monotonous and many of the people that set these up are also completely passionless and very strict about the conduct of the team fillers, with the most extreme of them not even letting them on the map to share the rewards (though even these ones usually tell you ahead of time, and let you leave once all the enemies on the map are spawned). Then there are the people that refuse to do anything but this type of team...
 * Amusingly, a lot of the more strident fans of farming the same map over and over and over and over in the pursuit of easy leveling and quick money accumulation will deride doing missions as "boring and repetitive". The Irony in such statements is stunning.
 * This section of the playerbase also relentlessly pursues and abuses other exploits for risk-free experience.
 * And now that we have the Invention system implemented, expect any player that doesn't use and abuse it to twink out his character to ridiculous levels to be mocked mercilessly by the usual suspects.
 * Those who aren't mocking people for not using it to make money of course.
 * If you aren't willing to put up with the restrictions and are willing to invest a lot of time into it, forget about two things in World of Warcraft: Raids and Arena. There is a very vocal group of players who believe you don't deserve any sort of advancement if you don't participate in either of these aspects. Never mind the fact that raids don't necessarily require skill, and that neither are particularly fun at their upper tiers primarily due to the high volume of these people at that level.
 * When 10-man raids were first announced, there was a huge uproar from the hardcore raider crowd. Some arguments against the change were reasonable, but many other arguments basically boiled down to: "You're not allowed access to this type of content because we say so."
 * On a very similar note, Blizzard has announced that in the upcoming expansion, Cataclysm, Battleground PvP, most often considered by SHFGs to be a complete and total waste of arena time, is going to provide rewards at least on par with Arena gear. As can be expected, posting about it on any Arena forums is a bad idea.
 * The infamous 50 DKP Minus person; this is the kind of player that can make World of Warcraft very unpleasant. Alas, they abound, especially on open world PvP servers.
 * The server Tichondrius is widely known to be the worst in World of Warcraft, as it is filled to the gills with elitist PvPer jerks who will actually scan your armory profile to make sure you are a seasoned PvPer. If you aren't? You're blacklisted by all players. Fun does not exist here and so (as the server's motto goes) "Tichondrius is Not For You".
 * The cross-server dungeon finder has had the unfortunate side effect of exposing Tichondrius players to the other servers. With shocking regularity when one party member stands out as being pushy, raging at the slightest delay, calling everyone noobs at the slightest provocation, and screaming over their deaths despite having aggroed an entire group while not being a tank, they are from Tichondrius.
 * The Rampage US battlegroup has similar problems with TWO such servers; Illidan and Cho'gall. Don't argue with them. Just Smile and Nod. Their vision is based on movement.
 * The official World of Warcraft class forums are chock full of posters that epitomize this trope. Don't have a + 16 Intellect gem in every gem slot of your gear? Then you are the worst Holy Paladin in the world and deserve to be boiled in acid. Have a talent point spent somewhere other than in the cookie-cutter build? Delete your character immediately and never play World of Warcraft again, you complete and utter loser.
 * There are massive complaints on the forums by the very vocal minority of "Hardcore" Raiders stating how Blizzard is ruining the game by allowing Casual Gamers to acquire endgame gear with the new Random Dungeon Finder tool (which allows players to get into Pick Up Groups that have a fair chance of not sucking, and hands out endgame loot tokens for successful runs). Has everyone forgotten that World of Warcraft has always been a casual-player-targeted MMO?
 * They also whined a lot during the Burning Crusade and Wrath of The Lich King major class revamps, commenting the game becoming too easy to play for noobs with little skills that can play with little or no addons. They seem to forget that even with the new changes, it still requires some skill to play classes, not to mention that players have to incorporate the new abilities and changes in their gameplay. This has continued into Cataclysm, with complaints about the new information displays. These mostly consist of giving people information they weren't previously given in the game but which is vital for progression content. Their attitude is apparently that instead of being given this info, they should have to look it up on third-party sources. There is no thought or skill involved in looking up these numbers, it's simply adds to the already extensive busywork of the end-game. But apparently actually providing these fundamental stats is catering to noobs.
 * The Random Dungeon Finder combined with the new gearscore attributes have caused a whole new outbreak of "Stop Having Fun!" Guys. It's not at all uncommon to wait some time to get a random group, only to have the tank and/or healer (the two hardest members to find) look at your gearscore and immediately declare they are "not playing with a bunch of noobs" and drop group - even if said gearscore is equivalent to raid-quality gear prior to the most recent raid dungeon updates and you are playing an easy 5-man instance. It can also lead to party leaders voting to boot other party members with "unacceptable" gear scores. An exceptionally petty action when the said low-scoring player is probably still leveling their endgame gear and they just got bumped from the chance to earn tokens to buy better gear, and by getting booted from a random dungeon party, they are now forced to re-queue. The worst bit is that the point at which a gear score stops being too low is about the same point as you don't want any of the gear from the dungeon anyway. If you actually need something from the dungeon you're running, you're not good enough.
 * It should be noted that GearScore is not an in-game attribute, but a UI mod that assigns scores to equippable items and tallies your scores up to determine how well-geared you are. It's basically a tool to allow "Stop Having Fun!" Guys to be lazy about their elitism.
 * Some people have this very attitude towards vanity items and the people who farm for them: Why would you farm for a mount and/or pet? It doesn't help you during a boss fight. Same goes for people who do Vanilla/BC raids. You're dumb for collecting old gear that's outmatched by the greens you got while questing in Outlands/Northrend.
 * Instant-Message Roleplay has its own breed of the "Stop Having Fun!" Guy. It's the type that demands a great number of Instant Message boxes be filled per post, and will throw a fit if you do anything under the limit. Most people would be hard-pressed to stretch a single action into three. How they manage to find people to play with is anyone's guess.
 * AOL. AOL by far has some of the worst "Stop having fun guys" RPers. The standard fare to RP with anyone is: you must have a well thought out profile (this apparently is the most important thing. Also if it's not schwag and it doesn't have a picture, it's not "well thought out"), can type two full IM boxes consistently, and should have a storyline to play along with (although some offer their own). And then there's the whole vocabulary thing (calling eyes "orbs" and ears "radars" of all things). There was also a group that booted you out of the room if you didn't RP fast enough, claiming they do a mostly "talking" RP.
 * AOL roleplayers have eased up a little lately. For one, AOL has so badly wrecked its profile system that people just e-mail their info to each other.
 * AOL Free-form RP (FFRP). With the 'ability' to "roll" various amounts of "dice" with various amounts of "sides" (i.e., a random number generator), there was infinite potential to not have fun. Combat tended to be speed-typing-based and not round-by-round (i.e., D&D style), which meant that 'fights' turned into copy-pasting "punches him" followed by the roll command over and over again. Which was de-funned even further by stipulations on minimum-word limits, time limits between actions, and refusals to recognize actions for one reason or another ("You can't just say 'fires a gun at him'! What kind of gun? What kind of bullets? What are you aiming at?") All this cat-herding was ruled over by a series of unofficial "official" enforcers of rules (a.k.a. clans or guilds), none of which required anything more than a hastily-assembled webpage of rules. And don't you dare laugh at any of this. It was Serious Business.
 * In Yahoo! Chat, back when it actually had user rooms, if you couldn't do three eight-line paragraphs about the simple act of throwing a punch, then you just couldn't RP, noob!
 * The reverse has been known to be true as well; some players advocate a maximum number of lines (usually three or five) per post for a variety of reasons that boil down to "you're a noob if you can't say what you need to say in three lines" or "you're a poser who pads his posts with Purple Prose." It can become a Cyclic Trope when the para-posters become dominant in a particular chat, save for a couple of disgruntled veterans who aren't on the paragraph side, and the latter become role models for a lot of newbies who don't like the para-post clans, form their own clans until they become dominant in numbers and the para-posting clans disintegrate, leaving behind a few old guard who start wowing the newbies with their "mad posting skillz..."
 * There's been a recent controversy on Twitter, specifically the "TwitterDex", a group of people who like to act out Pokémon Tweets that have their own wiki. A recent influx of people portraying characters from the games (such as Karen, Lance, and Steven) who chose to portray their characters in slightly different ways than they're shown in Canon have crossed paths with the "veterans" who think that the Twitter series they're posting "isn't an RP" and that their characters are "out of line". A recent incident involving a party at Steven's house where people drank and had a good time (some more than others, though nothing truly explicit occurred) was shut down when Steven reached his Tweet Limit for the day and arguments regarding the portrayal of characters and clogging up followers' feeds with multiple tweets began.
 * Forum Play-by-posts. Seriously many people require you to have an extreme amounts of actions taken. Of course this may also happen when you are playing numerous characters or Non-player characters at once, which would result in a longer post; but if you have only one character, then you must match theirs in length and description! Even when you are not in control of the environment and therefore have nothing else to describe but your character's actions. Another case where it goes both ways - some "Stop Having Fun!" Guys will demand that you simply don't overload them with details or introduce them over time, and will enable you to get away with a shorter post, and if you do too much stuff then you're overwhelming other players or are just trying to show off. Bottom line? Either try and balance "Get right to the point" and "Enriching the world", don't add details for the sake of longer posts and don't just say you nod and that's all, or adapt to the type of game you're in.
