What happens when you mix the following:
1. Sweet techno beats with massive bass
2. Long side-parted male hair
3. IRC chatting and online video gaming (i.e. DotA)
4. Talking to people over Ventrilo with these Icemat headphones
5. Hot Swedish girls
6. Partying/Clubbing

One word: Basshunter

I recently was in Stockholm, Sweden and after a week of partying, working, and watching YouTube clips, I only have on concluding thought: I want to be Basshunter. It’s not so much the partying, or the girls, or the bass, or the video game playing…its the fact that all of these can exist harmoniously. Historically video game players are huge nerds, techno fiends/clubbers are d-bags, and hot girls only go for people with money. But what happens you combine all of this? You get pure awesomeness and that pure awesomeness is Basshunter. For video evidence see the following:
Basshunter – DotA

Which leads me to my next subject…There’s really been a growing phenomenon over the past few years in the area of video gaming particularly. The association with hardcore video gaming and nerd-dome is becoming a thing of the past. Granted you will always have a large part of the video gaming community that can describe to you that a “Conqueror’s Helmet of Berserking” with +Strength will always be better for a warrior than one with +Intelligience. (i.e. im a huge nerd) However we are beginning to see a lot more “casuals” playing the same games as often as the hardcore gamers play, and sometimes even on the same level.

In addition to this there’s another video gaming phenomenon and it’s the existence of competitive video gaming. This leads to one thing: cyber athletes. I’ll never considered myself one since I’m not “uber” enough (aka I don’t play video games 10 hours a day) but I still can empathize with the competitive nature of online video gaming and how it is actually possible for said athletes to exist. What’s even more interesting is that people who are considered such athletes are beginning to get stardom. We’re not talking Michael Jordan stardom, but let’s just put it this way..they have fans. Don’t believe me, check this out. I went to some trendy clubs in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago. Turns out I was at a club with some of the guys from SK Gaming syndicate. For all of you who have lives and don’t follow e-sports, SK Gaming is considered to have some of the best cyber athletes in the world. Hell, they are a gaming group and they are sponsored by Adidas…wtf? Anyway here is a picture and a direct copy of the caption from the glitzy online magazine Stureplan.se of some of the cyber athletes themselves:

Abdisamad “SpawN” Mohamed, Michael ”Ahl” Korduner & Erik Martling

Notice something? Ya, they put their gamer names in the caption. I didn’t actually meet them nor would I really care about meeting them, but get this there’s a lot of people who actually do. Check this out:
Kiev, Ukraine – PR event
Yes, thats “SpawN” signing autographs at a PR event in Kiev, Ukraine. Also notice something else? These guys aren’t fat, aren’t wearing glasses, and don’t have extremely poor taste in fashion. For information on what I’m referring to see this picture:

Jump on over to Stureplan.se you’ll notice that the girls at this club were all pretty top notch too. Although this may be a bit of an oddity since it is in Sweden and pretty much every girl you meet there is either a 9 or 10, it still says something. I’m not sure these guys would be as recognizable in a club in NYC but I’m pretty sure they could at least get in.

All in all…I think I’m gonna start a gaming company and be based in Sweden.