I just wanted to say that I’ll never fail to be amazed at how polite and tactful pinball people can be at tournaments. By that, I mean traditionally so. The cultures between it and tabletop games and some video game competitions can be like night and day–to behave like the way you guys describe would be insulting and condescending to some of them, and they WANT you to trash-talk them, teabag their characters, Happy Birthday them at any chance you could.
Because of that, I get SO nervous at pinball competitions. I have problems behaving tactfully, honestly, because I am so used to other subcultures centered around playful mocking and teasing of other people (with varying levels of viciousness).
(For the record, a “Happy Birthday” is a fighting game term. In some fighting games, you use multiple characters per match, with one in active use and the others in reserve. A Happy Birthday is when you manage to knock out a character in reserve, who normally cannot be hit. This term came about when one of the players said it was his birthday–so his opponent proceeded to knock out his active character and a reserve character in one combo, with the announcers and spectators all sarcastically wishing him a happy birthday. The name then stuck, and from then on, any knockout of a character in reserve is called a Happy Birthday. This sort of behavior, I would guess based on what people have said in this topic and other related topics, would be completely unacceptable in pinball competitions, but in that competition’s environment, to NOT do so is a clear sign you are an outsider and must be taught the ways.)