 * MUSHes and MUCKs often suffer from the above phenomena too. Some will encourage (or require) you to write "long, descriptive" poses or character descriptions (what others see when they "@look" at your character), where it turns out that "long and descriptive" actually means "a giant rambling paragraph of Purple Prose." And then there are the competitive posers who try to constantly one-up each other in length and Purple Prose...
 * Efedding. It's a forum-based writing/roleplaying game with Professional Wrestling as a backdrop. Efedding players can generally be broken down into "storyline" (writing short stories and chapters thereof featuring your character(s)) and "trashtalk" (doing like real pro wrestlers do and talk trash about your opponent and the match). "Stop Having Fun!" Guys exist on both ends of the spectrum. Trashtalker SHFGs consider storyliners to be pretentious psuedo-intellectuals who don't know how to play the game. Storyliner SHFGs consider trashtalkers to be uncreative dullards who don't know how to play the game.
 * In Phantasy Star Universe, there is a large group of people who will boot you from the party for a number of reasons. Picking up "trash" rare items (even when there is some value to them)? Not having the right Weapon/Armor element (especially at a low percent)? Having weapons that are not grinded (enough)? Having low Photon Art levels? Daring to not play as the "right" race/class combo, especially as a disadvantaged one (Beast Ranger, Newman Hunter, CAST Force)? Getting most of the good rares when the setting's on Set Random? Oh Noes! Hell, just being there at the end boxes on missions is a viable reason to be kicked from the party. You don't have to do much to get booted from the party. Sometimes even nothing at all...
 * In EVE Online there's a constant struggle going on between "carebears" who do non-PvP related activities such as mining or mission running and the PvPers and pirates. Sure, there's the saying that "PvP in EVE is consensual and you consent whenever you undock", but PvPers seem to be of the mind that the game is all PvP and you should not have the freedom to play the game the way you like - if you prefer to fly out into an asteroid belt and shoot rocks with a mining laser, you deserve to die and be taunted for it. This despite the fact that freedom of gameplay is EVE's biggest drawcard and that half the in-game economy is powered by carebears. They're a little more forgiving if you're a new player, and don't have the skills or equipment to survive in 0.0, but veteran players have no excuse. (Which is not to say there aren't carebear players who are just as Serious Business).
 * For an even more illuminating case study, look toward the big 0.0 player alliances. Consider "alarm clock ops", where in a game where the potential conflict runs 23/7 in real time, you have players in other time zones setting their alarm clocks to wake them up in the middle of the night to go on them - and if you don't, you're letting your alliance down. And that's just scratching the surface. In 2009, a director in the Band Of Brothers alliance (whom for years had been impossible to destroy), on a lark, created a noob character and got him enlisted in Goonswarm - BoB's biggest competitor and the resident Something Awful stronghold. Hanging out with them apparently made him realize that he was sick of the BoB Serious Business mentality, so he outed himself and offered to defect. And he did... taking BoB down with him. The resulting explosion, fallout and power vacuum were epic.
 * Maple Story. If you don't have the right gear, or if your damage isn't up to par with the (increasingly more) absurd standards set by the "pros" (read: people who spend entire days just merchanting for Meso, the game's currency), or if you're playing one of the least popular classes, or, God forbid, if you play the game for fun rather than for leveling up. (Such as, say, not hiring a high level cleric to train you, a costly but fast process that lets you skip ahead in levels quickly), you're a noob.
 * As far as many Runescape players are concerned, if you haven't leveled all of your Free-to-play skills up to at least 75 than you're barely playing the game. And don't even consider buying a membership; you aren't worthy.
 * However, in the PVP worlds, each and every person there can qualify as the Most Triumphant Example of this trope. Heal when you're not low health? You get flamed. Use certain weapons? Flamed. Have a balanced level rather than specialise in one thing? You're labelled the scum of the earth. It reeks of Munchkinism constantly, and it's why a lot of people avoid the PVP of the game.
 * Final Fantasy XI. Dear God, Final Fantasy XI. The game has 20 jobs, of which you can pick a main and a sub. Of those 300+ combinations, there are maybe 15 that are acceptable to the SHFG: Any Melee class that is not Samurai or Dragoon shouldn't even bother leaving the Mog house. Sorry Warriors, Dark Knights, Thieves, etc—you're only going to be invited to a SHFG's party if there aren't any Samurais or Dragoons available. If you are not playing Samurai or Dragoon because you have already taken both to the level cap—you should expect to have one of three subjobs as a melee—either /SAM (for anyone over 60), /WAR (for anyone under 60) and /NIN (for parties with a particularly loud SHFG leader). These are the only acceptable subjobs, all others will be asked to change before leaving town.
 * For spellcasters: black mages should either level grind solo (which is tricky and works best at higher levels) or party with other black mages in what's called a manaburn party. Likewise, Summoners should level grind solely with other summoners, which is similarly called an astralburn party. All normal levelling parties should have a Red Mage as healer/buffer/debuffer, and have no need for any other caster. And everyone wants a bard for their wide variety of powerful buffs. Other spellcasters else should not waste their own time. The others—Scholar, White, and Blue Mages—are unfortunately only useful as subjobs.
 * Ninja is the only job that can naturally dual wield weapons, has a variety of spells (Ninjutsu) and can usually do generally respectable damage. However, none of this is likely to matter, because one of those spells creates a few shadow images which effectively cause the next few normal attacks to automatically miss. The "Stop Having Fun!" Guys realized early on that when used properly, casting this over and over would make the ninja effectively invincible in most situations, both by avoiding damage and by preventing enemies from using their Limit Breaks. Thus, "Blink Tanking" became the norm. In its most common form, a NIN/WAR gets a monster's attention, then uses shadow images to absorb its attacks while the rest of the party kills it. At high levels, a WAR/NIN can do likewise, although the spellcasting mechanics make it slightly more difficult and less reliable. In addition, other melee characters will frequently use Ninja as a subjob, both to allow DualWielding and for the above shadow image spell. However, some SHFGs insist that all players use Ninja as a subjob, even those who get little out of it, mainly because it weakens the player's damage output and makes the duties of the healer and "Blink Tank" a little easier.
 * Dancer, Puppetmaster and Beastmasters are nearly unseen in parties. Fortunately, all three can solo reasonably well. There are several reasons for this: none of them add anything to a party that other jobs can't do just as well; dancer is a late addition to the game, puppetmaster requires a little more effort, investment and planning than most jobs to be similarly effective, as well as relying on an unpredictable automaton. Beastmaster is commonly seen as the best job to solo with by SHFG and regular players alike, and their reliable pets tend to either be mediocre or easily killed.
 * The "Stop Having Fun!" Guy mentality on Final Fantasy XI goes beyond choice of job; choice of camp and party style are ways you can "do it wrong" too. Many of the above narrow job choice demands are based primarily on what's optimal in a meleeburn against colibri (or less commonly against puks and Mamool Ja. If you aren't meleeburning colibri, you had better be solo, or in a manaburn or astralburn instead; if you're fighting anything else in any sort of way aside from those two, at best the local SHFG will persistently "gently" remind you how inefficient you are at getting XP and provide "tips for improvement", and at worst tear you a new one.
 * And Heaven help you if you decide to use a weapon uncommon to your job—for instance, using a pole as a Monk. Even if you're soloing and not looking for a group. On the plains outside the Valkurm Dunes.
 * It is worth noting that very little of this applies to high level raid-style content, which commonly requires jobs that are considered useless for optimal Level Grinding, especially thief to increase drop rates, paladin tanks to survive powerful enemy Limit Breaks and magic damage, white mages for more efficient heals and better raises, and rangers and black mages for long-ranged burst damage. Dancer, puppetmaster, beastmaster and corsair are still rarely seen, however.
 * Guild Wars has this often when it comes to character builds. Woe betide you if you try something unique. There's only a certain type of build you can use, and if you don't do this, you suck.
 * Better yet, no one will tell you what these builds are or where to get the skills needed for them! At most, you'll get the name for the build. As if this is supposed to instantly communicate everything you need to know.
 * Roleplay on LiveJournal has a lot of these. Occasionally slip up in your characterization? You're the scum of the Internet and need to gtfo of LJ. The anon meme and Roleplay Secrets community combine this with the GIFT for extra vitriol, to the point where there are threads complaining about people using the "wrong" userpics or formatting their comments "wrong." Also, dare to play out a gay couple and you will be snarked at because according to the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys (or girls), you're only in it for the sparkly buttsex and/or because having a character whose orientation is never mentioned in canon be gay or bisexual is somehow OOC.
 * There are plenty of these in the Dungeon Fighter Online community, especially concerning builds and play styles. If you like playing the normal game at all, then you are a worthless n00b (never mind that thegame isn't really made for PVP). Several skills are considered "useless," and even if you demonstrate how they can be particularly useful, you are derided for picking a "worthless" build. This game is unique because you could have a 100% win record in PVP, yet still be called a bad player if your build has "worthless" skills, no matter how much they helped you win. David Sirlin himself would be derided.

