Too anxious to type up much myself, but thank you both for trying to educate people in this thread.
Well shut me up and butter my biscuits. That's a fucking list and then some.
Literally have never seen a compilation like this. Thank you
I'm glad that this list has been posted because it highlights some really important things.
There's a few things to understand about that list, that the list actually puts at the top of itself:
1. These are all "claims", but they are claims of very widely varying magnitude. From far-reaching patterns of sexual abuse to someone drunkenly hitting on someone. It's only going to be callous to label them all in such a way.
2. These are all claims, and some have even been removed. We'll probably never know why they were removed. And as they're claims, only a few of these cases has resulted in the accused taking any action.
3. And lastly, although the list is supposed to be "Smash players only", this list has people with very widely differing attachments to the scene. From people who attended a smash tournament once, to Mr. Wiz (Which is kinda weird, but only if people misuse the context of this list).
Smash (And a bit of random FGC and other internet communities) had a bit of a MeToo earlier this year, and many widely-known and prominent members of the Ultimate and Melee communities began racking up some stories. I can't recap all of it in simple words so if you really want to know more you're going to have to read it all for yourself.
So with all of that said I'd like to present a few judgement calls.
1. You need an environment that facilitates listening and understanding for people to be comfortable coming forward. Some of these accusations were not small or simple one-off things. I know that Betty (in the quote above) labelled that as toxic, but I'd urge you to consider that being able to safely and seriously be listened to is a benefit. That's not to say that the Smash community did that cultivating per se, it's probably more complex, with the actual MeToo movement and other things being factors.
2. As stated before, the claims are wide-ranging in both severity, type, and engagement with Smash. To make conclusions about the smash community based on some of these accusations and incidents is strange, especially when the vast majority involve people who only met one another because of smash. As stated by others, the majority of these incidents didn't occur at smash tournaments at all.
3. Nintendo's involvement in Melee specifically, and their involvement with the Smash community, even before this "Smash MeToo" has a history which has already been detailed by other people. To sum it up, I agree that Nintendo likes to do things their way, and really prefers something that they control, even if it's to the detriment of certain factors. People who don't know much about the scene are conflating things incorrectly, and it's leading to some really strange and some even outdated takes. Fugu puts it better than I can.
I'm not "questioning" it because questioning would imply that there is a second way to interpret what's going on here. I'll say it again for the people in the back: Stop exploiting sexual assault victims to advance your narrative about the Smash community. It's childish and, above all, disgusting.
Some high profile Ultimate players rightfully had their careers ended this summer because they did some incredibly shitty things, true. What does that have to do with the huge percentage of the community - including almost the entire Melee community, which had close to nothing to do with the allegations that came out over the summer - that didn't? It would be like coming into a thread about film and saying "I can't believe y'all still watch movies after Roman Polanski raped that girl". You're not standing up for the victims, you're co-opting someone's personal tragedy to criticize a huge and diverse community.
4. This scene has existed for a long time, specifically the Melee scene. A lot of things can happen in the 19 years since Melee was released. This is not to excuse anything, or try to divert discussion away from what the smash scene has done poorly. But these things don't come out of the blue, especially when it comes to people not bringing issues to light and people getting to know one another and being exposed to whole new groups of people.
5. Many of those people are younger, and if my data is right, smash also attracts many women as well. In my opinion, smash was always going to have a larger responsibility to its players to create a space where these kinds of incidents could not occur, and should they occur, provide a good space for people to come forwards about them. As Brainfreeze showed in their post, many community figureheads took this movement VERY seriously. They didn't shy away from things, and they encouraged people to speak up.
6. As such, many of the people, even very high-profile people who had credible accusations about them, have been removed from the scene. There's still work to do, and Nintendo likely has strong opinions about its image, but this was largely a group (again) that tried to have everything come out. Which leads to my last point...
7. Do not make the very dangerous assumption that these things have not happened or are not happening in other communities, gaming or otherwise. It is not good that these things happened, but it's very important that people were able to come forward. They might not all get the resolution that they want/need, they may not all get justice, but it has been a big sweeping change. Because there is no MeToo for other communities (Even those of similar size), do not assume it's because Smash has some magical toxicity that is inherent to it. Sexual abuse/assault is not new, and even though great strides have been made in many social spaces in the past few years, there are still people who have endured things which they have not come forwards about for whatever reason.
Sorry for wall of text, please correct me if I got any info wrong or if you just want to respond to something. And I know this is more related to the smash MeToo than Nintendo, but I think it's very important for people to understand more about this so that there can be better discussion regarding Smash, Nintendo, and other scenes.
