This was originally just a message to the mod Police, but I figure I might as well share it with you guys. I'm not gonna come back to this site again, so I won't be able to check the witty insults that will be levered against me (i.e., I'm not trying to be some martyr that gets loved by the community after crying to them). Just some food for thought.
"Hey Police, I just want you to know that I won't play comp ever again, and I won't continue this round, and I probably won't play on this account again. No, this is not a sob story or appeal of pity. No, I'm not going to change my mind. Obviously, I have no ill feelings towards you. I'm just letting you know I won't be playing so that you don't even have to worry about me, but by all means, continue whatever investigations you guys may have going on.
I haven't been on this site long, so I don't know the quality of the jobs you and the mods are doing. I'll just assume you all genuinely care about the site, and I just want to ask that you guys make efforts to have the community be less toxic overall. I'm sure people like me are rare: people who are quite new and quickly rise to top win percentages in ranked and comp. But I don't think the toxicity affects only me; I've seen plenty of veteran players verbally abuse noavis and just overall make the game really unpleasant for them. Trust me, I'm no angel either; I've had my streaks of rage as well.
But especially when I started playing comp about a week ago, it's been really bad. There's a gigantic circle jerk of experienced players who know each other well and know each other's alts and whatnot, and then a very vocal minority of them will harass people like me in pregame or during the game, saying I'm not even allowed to talk (even as the uncc'd PR, for instance) because my opinion doesn't matter because I'm newer than them and they're so godly and they'll beat me in a 1 on 1 no contest, etc. These players act like there's a good way to play and a bad way to play (which, sure, makes sense generically) and that whatever strategy or kinds of arguments I use must be automatically bad because I'm just new and bad. These players go out of there way to harass me and tell me how bad I am all the time.
Today was the worst. Random people who I've never played with are calling me cheaters, and people like Bogut say things like I'm too bad to possibly legitimately be at the top of the ladder, and that therefore I must be cheating. Every time I mishammer or make a bad read (which is, objectively speaking, quite rare), they will spam me in the next pregame about how bad I am. Every time I make a right read or hammer, it's always pure luck and I just got carried. Every game's community has toxic inhabitants, but this one is particularly bad. The fundamental problem is that people who've played a long time think they're automatically smarter and better than others every single time they play, and think they have some license to harass the out of new players who are playing at their level.
After the kind of insults and harassment I had to deal with today, I lost all desire to play and it won't come back because I know the same thing will happen again. I can't play on this account again because people will randomly hate me, and if I make a new one and then do well in my first comp round, the exact same scenario will unfold as what I'm going through right now. It's a perfect trap, and there's no way out for me to have a pleasant experience at EM unless I intentionally lose a ton of ranked games and play badly on purpose for my first several rounds of comp. Otherwise, I'll automatically be labeled a cheating noavi noob.
I joined EM because I loved playing it in Starcraft 2: the elements of psychology, logic, critical thinking, and persuasion combined were so fascinating to me, and I was hooked on EM as soon as I began to play at the start of my winter break. My semester starts again soon anyways, so I won't have the time, but now I just feel extremely jaded and annoyed at how the community has treated me. I see no way for things to get better now or in the future. To you, and all the other players out there, I really hope the community becomes a more positive and welcoming place for what I think is a great game. And to the apparently many people who hate me, most of which I've never reciprocated the same hatred or even played with for more than a couple games, I hope you guys can look past your hatred of me and consider treating other newbs like me more kindly.
Best, spicywaffle"
