What ELITE really means!

Day 1,163, 07:08 • Published in Australia Australia • by An Idiot Abroad

I have heard the word being Elite being used as an insult, mostly by ANP members. Now while I have nothing against the ANP I do resent their use of this word as an insult.

So let me tell you what Elite means to me.



A long time ago in a galaxy not very far away, well actually this galaxy but it doesn’t sound as good, there was a computer game and its name was ELITE and for me it was the greatest game of all time.

I remember the day I got the game, opened the packaging and placed the tape in my Acorn Electron Tape Machine and waited........ and waited...... and waited , a few days later the game was loaded.



Elite is a space trading and combat game where one of the player's goals of raising their combat rating to the exalted heights of "Elite." The actual game was open ended and you could play for ever.



What you did was fight and trade your way to buying better ships, engines, weapons and gadgets. Since the game had no real ending as such, players marked their progress by how much money they had, which cool spacecraft they flew and also their ranking, which was little more than a ranking system based on the number of kills you had made. Of course back then you never realised it was this simple and assumed it must be calculated from all kinds of complex analysis.



The ranking system worked like this Harmless, Mostly Harmless, Poor, Average, Above Average, Dangerous, Deadly, Elite. I spent many months playing away getting my ranking up, until that hallowed day when yes I became ELITE

So as you can imagine when you use the word Elite and an insult in saddens me , it takes away all that effort I put in years ago to become ELITE, is it possible that you could use Mostly Harmless instead.