alright i don’t like being too negative publicly but i found myself today with some steam to blow off so i’ll rant for a bit here
the way some people who don’t play or want to play splatoon, or any game, competitively talk about competitive gaming ticks me off sometimes. like there’s of course the “lol you’re taking some video game too seriously” non-gamer crowd (with the added “
kids’ video game” point for splatoon, but i’m also thinking about stuff like that news anchor who belittled the kid who broke nes tetris a little while back) but while i do think just Not Speaking on something you don’t see the appeal of is easy and free, i’m not even really talking about them. it’s moreso the way some casual players (
not all! a lot of yall are chill, i’m complaining about what i hope is a vocal minority!) talk about comp that frustrates me.
it’s not even like, casual players blaming the Evil Sweaty Tryhard Comp Player Brigade for their losses in turf/open/splatfests that bothers me the most. like i think people should reflect a bit before going online and being angry publicly about losing games but eh, losing sucks, i get it. it’s more the ways some people paint the whole competitive community with a wide brush - we’re
toxic and we love to bully children in turf, we
don’t care about the lore, we
whine about the ‘meta’ and how good the new kits are instead of celebrating new content, we
clearly hate the game so why are we even playing it? that kind of stuff.
(side note: i’m a wannabe comp player who’s obsessed with lore. we exist. 
)
i feel like sometimes people think they’re punching up when they stereotype and deride comp players in this way. it’s pretty common knowledge that the wider splatoon community has a huge amount of queer and neurodivergent fans who feel at home here (“but i’m cis, straight, and neurotypical and i’m a fan—” cool!), but i feel like some casual fans don’t realize that that… also applies to the competitive splat community. and the stereotypical image of competitive gaming as a toxic space dominated by Gamer Bros who call each other slurs on the mic and intimidate minorities out of the scene persists. even though from what ive largely seen of the comp community so far, that’s not who we are. the idea that we’re a homogeneous, toxic community just isn’t universally true. we have toxic behaviors and individual players prone to them, of
course we do, and some might point to the frequency of intra-community discourse over stuff like bagging and trash-talking as “proof” of us being toxic - but why would we even be talking about that if that kind of stuff was all that we were?!
and even if toxic behavior like that was like, a little more prevalent - and this goes for all games with a comp scene, tbh, even if those scenes demonstrably
are more toxic on average - do you, as an outsider, think you’re helping the people hurt by that behavior by lumping them in with the people who hurt them and proceeding to poke fun at the whole group? where is someone welcome if the competitive community looks down on them for who they are - or even for something like not being as good at the game or not having a ‘thick skin’ - and then when they turn to the casual community for support, they just see folks looking down upon ‘sweaty tryhards’ like them?
a specific incident in recent memory, of course, was the whole discourse around IPL briefly unbanning screen. i’m not gonna rehash that whole thing; we’ve all seen it. but i remember seeing people from outside of the competitive community going “lol comp players when asked to accommodate people’s disabilities” and it’s like.
who exactly do you think was bringing up concerns with the rule change? casual players who wouldn’t be playing in tournaments regardless???
i’unno, man. i’ve had A Lot of Thoughts about this topic for a while and i think i needed to hash them out. props to you if you read through this whole rant, lol
