What is a “Niño Rata” and when is this expression used?

A “gamer kid” is a teenager who spends hours locked in their room playing games like Call of Duty, FIFA, Minecraft, or Fortnite —always online with other players, of course. These teenagers are easily recognizable because if you’re unlucky enough to play with one of them, you’ll notice their shouting, insults, bad habits, and constant complaints about the game, your actions, or anything else they can think of to excuse their poor performance.

The “Kids” phenomenon emerged during the golden age of online gaming, when the PlayStation 3 reigned supreme, and Call of Duty and FIFA were the undisputed kings of the console. However, they’ve gradually spread to virtually every successful online game, and given their proliferation, you’ll inevitably come to hate them if you’re a dedicated gamer. Wherever you go, if the game is online, you’ll find a den of these “kids” playing and disrupting your session. It seems that, due to the nature of the game, these dens are much larger than in other types of games.

It seems that this movement may have originated around 2011 when Sony, after unscheduled maintenance due to a major hack of its online service, PlayStation Network, relaunched the service and began to attract followers to its most famous or best-selling games, thus initiating a new species that we now know as “Rat Kids .” Little by little, they seem to be disappearing, but there will always be some active pockets that can thrive.

They are also easily recognizable since most embark on a great career to become YouTuber, creating their own channel to upload their perfectly chosen games from among the best they have been able to do, and which they abusively spam on all the video game channels they are in and that allow it, these are generally in Discord chat groups, you know, if you hear some teenager of no more than 17 or 18 years old, with a strident voice, advertising their ” YouTub ” channel and cursing how badly the rest of their team plays, you are dealing with a “Kid” Gamer.

The expression “Niño Rata” (Rat Kid) is used pejoratively or as an insult to players under 18 who are known for harassing, bothering, insulting, and excessively spamming their YouTube channels, generally exhibiting despicable and rude behavior, like a sewer rat. We will use the expression “Niño Rata” when referring to someone who fits this description.

We can also use this expression when we see someone who, based on their physical appearance and behavior, we describe as a “kid gamer .” If we’re shopping in a department store or toy store, we might see young kids, even 9 or 10 years old, proudly wearing their ” Minecraft ” or ” Fortnite “ sweatshirts and probably pestering whoever’s with them about buying a toy or figure from one of these two video game franchises.

Another use we can give to “Niño Rata” (Rat Kid) is when we play online and see that there is a player who, when they are winning a good streak of games, deliberately disconnects, bothering the rest of the team and leaving us with one less player, even if you don’t have voice chat connected or you are simply with other teammates or friends in a private room for you on another voice chat software, you might think that this player is a “Niño Rata” (Rat Kid). This practice is very used by them so as not to disturb the ” good streak ” of plays they can achieve.

In short, we will use the expression “Rat Kid” as a derogatory term for certain teenagers with annoying behavior, whether you are playing online games with friends and you get one on your team or if you are in the public chats of some of the Vo-IP applications dedicated to games, whether in voice or text channels, dedicated to one of these games, and you see someone immature who is bothering, annoying and spamming their sad Youtube channel, we will say “Look, a Rat Kid”.