Tf2's Groups
Just like any other society, Tf2 has groups and they love or hate each other...
A group is defined as "any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share a sense of aligned identity." An example would be a class in school. A class is a set of students that have come together with the objective of learning the topic of the class, like science or writing classes. Team Fortress Two has groups as well, but being a video game, those groups may not be within the game itself, rather the friend groups that play the game. Here is a prime example:
Link to the YouTube channel: Weegeepootis & Ray: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs9KQJQe6W8bFDcAtROFHHw
This video showcases two friends doing synchronizing taunts after almost kill. Why did they do this? It's because they thought it would be fun, and they were right. Not only did they make a good video out of it, but they brightened the days of so many other people.
An example of a more in-game group, I would say, is the dreaded lime scout group. A lime scout is someone that plays the Scout class in Team Fortress Two, wearing lime green cosmetics and ruining the fun of everyone else in the server. Of course, there can be a lime scout that is friendly and just likes the color lime-green, but there have been enough bad lime scouts for the stereotype associated with them to gain a foothold, forming a social category of lime-green wearing scouts being menaces to the Team Fortress Two society.
Aggregates (groups that consist of individuals with no similarities other than being in the same place at the same time), are pretty rare in Team Fortress Two. Everyone's got something to do, whether it be to do the objective, have fun, or kill the enemy, so when you encounter someone, ally or enemy, something is going to happen.
When it comes to in and out groups, the line between them is positioned differently. The other players are either doing things that run for or against what you are currently doing, whether it be a group of randoms getting together to do friendly things, only for a lime scout to try and murder them, or a group of players wanting to push the cart on hightower, only to get market gardened by the group of market gardeners on the server. Being a video game, in-groups and out-groups come and go with every match; it all depends on what you and your teams wants to do.
The last thing I want to discuss is the theory of Amitai Etzioni. He believed organisations fell into three categories: voluntary, coercive, and utilitarian. I believe that you will mostly find voluntary things in Team Fortress Two, especially since it is a video game. Of course, there are things like the Jump Academy, a map that has the primary objective of teaching Soldier's to rocket jump.
^ This is basically Jump Academy's trailer ^
Link to The Winglet: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe8Jx3nbqr-aZqNIBXfasGQ
This could count as a utilitarian part of TF2, but you aren't forced to take it either. Being a video game, especially one that doesn't have a story mode, making the player do things is not the games objective, besides doing the objective, of course, but even then, their are those that ignore it.
As in any society, Team Fortress Two has many groups. Some are loved, some are hated, and some are just there. In the end, they could all be summed up into one big group: the people who play and/or like TF2.
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