Shots 1-5: Clearly Missed

About

Shots 1-5: Clearly Missed refers to a copypasta popular in the gaming community which is often used as a humorous way to poke fun at moments when lag or poor game optimization prevents a kill. Originating from a Reddit comment made by a Valve employee, the copypasta gained significant popularity in the Counter-Strike community in the following years.

Origin

On August 17th, 2016, Redditor^[1] Xzarp posted a clip of the professional Counter-Strike player Hiko allegedly getting "CSGO'd" (failing to achieve a kill due to lacking game optimization) to /r/GlobalOffensive subreddit (clip shown below).

In the thread, Valve employee ValveRyan^[2] posted a potential explanation for why Hiko failed to get the kill despite perceivably landing 12 shots on a close opponent, dismissing shots one to five as missed, shots six to nine as missed due to recoil, shots ten to eleven missed due to recoil and inaccuracy and shot twelve as never being fired due to Hiko's dead status not yet being sent to the client. The comment received over 260 points in /r/GlobalOffensive in six months and was gilded.

Summary:
Shots 1-5: Clearly missed.
Shots 6-9: Missed due to recoil (bad spray control).
Shots 10-11: Very close, but recoil and inaccuracy make these reasonable misses.
Shot 12: Likely didn't actually fire because Hiko was already dead.

As a part of the response, ValveRyan also made a detailed Imgur^[3] post in which he explained why each of the shots did not land (shown below).

Spread

The copypasta did not see spread until on February 24th, 2017, Redditor^[4] ThatJumpyJumpS made a comment parodying ValveRyan's post, responding to a clip of a breakable vent grate not being broken by shooting at it on Cache. The comment received over 140 upvotes in six months (shown below).

Following the comment, the copypasta started to spread in /r/GlobalOffensive. For example, on February 26th, 2017, Redditor^[5] Presisor posted the copypasta, gaining four downvotes. On March 8th, 2017, Redditor^[6] mmberg used the copypasta as a response to a clip of fl0m not getting an AWP kill (shown below, left). A May 30th, 2017, tweet by Twitter^[7] user @Mollsdas marks the earliest known use of the copypasta outside of Reddit (shown below, right).

In the following years, the copypasta received a massive spread both within the Counter-Strike community and outside of it, being used as a way to poke fun at moments when lag or poor game optimization prevents a kill, or to ridicule players who missed an easy kill.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References