What happens when you summon the deep powers of music and foolishness of the teenage male?
Okay, most of you probably don't know what Leeroy Jenkins is about, so here is a primer on the meme from the Meme Dictionary.
Leeroy Jenkins is the name of a World of Warcraft character that is known for screaming out his name before ignorantly charging headlong into battle, killing everyone in his party. Though the video may have been staged, Leeroy Jenkins was embraced by Blizzard, making several appearances in World of Warcraft products. ~ Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/leeroy-jenkins
World of Warcraft was the first truly Massive Multi-Player On-line Role Playing Game (MMORPG). I say this because it was played by 7 million people world wide. The 2nd place MMORPG is Runscape, with only 1 million subscribers. 7 million people playing a game that was released in 2004. It really is hard to grasp the idea that 7 million people are walking around an imaginary world trying to be something they not, fighting against monsters that don't exist for rewards that are just a bunch of 1s and 0s in the digital world.
I personally have never played WoW. The only MMORPG I have played more than a few hours was Lord of the Rings Online. I guess I got too used to games like America's Army and Star Trek: Voyager Eltie Force, that I don't have the patience to build up a character in real time.
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:Voyager%E2%80%93_Elite_Force
Sure, I played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, but those adventures came out of a book. Or we spent hours creating maps and designing castles and towns. We probably cheated a little on character development, because I now how it would be possible for my character to take all of those swords, shields and excess armor I took off of defeated foes out of the cave. Just the weight of everything would prevent fast movement and probably leave me open to attack with all the noise I would be making.
I currently play Fallout Shelter, which is kind of based off of the same concept of D&D, with characters with different ability levels and going out on quests. And, you can some how haul back all the things you capture from the wasteland.
Anyway, back to Leeroy Jenkins
The funny part of this meme, whether it was a staged event or not, is that the group of players are sitting around talking about what they are going to do for the attack. Leeroy Jenkins needs to go in to get a certain item off of the boss. The room is filled with dragons, so it is basically a death trap. One of the players is asked to calculate the probability of survival, which he returns as 34.4444~%. Being able to calculate the success of a spell or an attack has always been a part of D&D and I'm sure there are some hardcore players who would crunch the number for a team going in. So, I don't know whether or not this was a believable conversation.
Leeroy Jenkins was apparently off getting some food while this discussion was going on. As soon as he gets back, he tells everyone "Time's up, let's do this!", yells out Leeroy Jenkins! and rushes into the room. The team is shocked and attempts to keep to the plan, while trying to catch up to Leeroy Jenkins. However, the effort is futile and the entire team is killed.
Here is the video. *** adult language warning ***
The last thing that Leeroy Jenkins says is "At least I have chicken."
Whether or not Ben Schulz (the actual person behind the character of Leeroy Jenkins) and his friends planned this as a joke, it became a hit when the video was uploaded in 2015 to YouTube. A meme was created for basically running into something while ignoring the thought out plan. You could say, it was ultimate action every teenage boy would do. Charge into a situation without any worry about harm or outcome.
It is what makes boys, boys. I'm sure there has been more than one time that I have charged head first into something with no fear and all the bravado of an invincible being. And to be honest, if it works out either the way expected or in a positive manner, then it is even more rewarding.
And, on a reflective note, it probably is good to charge forth with a battle cry to conquer something you already know will be conquered, just to give it a sense of adventure.
One Vision
Ben Schulze would have been at most 21 years old in 2005, when the video was made public on YouTube. But, if somehow, he had a feed back to 20 years prior to 1985, then he might have been channeling Queen's song One Vision.
Not only is One Vision a good song, it was used in the movie Iron Eagle as the action song for when the teenage boy flies a jet fighter into battle to save his father. Yes, pretty unbelievable.
Here is the official song, since it is hard to hear in the above video.
The final line of lyrics is :
Give me fried chicken!
Yes, Freddie Mercury apparently had the vision to know that attempting to do something that had only one way in and possibly not returning would lead to the person to comment on fried chicken.
It truly is a magical world.