After the first gameplay footage of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the highly-anticipated sequel to Call of Duty 4, was unexpectedly revealed during the NBA Playoffs on TNT this Sunday, internet assholes quickly sprung to their keyboards to analyze the footage second by second in the hopes of ferreting out any bit of useless information.

Users began the evening by arguing back and forth over whether anyone had actually seen the trailer, how unfair it was that something could exist in the universe without being directly piped onto the internet, and how Infinity Ward, the game’s developer, was shooting itself in the foot by not appealing directly to Call of Duty’s fans. At no point during this conversation did anyone admit that as Call of Duty 4 was one of the best-selling games of all time, the ad probably reached more fans during those fifteen seconds than 12 hours of NeoGAF chatter.

Issues of protocol quickly went by the wayside, though, as fans realized that there were, indeed, online copies of the trailer, and that those copies could be watched over and over and over again by salivating fans. Responses ranged from “O SHIT I CAME” to “BONER JAM” to “WTF AWESOME”.

A brief glimpse of a snowmobile in the trailer led first to Sarah Palin jokes, then discussion of vehicles in multiplayer, and finally a vicious flamewar between two overweight teenagers over the efficacy of snowmobiles in combat. Neither had ever met anyone who had been in the military.

As the thread quickly ballooned into the hundreds of comments within 2 hours of the trailer’s airing, the thread approached total collapse. Meanwhile, editorial directors at several major games blogs called emergency meetings to find a way to create 8-10 front page posts about the pre-trailer over the next 24 hours, in a desperate attempt to drive pageviews. When asked for comment, a spokesperson at Hardcasual said, “Sheep. All of them, just sheep.”