Newspaper Comics
"Hobbes: Who cares, I wanted to make it. Calvin: What is this, some sort of snobby aesthetic thing?!"
 * Brilliantly skewered in a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin is criticizing a clay tiger made by Hobbes.


 * Also shown in Baby Blues. Zoe wants to have some fun cup-stacking while Darryl offers to be her coach. When she refuses, saying she just wants to have fun with cup-stacking, Darryl asks, "What kind of mentality is that?!"

First Person Shooters

 * A "noob weapon" is defined as any gun that does decent damage and doesn't fire every other shot at your own head.
 * These guys occupy both sides of the debate over snipers. Either sniping is pro and people just need to stop whining (often with additional statements that it's unrealistic that they have to get a headshot to kill in one hit and/or bragging about no-scoping), or snipers are noobs who can't play properly and so have to camp for cheap kills, where "cheap" is defined as killing the player in question.
 * If you do like to snipe, for the love of God, never get a bodyshot kill or people will view you as a Complete Monster.
 * Any competitive game in general attracts this, but due to the fact that most First Person Shooter multiplayer games are pretty much competitive, it quickly deteriorates from simple fun where you wanna come back to a "Win to Live" mentality. If you have more deaths than you do kills, then get the hell off the server and play with a bunch of kids, you noobling! You use anything unconventional? BURN IN HELL FOREVER!!! The mentality of too many players of First Person Shooters is comparable to if they were actually in war and someone does die a painful death if someone's goofing around.
 * Word of advice: If you're really suicidal, say the words "Maybe I'll use the autosnipe next round" to hardcore CounterStrike players.
 * Team Fortress 2 is something of a Broken Base on its own, and the competitive community in it is actually fairly nice to people (of course, there are exceptions) but the people who complain about how it's an objectively terrible game because it doesn't take as much skill as its predecessor, Team Fortress Classic are a vocal enough group to be considered the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys of the TF fandom. Never mind the fact that the game's developers said that their goal was to make a more balanced game than TFC, which they said was extremely unbalanced, it takes less skill and the Medic is no longer an attacking class. It's just a horrible game and if you say otherwise you're an awful person who doesn't deserve to own a PC.
 * A good portion of the competitive TF2 players seem to think that if you're not playing 6v6 nocrit matches with them, then you're off playing 32-man Instant Respawn 2fort, crouched behind your Sentry holding Mouse1.
 * Then there is the inverse: the people who enter public servers with few players and declare "no playing serious." What this means varies from just not going after objectives to straight-up not doing much of anything, but the one constant is that anyone who joins afterwards will be unable to tell until it is too late and he has already broken these unspoken, unwritten rules. At which point the other players will immediately assume he did it on purpose (even though he just joined) and shun him until he leaves.
 * On some of these "no playing serious" servers, any player who is performing a "Spycrab Walk" is not to be attacked for any reason by the opposing team. Players who kill "Spycrabs" on these servers are subject to ridicule and are occasionally kicked or even banned for this transgression.
 * This game's version of "No Items Fox Only Final Destination": "No Spread No Crits No Unlocks Max Damage 2Fort"
 * Gentlemen? Meet ghost4. What's a ghost4? For booing at the developers for implementing a badge for those who first played the game over a year after it came out and calling them "Weekend Warriors," which he considers insulting.
 * Said medal was changed to bear the name "Mercenary" before the medals were even released (within hours of the original announcement, in fact - it was likely even changed before the Flame War above took place), and the original page showing it with the "Weekend Warrior" name had the "Mercenary" version put in very quickly, erasing all mention of the old name from any of Valve's pages.
 * A fairly recent example: Competitive leagues have recently decided they're removing the Sandman (a scout bat which also hits a baseball to stun people), Natasha (A heavy minigun which slows targets down when shot), and the Wrangler (an engineer pistol replacement allowing them to take control of their sentry gun from their next season. While, regardless of the backlash, many people have spoken up and give good reasons (or not-so-good ones), others have decided to say otherwise.
 * Arguably a case of "Let's have some fun guys" as many find those weapons make the game significantly less enjoyable.
 * The general community also gets pretty vocal about weapon loadouts. No matter how balanced a set of alternative weapons may be, one of them will always be the infinitely superior choice and you must have it equipped at all times. God forbid anyone ever uses the Backburner or the Bonesaw in public. They will be promptly shat on and told at length how much better one of the other choices is.
 * One word: Demoknights. After the Demoman gained the ability to give up his StickyBomb ability for increased melee potential, players will either complain about either how using stickies is unfair because it encourages camping or that Valve never should have given the demolitions man an ability completely unrelated to blowing shit up.
 * Halo 2. They're the ones that start crying when you suggest playing Swords or Rockets or anything that isn't a team game. Or when you suggest playing on Beaver Creek. They'll generally only play Capture the Flag, on Blood Gulch, with Heavy Weapons. Or, they'll get on your ass if you use any weapon other than the Battle Rifle...
 * Left 4 Dead. While people do need a good amount of skill to survive the Advanced and Expert difficulties, some players will immediately kill or boot another player from the game if they make just one mistake and/or call them a n00b for not knowing how to play properly. Shown a lot more in VS mode where team members will accuse you of making them lose because of...well, anything. Because of stuff like this, some people get pure joy in making other players rage at their bad game playing. This becomes more apparent when you get scolded or booted from the game for something that could be beyond your control, such as shooting someone by accident as they wander into your line of fire or popping a Boomer that was next to someone as it catches you by surprise. Doubly annoying in Versus mode, as there is no place to practice the infected side other than during an actual match.
