I have a habit that might not be entirely healthy.

In short, if I feel like I need a quick pick-me-up, I go for a brisk wallow in the mud-pit of human suffering that is the Xbox Live Account Suspensions and Console Bans forum.

This is the forum where people who’ve – generally – done something dumb with their Xbox or with their Live account go in order to ask why they’ve been banned and if they could pretty please have their account back and swear they’ll never do it (whatever it is, though of course they did nothing wrong in the first place) again, and are told, simply, “no.”

Much like tvtropes; you start reading it and then you just keep reading and all of a sudden it’s 3 AM.

Here’s a few particularly enjoyable bits selected from today’s postings.

B1FF lives!

MY ACCOUNT H1T DAT TROJAN WAS PERM BANNED AND I DONT KNOW WHY AND I ONLY MODDED MY AVATAR COLOR SO IF THATS WHY THATS NOT COOL U GOTTA HELP ME PLZ

I like this one a lot because the guy is trying really really hard to be helpful at the end.

i got home from work on  saturday and turned on my xbox to find that i had been banned i dont know why i could have been banned but when i phoned up xbox they said   that  because i baught my xbox off of ebay it may have been alterd and thats  why i was banned can someone telll me what i have been banned for and also if i can get my xbox unbanned

also the other day i was in a party with my friend and someone else i  didnt know who said they were going to ban me from xbox i didnt believe them but  maybe  thats why i was banned i can try and get the gamer tag  if you would like

And of course, appealing to a higher authority is always a good tactic.

I am really upset how your system works. Your company is corrupt. You made me waste $25 on a 3 month card for an account that is now permanently suspended and you also stole a lot of downloadable content that I can no longer use on my account since you suspended it. My parents are also upset that you are not allowing this to be lifted when I didn’t break any rules whatsoever. I am in a MLG group and a machinima and now I can’t participate in them cuz of you. This is really unacceptable. I did nothing wrong of the sorts and you really must stop deleting people’s posts. Have you even heard of the 1st amendement??? IT’S CALLED FREEDOM OF SPEECH. I would like to speak to whoever is in charge because my parents are not happy one bit at you guys.

I acknowledge that reading this sort of thing for amusement makes me a terrible terrible person.

Edit: while most of the time, the response from Microsoft representatives is a dry “you were banned for violating the code of conduct”, occasionally a rep will let their snarky side show.  Here’s one I thought deserved preserving for posterity.