If you’re a gamer—or, at least, if you’re a gamer who’s old enough to buy his or her own games—it’s a familiar scenario: You’re sitting on your sofa. You’ve got your headset on. You’re waiting in an online matchmaking lobby for the teams to fill up. It’s getting late and you still need to take the trash out, put a load of laundry in the dryer and brush your teeth before bed. But after getting only a handful of kills in the last match, you’re hoping to finish strong with one last rampage.

Finally, the last player slot is filled. His gamertag is xXbigOLbonerXx. Your heart sinks.

For the next 10 minutes, you listen to an obnoxious 19-year-old kid sing “Roxanne” at the top of his lungs while he steals your kills, “accidentally” frags his own teammates and slings racial epithets at the opposing team. Before the game even ends, you just can’t take it anymore. You shut off your console, and crawl dejectedly into the night.

Oh, and your player ranking takes a hit for quitting early.

Isn’t online gaming great?

This is the topic of a recent article called “Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy,” which postulates the following equation:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total F***wad

It’s also the topic of this week’s Spudcast. Stephen and I huddled in the NewsCenter studio to discuss this and other scintillating matters, such as:

• The new R.E.M. disc is—get this—good!

• “Rainbow Six: Vegas 2” continues to rule our lives. Stephen continues to blow himself up with grenades. Rommie continues to play through entire levels without ever turning off his thermal goggles.

• Meanwhile, “Dark Sector” tests our patience. The Glaive is really cool, but ... man, it would be even cooler if you could use its full capabilities a bit earlier in the game.

• Sony‘s introducing a new Dual Shock 3 controller for the PS3, so if you hated the lightweight Sixaxis and missed the “rumble” feature of your old PS2 controller, you’re in luck.

• MySpace is starting up a retail music site. Do we need another retail music site at this point? Eh, I guess competition is good, regardless.

Check out the podcast here:

Couch Potatoes, Episode 32 [link]

As always, you can download the MP3 directly from the link above, or subscribe via iTunes by clicking on the logo on the left side of this page.