 * You must use the autoshotgun! If you pick the assault rifle or (God forbid) the hunting rifle, you're hurting your team so much you may as well be teamkilling. (Amusingly enough, many people consider the hunting rifle, and its big brother the military sniper rifle, some of the best guns in the sequel, plus the hunting rifle in the first game now had its accuracy buffed up so opinions may change.)
 * Just try playing a pub Versus game and not exploiting glitches such as getting pushed through walls or "shiva stacking" (huddling in a corner during zombie rushes, making you all but invincible). You will be booted so fast your head will spin. This was the case in the first game, but thanks to new types of crescendo events plus new special infected in the sequel, the old tricks are not encouraged as much.
 * Heck, just lacking a microphone will get you booted by people who take communicating in games very seriously. It seems having no mic at all automatically makes you a sucky player instantly.
 * Most of time you are just kicked out without giving a reason. You are left wondering why, as asking for explanation does nothing. If you are lucky, you are called "n00b" or "you have less than X amount of playing time, learn to play".
 * Heaven forbid you have a poor connection - it's obviously not possible to have difficulty playing due to a slow connection, clearly your slow connection is caused by you sucking at the game and not by being too far from the server host, simply having a lower-powered Internet setup or computer, etc.
 * Another VS example: players who are serious about winning will demand other players to rush the maps so that the infected team will not have time to spawn properly and catch up. It is a legit tactic, but god forbid that you need a few seconds to heal up or are actually caught by a special infected and need help. For the players who demand to rush, they will blame you should you fall behind for reasons beyond your control.
 * If you want to get The Hidden: Source players up in arms before you even finish your sentence, just mention the "pig stick." It's a One-Hit Kill available to the Hidden player, in exchange for making them unable to move throughout the three-second animation. It also makes a noticeable sound; the Hidden player's advantage being that he's invisible, this is a seriously bad thing. Yet most players insist it be turned off, because anyone who uses it is a hacking noob. It's seriously the most polarizing game mechanic this side of Team Fortress 2.
 * Quake III Arena and it's online reproduction, Quake Live are fairly immune. The simplicity of the weapons and the purity of their purpose means every weapon (even your intentionally nerf-y starting weapon) is useful in some situation, in which its use is almost necessary. Plus, the structure of the game means that there are very few modifications to one's playstyle that are necessary to start playing as effectively as possible - namely, learn when powerups respawn, and try harder. Well... fairly immune: the Munchkins and tourney-obsessed will also force their games to display opponents as one type of character and make the level textures lighter, but the latter may be blocked in Quake Live. Speaking of which...
 * ...the discussions about the Quake III: Team Arena stuff in Quake Live at the official forums have many players who will want your death if you dare to use the Nailgun, Chaingun, Prox Launcher, Runes, Kamikaze or Invulnerability; or even if you vote the qzteam* maps.
 * Modern Warfare 2: A number of these show up in online play with regards to player gear. Assault rifles, for example: the SCAR-H/ACR fanboys will flame anyone for even daring to use an assault rifle that isn't their most treasured weapon, even players who have not yet unlocked the ACR. Bonus points if the player is using a FAL which is probably the least-liked assault rifle for not being able to unload its magazine instantly. Grenade-launcher attachments are called Noob-Tubes; if the Knife Nut and Akimbo Shotgun kits suddenly flood a match you can guarantee that anyone trying to use anything else will be flamed for not being a real player. The riot shield is probably the biggest offender to the trope, despite making the player Immune to Bullets, and its ability to dominate in close-ranged fire-fights especially against opponents armed with shotguns or pistols, using it is seen as a sign of noobhood to the so-called "Pros". Using the 2 "stealth" perks and a silencer/heartbeat bling weapon will invite a hefty dose of flaming more often than not.
 * Everyone loathes the Fal, considering it to be the worst weapon in the game. It's also the best weapon in the game if you have a hand that actualy works.
 * The Search and Destroy game-type tends to breed this kind of behaviour. It doesn't help that it plays like CounterStrike. Often it's best to just skip onto another game-type, as the matching service will keep dumping you back in there.
 * Try to find a Battlefield 2 server running something other than Strike at Karkand I/O or Wake. Wake in particular is beloved of "pro" players due to the phenomenally unbalanced Chinese jets that can be whored for the entire match. Expect to be teamkilled if you try to get to one first.
 * Most Battlefield 2142 Titan games will have something stupid going on, be it a commander parking his Titan over an antiaircraft gun so he can get tons of repair points for fixing the guns, parking his Titan over a missile silo so he can skip straight to the "loads of easy Claymore and RDX kills" stage of the match, parking his Titan directly in front of the other Titan for loads of free kills on enemy transports and gunships taking off, or the fact that everyone else playing is either doing it for tons of free Clay and RDX kills or really, really likes dying. Needless to say, this is how the game is "supposed" to be played, and capturing the silos to win rather than fighting through the ludicrously booby-trapped Titan is the height of noobery. Elsewhere, the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys can be found abusing the PK rockets/Voss combo to the hilt and accusing anyone who kills them with the Bauer (or, for that matter, anything else) of haxing, or sniping at you from on top of a ridiculously tall building because pod surfing is pro.
 * Any sniper who uses the Zeller-H is likely to be mocked, as is anyone using a Scope Stabiliser.
 * Killing a "crawler" (a zombie without legs) in Nazi Zombies will cause torments of nerd fury to come upon you. Granted, the frustration is somewhat understandable, as keeping one alive will prevent the next round from starting, allowing the team to rebuild barriers, upgrade weapons, etc. But others frustrations will go too far.
 * The aging, but still fairly popular Red Faction has had this problem from time to time. For a three or four year period, there was an extremely common server-side mod (still around, but the playerbase has shrunk considerably, with the SHFGs moving on to newer and flashier games) that would disable the Fusion Rocket Launcher (blasts a huge hole in the ground, and kills anyone in a considerable raidus), the Heavy Machine Gun (most powerful automatic weapon), the Super health/armor (gives double the normal max), and the invincibily/damage amp powerups.

Third Person Shooters

 * Expect to be called a Noob for doing... just about anything outside of using the advanced sword cancel techniques with shotguns in the online game GunZ: The Duel. Even using the most accurate rifle in the game, you'll be doing nothing but spraying wildly... even after you nail an opponent 14 times in the chest. Using a dagger to knock someone down and shooting them while they're on the ground because they didn't jump out of it? You're being a dagger noob.
 * And if you jump out of a dagger user's lunge almost every time, you'll often be called a hacker.
 * Rifle, Revs, Kodaichi, and E-style (short for European-style and is the "simpler" advanced technique system i.e., anything that doesn't require a glitch in the system to be usable, which is what the sword cancel techniques are) is guaranteed to piss off the ones that use the sword cancel techniques (called K-Style, or Korean Style.)
 * On the flip side, there are those who insist E-style is the only true way to play, and that anyone who needs to sword cancel to in has no skill at the game.
 * S4 League players that use the Cannonade, Counter Sword, or Semi Rifle are often called noobs, since these are more versatile, safer or easier to aim but less damaging versions of the Rail Gun, Plasma Sword, or Gauss Rifle. They're also powerful tools in their own way—the Counter Sword is usually shunned by Scrubs as being overpowered. The Counter Sword and Rail Gun tend to also be considered unacceptable weapons on the Tunnel v1 map, where they are fun but not a good way to score touchdowns.
 * And then there are the 'rawr guns r 4 noobs' players, that insult and abuse anyone who uses anything but melee weaponry ( 2 out of some 20 or so weapons ), the 'LAGGER!' haters, who abuse anyone who tries to play with a poor connection because the game attempts (albeit a bit clumsily) to protect any poor sod whose connection can't give them a perfect uplink. For people defying the game's basic premise, these guys (perhaps due to their stupidity) can be unbelievably vicious.
 * Swords Only mode was originally created for the aforementioned 'guns r 4 noobs' players. The way the game is designed, though, turns some very ineffective strategies in S4/Chaser mode into Game Breakers when playing Swords Only (which would be much easier to stop if you just used a gun). The SO community, to counter it, created an entire set of rules to prevent that and whoever doesn't respect it is raged at. Apparently, limiting yourself to 3 weapons (out of 17), 3 skills (out of 10) and forcing yourself to adapt to a set of unwritten rules is the only true way to play the game.
 * The online Multiplayer mode for SOCOM 3/Combined Assault seems to consist almost entirely of suppression matches on a timer played on Devil's Road, Which is made up of two villages on either side of a lake. The result? Constant sniping, to the point where some servers have every other weapon disabled, and where this isn't the case you will be flamed for using other guns.
 * Gears of War on Xbox Live: much of community believes that the only weapon that should be used is the Shotgun. If you kill someone with say, the chainsaw or Lancer, it's not uncommon to receive an angry message from that person saying "Take out your shotgun, you noob!".
 * In the case of Metroid Prime, the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys are actually the company rather than the players. Retro seems to have a deep, abiding and entirely pointless hatred for Sequence Breaking, to the point that each successive version has tried progressively harder to ruin the game for Speed Running, apparently simply on the basis that this isn't the correct way to play the game. Most famously, Retro removed the "Space Jump First" glitch (where players who used a "scan jump" glitch when they first land on Tallon IV to get the Space Jump Boots much earlier than intended) from every subsequent edition after the original pressing.

Other Games

 * Sparda have mercy on your soul if you admit to playing Easy Automatic on any Devil May Cry title, for the Dante Must Die-demolishing "pros" will have none. Although there actually is a bit of sense in this, since part of the fun is linking together Dante, Vergil or Nero's moves as one sees fit, and the automated combo choices Easy Auto forces on the player detracts from that.
 * Defense of the Ancients, that (in)famous Warcraft III map, has a number of players who despise "noob" and "pub" (public game) hero and item choices. Anyone who plays Phantom Assassin, Stealth Assassin or Phantom Lancer at any time will be trashed for the entire game by the SHFG player. Also, anyone who ever buys a Dagon will incur the same level of wrath.
 * Heroes of Newerth, which is a standalone version of Defense of the Ancients, is this way. Even on games advertised "noob players only" there is usually someone who will complain about their team not doing things "right".
 * Not only that, but there is no tutorial, and no practice games. Essentially, to START PLAYING, you have to already be a SHFG on Defense of the Ancients.
 * It does have a tutorial now.
 * League of Legends suprisigly averts this.
 * If you're not coming within seconds of a world record in Initial D Arcade Stage or Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, fellow players will think you're So Bad You're Horrible.
 * Chrome Hounds presents an interesting case—the Scrubs and the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys are both in general control of the online community, and advocating similar messages: Stick Mechs are king, and Base-Dropping means you're a n00b, unless you did so in a Wheelie (God help you if you play like the game advocates instead).
 * The Mario Kart series have been getting this, starting with the DS. Mention the word, snaking, anywhere, and you are bound to stir up a flame war between people who are for it and and people who are against it. If you try to explain how snaking is broken, you are classified as a Scrub who can't handle better players or just suck at snaking.
 * Mario Kart Wii is no better when it comes to using bikes and certain characters with stat bonuses. If you dare to use anyone other than Daisy and Funky Kong (since they have the best bonus for top speed), any bike other than the Dolphin Dasher, Mach Bike, Flame Runner, or even try to play by just using a kart, pro players will tell you that you will always lose and stand no chance against people using a bike. You're also a Scrub by default if you even go as far as denouncing bikes for being overpowered. Apparently, no one is allowed to use anything other than the top tiered characters and bikes because it's all about using only the best to win.
 * Use the Wii Wheel? You're a casual Scrub who'll always lose. This troper has also seen the opposite, stating if you don't use it, you're a casual Scrub who can't drive worth shit and will always lose.
 * Admit to playing any game with Difficulty Levels on Easy (or even just ask a question about how it compares to the other levels) and prepare to get swarmed by people insisting that real gamers don't play on any level lower than Normal Hard  Harder Than Hard the absolute hardest difficulty.
 * This also applies to custom levels or custom games like rom hacks. If they are too hard and people complain about it, the people that love it will denounce the complainers as scrubs and n00bs who can't handle a challenge.
 * Conversely, admit to playing on the hardest difficulty level and being good at it and people will tell you you're not having fun.
 * Interestingly, Spiderweb Software switched to using Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels in the later Geneforge games as a response to something similar to this. The fanbase itself has relatively little friction between those who play on Normal or Tough in the older games and those who prefer Torment, but Word of God says that there's often an impression that playing on Easy is somehow wrong, and they didn't want people to feel that they were stuck playing on Normal or harder if they had trouble with the games. Makes a certain amount of sense—after all, if they didn't want people using Easy, they wouldn't have included it.
 * Interestingly, many games lock the harder modes until you've completed the game on either easy or normal. How have they played only on insane mode without unlocking it first?
 * Well obviously those games all suck and you shouldn't be bothering with them at all.
 * Mount & Blade offers players the chance to play either on foot as infantry, or use a horse. In a bidirectional relationship, horse players and infantry players both generally hate each other and view the other side's tactics as noobish. Cavalry players typically hate infantry because they are too slow and don't rack up enough kills, while infantry players typically hate cavalry for being a one trick pony (pun totally intended) and without any real skill.
 * The only legal methods of input for Touhou are arcade sticks and keyboards. Even if you can't afford a stick, you are not allowed to play using a pad, even if it's a reputable pad like the ones for the Sega Saturn and the SNES.
 * Games from the SNES era and earlier are the only games you should ever be playing. Everything else is far too casual.
 * Well, in general, anyways.
 * Admit to struggling with Thunder Force III or IV, and fellow shmup players will brag about how impossibly easy they are and how it only takes 1 or 2 attempts to 1-credit the whole game.
 * Not directly related to this trope, but this picture takes it to a literal level.
 * Apparently, you're not really a fan of the Mario game series unless you know every single warp pipe, hidden 1-Up block, secret passage, blah, blah, blah like the back of your hand. Likewise, some fans will tell you that the only way to beat the game is to not use any warp pipes (or the warp flute in SMB3), while others will tell you that using the warp pipe is the best way.
 * Woe betide anyone who says they don't try for 100% Completion in the games. IE: All the levels, all the coins, all the stars, all the bonuses etc.
 * If you are having trouble beating a certain part of a video game, do not ask for help anywhere on the internet. The only responses you will ever get are people telling you that you suck and bragging about being able to do that part in their sleep.
 * Chris Sawyer, creator of the Rollercoaster Tycoon games, went on the record as saying that the "entire point" of Rollercoaster Tycoon was the scenarios, only the scenarios, and that the casual sandbox-players (that is, those who just wanted to build a simulated theme park and who didn't care about the scenarios) were "doing it wrong, and needed to get serious and do it right", especially when they used a fan-produced "key" program to open the game up for sandbox play. He disliked sandbox play so much that when he wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, he included code that would wreck the game if the player attempted to use any sort of "sandbox key". Sales on Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 plummeted appropriately. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 was not only produced without input by Chris Sawyer, it included an open sandbox option.
 * Table-Top War Gaming, aka playing with toy soldiers, has its own two versions of "Stop Having Fun!" Guys. Type one think that you can't be a proper member of the hobby if you haven't allowed for the fact that at the battle of Bunker Hill Nathaniel Smith was riding a borrowed horse, while Type two only ever plays an ad-hoc elite SS unit containing every Jagdtiger tank the Germans ever built.
 * Dead Rising 2. You didn't get Ending S on your first playthrough? You suck at all video games. You restarted the story? You're a Level Grinding faggot. Strangely, the first game never had this problem. Most people would even recommend grinding to max level and getting Zombie Genocider before doing anything else.
 * Minecraft is young yet, but it's already got SHFGs lurking around the forums. Since the game is still in alpha, they dedicate their time not to deriding people for playing wrong, but to demanding Notch make alterations to the game to force people to play it "right". This includes everything from removing any feature whose only practical purpose is the creativity factor, to altering the way certain tools work for aesthetic reasons.

Sports

 * Sports in general are not only treated as Very Serious Business but also are a breeding ground for these. Too many examples to count, we'll just leave it at that, but we'll also say that it is usually justified in the professional level, since 'having fun' typically takes a back seat to the millions of dollars that are at stake at that level.
 * Really, the "professional level" may in and of itself be an example...
 * Children's Soccer. Have you ever seen Soccer Moms in action? It's just a game, the kids are supposed to be having fun.
 * Have you ever seen Hockey Dads? Some of them have beaten each other to death.
 * In the Netherlands we have Soccer Dads acting exactly the same.
 * The Fast Show ' s "Competitive Dad" was based on this kind of character.
 * Hunting and Fishing have often been known to attract these types. But of course there are quite a bit of people who're willing to give you some slack. Not everyone is really going to be performing at their peak when it's five in the morning, or lucky enough to catch a really big one. But there are people who can be yelling at you for catching too much fish or getting a kill bigger than they got. Oh you got a bigger trophy than I did? Beginner's luck...I got a bigger one? What finesse! What skill!
 * Of particular note for mass hilarity is ice fishing, though some tournaments do state upfront they ban all but certain specific ways of fishing. Go ahead and use a spear or large handheld net normally though. Just do it. Lets ignore the fact the Inuit have done it this way for centuries, civilized people only use rod & tackle, same as in normal fishing... and God help you if you're sitting on anything other than your bait box. A lawn chair? You scummy suburbanite trendwhore! How dare you also dress comfortably!
 * British amateur ski-jump enthusiast Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards was able to compete in the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary due to a rule allowing a nation to send an athlete in any sport for which there was a competititon, regardless of previous achievements by that athlete. Edwards, a middle-aged, myopic man who looks more like an ice cream vendor than an athlete, was to be honest a really, really bad ski-jumper. But his enthusiasm for the sport, as well as his "never give up" attitude and his statements that he was here for the "fun of competing in the Olympics", endeared him to the general public. Unfortunately, many of the "big name" jumpers felt that Edwards was "making a mockery" of the sport by being so bad at it and yet daring to compete in the Olympics with anything but a "win or die" attitude. Shortly after the Olympics finished, the entry requirements were greatly toughened, making it next to impossible for any other self-funded, self-trained amateur athletes to gain entry into the Olympics.

Strategy

 * In any strategy videogame, if you believe the forums, there are exactly two kinds of players. According to the other kind, these are turtlers, who suck at the game and need to come out and fight and use proper tactics, and rushers, who need to lay off the caffiene and actually try to have some fun. Both are the offspring of the terrible union of Satan, Hitler and Skeletor.
 * That's a consensus shared by the SHFG's and the Scrubs. The SHFG's take it several steps further by arguing that certain setting are "noob settings" and that if you beat them on said setting, it's because you gained a noob advantage.
 * Go to any Warhammer 40000 fan forum, and ask about army lists. Note that many of the aggressive posts are the guys who are building their armies to play Tournament matches against Space Marine armies (loaded with six-man Las/Plas squads and as many Assault Cannons, a huge Game Breaker in previous editions, as possible) on tables with no terrain.
 * If you post a list containing the most powerful units you can choose (such as the aforementioned las/plas squads), you will provoke an equally acerbic response. Such armies are criticised for not fitting in with the critic's idea of the background material (which will differ from critic to critic) -- and, especially, for being Game Breakers and not the 'right way to play'.
 * Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 are prime wargame examples. Use certain units or make a themed army, even if they're fluffy and fun, and the hardcore grognards will generally lecture on efficiency and effectiveness then probably advise the same cookie-cutter army that other people use to win. Make a wacky paint scheme and get decried by traditionalists. Make an army with a background that doesn't strictly follow established canon (like a loyal Space Marine army that is descended from one of the Traitor Legions) and prepare to be lambasted by canon-is-God players. Unless you say you're going back 10,000 years. With the Horus Heresy such a squiggly knot in history with Chaos playing some kind of supremely-advanced Risk, practically anything will go.
 * On that last note, tone and background are important factors. Gag armies are typically well-received by good-humoured players (Joycrons being a prominent example), and even in-character for some races (Orks being Orks are known to do all kinds of crazy stuff). That said, however, many gags or attempted combinations (Chaos Tau or Female Space Marines, for instance) are Berserk Buttons in certain parts of the fandom, and will throw even otherwise normal gamers into SHFG-worthy rages. Ultimately, it comes down to presentation, sensibility, and the type of people you play with.
 * Heroes of Might and Magic. If you didn't use the Armageddon + magic immune Black Dragons combo you're just completely devoid of common sense.
 * Worse yet: In Heroes of Might and Magic V there are people who actually come with arguments of how the Dungeon faction, specialist in destruction magic, is now completely ruined and obviously inferior to any other faction using destruction magic because other Heroes don't have a natural skill that pierces magic resistance, and thus, the Black Dragon's magic immunity, regardless of the fact that Warlocks, the Dungeon heroes, does from 50% to 200% more damage with destruction and receives way more Spell Power than any other faction hero save necromancers, and these are better off debuffing enemy armies and raising back theirs than wasting their mana in damaging spells. Trying using a destruction spell that isn't Armageddon didn't cross anyone's mind apparently.
 * Not to mention that this Necromancer strategy is the only valid strategy for necromancers. God forbid you don't use Raise Dead, and not getting this spell in the Magic Guild is obviously no excuse.
 * In Supreme Commander, if you don't use your Commander as a heavy tank destroying heavy platform in the early game, you're obviously trying to lose. Also building anything else than light tanks and engineers in the early game. Or using any other strategy than the siege bot spamming in the late game.
 * Unfortunately (Or fortunately, depending on your tastes) due to the way the original Supreme Commander was designed, if you didn't follow the above advice and someone else did, you were almost guaranteed to lose on most maps. It wasn't just good strategy: it was pretty much a required set of tactics and it came down to who could do the above tactics better... Fortunately, the expansion, Forged Alliance, added some new units and shook things up a bit, variety-wise, but the tactics still remain ingrained deeply in the community.
 * Let's not even begin with Command and Conquer itself. Didn't maximize the ore income in the beginning of the game with 3+ refineries? You lose. Didn't immediately begin to spam your basic tank? You lose. You actually bothered with human soldiers? You're so noob it hurts the pro's mother.
 * Starcraft is a unique RTS in the sense that it requires the same twitch reflexes usually associated with FPSers and Fighting Gamers. Your commands per second is less than 3? What are you doing wasting the professional's time and ruining their fun? You're not even worth thinking about. Didn't know that to defeat a 6 zergling zerg you only need a Zealot and a shield recharger... plus inhumanly reflexes capable of attacking the zerglings, landing exactly 2 hits and retreating before they can gank your zealot, ganking the zerglings with your probes as the zealot retreat, while recharging the zealot's shield? Even south koreans babies are born knowing that. You don't deserve to exist if you didn't know that.
 * Thankfully though, Starcraft generally manges to avert the trope since the best players play professionally and don't have time to be on the same server as the average players. The best average players can't invoke this trope since they are far and away worse than the pros.
 * The best average players (and not only) shouldn't invoke this trope, since they are far and away worse than the pros. Of course, it still happens. Continuously.
 * They also avert it in that top players are always coming up with very inventive tactics to win matches, to the point that there really has never been one "best unit"
 * Five rules for being a welcome member in the Advance Wars communities: never mention Snipers, never play in Fog of War, never play with navy, never say you can beat a competent player's infantry spam without CO abuse, and if you don't want to be marked as a Scrub, never ever (in Days of Ruin) choose No CO just because you only have to pay a minor price for the ridiculous boosts you get for COing a unit and surrounding units, or even complain about said ridiculous boosts. In short, do not complain about the blatant FakeBalance.
 * Though mentioning Snipers isn't a rule in game, it's just for the sake of your, and the forum's, sanity.
 * If you play Worms and you don't use rope every turn, use certain weapon combinations or get to the crates in time, God have mercy on your soul. Playing an online version with a mic (such as the Xbox Live Arcade versions) gets even worse, as you'll get several SHFGs yelling at you for every minor step you take, even if you're winning the match.
 * Spore, while rather simple, tends to attract this with its expansion Galactic Adventures. Granted, making an adventure is actually pretty easy thanks to the editor, and yes people should put in more effort to make something that isn't a Clark & Stanley knock off, however, not everyone likes to make a serious and grim quest or attack-based mission/adventure. In fact, most complaints in the forum that don't regard Maxis/EA are about the fact that there aren't a lot of "serious adventures" (when you have already factored in Sturgeon's Law, of course), even though just about everyone (and possibly every type of gamer) plays this game...
 * And let's not even discuss the creations, the way you should play the game, how the game is, or anything of that matter, shall we?
 * If you play any game in the Fire Emblem series, you'd better not go on any fan forums and mention using any character that isn't high-tier, and you better not say you didn't use a top-tier character. If you do, expect to get flamed about why "X is terrible, Y is so much better" and "You're such a noob for not using Z".
 * If you don't play Civilization at the highest difficulty setting using a build order that has been mathematically proven to be the absolute best then you're a brain-dead sub-human. If you play at any difficulty level below "Prince" then, sorry but you're too stupid to play Civ and should buy a game more to your level like Barney Teaches Numbers or something.
 * Other ways to have other people call you a noob in Civilization Online: Custom name your cities, chat in the chat box, set the turn timer for anything under blazing speed, and trying for any victory that doesn't involve military force.

Web Original

 * Played For Laughs in this video. "THIS IS A SERIOUS GAME." Cue The Scrub being named Boba Fett, steal the last kill, butt-fuck one of the characters which sets off a chain reaction, resulting in that character killing the other "Stop Having Fun!" Guy's character.

Card Games
""That's a terrible, stupid card that sucks and should never go in any deck." "I just beat you with it." "It's still horrible.""
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! If any game can be considered personification of this trope, this would be it. It seems like the majority of duelists who play the game are like this, netdecking like crazy, dismissing cards that aren't Too Awesome to Use as utter crap, and completely willing to rape the 10% of players who only play the game for fun. Flame wars have been started over duelists asking how to make a good Elemental Hero deck (considered So Bad It's Horrible among the elite), with both sides being chewed out as talentless, brainless hacks. Also the Seven Staples (a group of Broken cards) once made even the most fearsome high attack monsters like the Blue-Eyes White Dragon useless as they would be decimated the moment they are summoned by a simple pit.
 * The seriousness of the fanbase is lampshaded in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, where the main character, Judai, will regularly remind opponents that dueling is supposed to be fun. These people will always act shocked and amazed, believing Judai to be foolish and childish. Judai is the source of the Elemental Hero deck to begin with, having debuted it in GX. Later, as part of his Deconstruction, Judai develops this mentality himself, and part of Season 4 is an attempt by his friends help him regain his old passion for the game.
 * Interestingly, the character of Seto Kaiba from the original Yu-Gi-Oh story (who is himself an example of this trope) was inspired by one of these. According to the author he had once asked a friend to teach him how to play a TCG, but his friend said "Come back when you've collected 10,000 cards."
 * Magic: The Gathering designers call the players with the "only winning matters" mentality Spikes, in contrast to Timmies (who treat the game as a social outlet and like exciting play with big, impressive effects) and Johnnies (who treat the game as an intellectual exercise and creative medium and like unusual effects that complement each other). The design team generally tries to make sure there's something for each of these three player profiles in every expansion. Note that not all Spikes fall into this trope; see Player Archetypes for details.
 * There is, though, a common belief among tourney players that if any card that costs four or more mana doesn't win the game for you on the spot, it should never even be put in your deck, which the more experienced tourney jocks know ain't so and casual players find laughable. The specific quote comes from Zvi Mowshowitz, long time professional Magic player; but even he finds the idea laughable nowadays as seen in this article.
 * Particularly irritating are those who fill their decks with foreign-language cards for "variation" and almost roll their eyes out of their skulls if you have to actually ask what a particular card actually does.
 * There is a definite subtype of Spike, though, that loves to fill their deck with only "good" rares, barring basic lands. You're winning? Spike's attitude becomes a bit abusive and Spike acts like your deck is cheap, no matter what it's composed of. Spike is winning? Spike then becomes condescending about how "It's a shame you can't afford all the great cards like Spike can."
 * To make matters even worse, there's a subset of tournament players who play in "Friday Night Magic" (the most casual of the game's nationally sanctioned tournament formats) just to boost their player rating. Why is rating important? Because a high rating can qualify you for high-level tournaments that aren't necessarily open to all players, among other things. So these players will farm rating off of any newbie or cash-poor regular who shows up at the tournament looking for a fun chance to play some Magic. As if that weren't bad enough, a common response to beating the stuffing out of the "lesser" player is along the lines of "Well, you didn't lose that much rating anyway, since yours is so much lower than mine." Ignoring the fact that if you cared about your rating at all, the match might have lasted longer than seven minutes, including time to shuffle.
 * Dan Shive, of El Goonish Shive, reports the following dialogue following a game of Magic (he was the one using the card):


 * As a contrast to the above points, Magic: the Gathering can also be played in Limited formats. In such a circumstance, you have less choice about what cards to put into your deck and it is independent of how much money you have. You cannot fill your deck with foreign language cards for "variation", it is difficult to fill your deck with only "good" rares (since most of the cards you will draft will probably be common cards). about "if any card that costs four or more mana doesn't win the game for you on the spot, it should never even be put in your deck", well you won't always be given that choice so a player who "plays always to win" at Limited will need different strategies.
 * Try playing most card games for fun. Some, like Texas Hold'em (and other forms of Poker), get this treatment more so than others. People also insult you for not playing the game correctly. Which is ironic, considering that, for the most part, the people being insulted are effectively handing out free money to the people who hate them; insulting opposing poker players for perceived mistakes can be a huge part of the Meta Game.
 * However, poker games do not even necessarily have to be played for money. Tournament-style games needn't be played for anything at all (although usually still are played for money and/or trophies); cash-games (a.k.a. ring-games) must be played using resources outside of the game to bet, which is usually money, but you can use paperclips or your blood or whatever you own if you wish to enter such a game.

Other

 * You can expect to be lambasted by many a rock music fan if you enjoy hip-hop, country, dance or anything that isn't considered "real" music by them. Even worse, every genre and sub-genre of music has its own share of elitists telling you what is and isn't appropriate to listen to. God forbid you enjoy any mainstream hip-hop artists, or don't particularly care for the underground/lyrical rapper types, because if so you are part of the people who are killing "real hip-hop" and don't know what true rap is all about.
 * Fans of older music such as the Rolling Stones or the Beatles will lambast others for listening to modern music and modern music fans will likewise lambast older music fans for not liking new stuff. Ok, maybe the older music fan just reall likes earlier musical movements over the newer ones and the modern music fan happens to genuinely enjoy modern music ok people?
 * Saying that, Beatles and Stones fans will constantly berate each other for being fans of the other. Get over it guys, they were huge fans of each other that covered each other's music even.
 * Another music genre that seems to be almost everyone's Acceptable Target is metal. Especially that which may be found on Encyclopaedia Metallum. Tell anyone that you're into such music, and you will be bombarded with "randomly slamming on drums and belching into a microphone isn't real music!!" and "how can you listen to anything you can't understand!?". And this preludes the accusations of being a church-burning Satanist, Wiccan weirdo, virgin who plays Dungeons & Dragons, scary loner likely to shoot up a high school, or all of the above. If you like metal, your best bet is to treat it as an embarrassing secret and keep your fucking head down; to do otherwise would be social suicide.
 * Heavy Metal itself isn't immune to this trope, with the "True Metalheads" bashing Nu Metal, Hard Rock and *Core fans among other genres. The exceptions for this bashing may be at best Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Black Metal and classic 80s Heavy Metal. Oh, and they will hate you for liking, among other things, "The X Factor", "Virtual XI", "Risk", "Dark Passion Play", "Load", "ReLoad", "St. Anger", Helloween's Andi Deris's era stuff, Pantera's pre-Nineties stuff, and many other things.
 * Art in general tends to attract this trope, mostly thanks to the True Art tropes that can be at play.
 * Film preference can be bad about this. Fan or lover of an Epic Movie? You're a Lowest Common Denominator with no real taste or idea of what separates the real stuff from those Cliche Storms that Hollywood belches out... And yes, it even happens here on All The Tropes.
 * Certain Canon purists when it comes to Fanfic. Most canon sticklers will give plenty of leeway when it stories that take place "between the scenes" or that play around but still remain canon-compliant. They give even more leeway if the story is marked as an AU as long as canon isn't completely defiled. However there is a certain group that will have none of that. Fanfic stories must adhere strictly to canon and never deviate from what has been explicitly presented. For example, a canon purist who is also a "Stop Having Fun!" Guy will flame an author for describing a character's home or having him go there because this home never appeared on any episode of the show, which defeats the point of making a fanfic in the first place. But when a fic follows canon too closely, they bitch that It's the Same, Now It Sucks.
 * Hell, just writing fanfic, period, is enough. For every ten fanfic enthusiasts, there's one SHFG whining that they should be writing original fiction instead. Stop having hobbies I don't approve of, guys!
 * Any time a thread is started about anything religious/paranormal/UFO/conspiratorial/or creepy-pasta related among said enthusiasts tends to attract condescending, skeptical know-it-alls who insist on making it very clear to you that it's not real/fake/hoax, etc... and that you're a dumb ass for discussing and believing in such things.
 * Whenever a comic book character is adopted into television or movie form, there will be legions of angry fanboys screaming about every. single. detail that differs even slightly from the comics. For examples, see: Smallville, The X-Men Trilogy, eh, virtually every onscreen adaptation of a comic book character will have an army of "Stop Having Fun!" Guys flaming the people who enjoy it.
 * There exist in this world people who believe in the "correct" way to watch Star Trek, or indeed any other film or show. They may not agree with one another as to whether it is appropriate, when watching a Rubber Forehead Alien die slowly and emotionally, to laugh out loud at his forehead, but whichever they do they will be ready to insult people who don't.
 * AutoTune. Stop enjoying yourself by distorting your voices for aesthetic effect, artists!
 * Using it for aesthetic effect is not the main use of AutoTune. In more professional circles, the bigger issue is most people using AutoTune are using it improperly. Most people using it are using it to pitch correct notes. If it is used properly, no one should know AutoTune was used. People obviously using AutoTune, but not using it for effect tend to be the ones that get ridicule. Of course, in amateur and fan circles most of the AutoTune hatred is Fan Dumb.
 * Older people expressing an interest in activities or forms of entertainment that are more commonly associated with kids or teenagers are routinely belittled as being losers, immature, creepy, etc. Once you turn twenty-five, you are apparently no longer permitted to enjoy cartoons, video games, cosplay, fanfiction, anime, Halloween or anything else that has been arbitrarily designated as "kids/teens only." The only way you're allowed to enjoy such things unironically is vicariously through a kid, either yours or one that you "borrowed" so you'd have an excuse to do "kid stuff." Stop having fun, old guys, lest someone label you a stunted deviant that won't grow up because you own a PS3. And never mind that the people who created the material for consumption by kids only are usually in their late twenties, thirties, or even *GASP!* their forties (my God, why are people allowed to live to that age???).
 * This is the attitude of many NaNoWriMo haters, who seem to have the mindset of, "If you can't write a PERFECT novel in 30 days, you shouldn't bother!"

"You do realize that wooing aliens/eating mushrooms/killing passengers doesn't make you cool like real galactic badasses/plumbers/terrorists, right? Do you hear me? Stop having fun!"