Elitists, and Why We Need Them

iKotomi

iKotomi

[10] Knight
I'm going to clear one thing up right away to save some people some time. I am an elitist, so if you have a natural hatred for elitists, you probably don't need to bother reading this post as it will probably just make you angry. Being a said elitist, I probably don't care much about your opinion and would probably end up laughing at how stupid I perceive your counter-opinion to be. I am also 99% sure that nothing I say would change your opinion, or vice versa.

One interesting phenomenon of the internet is the relative ease for a lot of mediocre people to gather under a single united voice. One person can say a perfectly legitimate statement, and those insulted for whatever petty reason tend to get indignant about it and create a counter post, usually not very insightful, of which the emotion resonates among similar mediocre people that want to be heard.

The classical example is the "You aren't really good unless you've done well in tournaments," a reasonable hypothesis, which is usually countered by something along the lines of "STFU, I don't have time/dedication to go to tournaments, but I'm still damn good at this game," a not very reasonable hypothesis.

The reason I find this to be really stupid, is that I repeatedly ask myself, what have we done such that we attract so many vocal people like these? Any other community, not only fighting games, but educational, professional, etc. what matters is not whether you say you are good, but whether you are good. And the only real measure of that is results. SRK is unpopular among these people, but to use it as an example, very rarely do you see people say they are really good at the game. In fact, most people know they actually suck at the game. When noobies do come, the general sentiment is that you suck until you prove you don't (for the most part, never) and petty arguments over who's good and who isn't are very rare.

Note at this point that I have said nothing about respect. There's a difference between a community of people being bad at a game together, and a community that trashes bad people. The former recognizes that everyone is learning and sharing a common goal (getting better at said game). The latter just discriminates for no real good reason people that are either new to the game or slow learners. They are not mutually exclusive, but they also are not coexistent. What it comes down to really, is we're here to play the game, not to form some sort of support group where we can make each other feel better and important.

If you want to learn, we'll help you out. If you want to brag about how your uber tactics totally crush everything, we'll tell you (or try to get through your thick skull) that your uber tactic is not that uber, and then tell you that you're not special.

Note, it really isn't particularly insulting to be told that you suck at a game. Well, it is insulting, but its not a big deal. First of all, its probably the truth. The truth hurts, you're probably a guy, learn to live with it. The fact of the matter is, most people are mediocre.

So here enters the elitist. The elitist is unashamed of his belief that most people are mediocre, and probably doesn't make much effort to hide this belief. Being able to recognize mediocrity, he is then able to reject it. How is this different than the whiner he was "a jerk" to?

The way I see it, the elitist has a much deeper understanding of what mediocrity is. For the scrub (I've been beating around this word for a while, but we all know who we're really talking about), mediocre is pretty much what he isn't, as well as a bunch of arbitrary things, things that are cheap, not flashy, boring, repetitive, whatever. The elitist however views mediocre in a very different way. He takes the objective of the game, winning, and considers mediocre tactics, attitudes, etc. that are not very effective in reaching that objective. This applies not only to matches that matter, but the actual process of learning the game, since in order to win, you need to continually learn more about the game.

I argue, that the key for a strong community, is the general consensus that mediocrity should not be accepted as good in any way by any one. The sooner we stop talking about whether or not someone is special (he probably isn't) the sooner we can start playing or talking about the actual game. The same goes for the game itself. The sooner we stop whining because our mediocre approach to the game isn't letting us win, the sooner we can start focusing our energy into more useful things that will actually improve our game.

Now, do we really need people that are "jerks" in the community? The way I see it, "jerks" are not inherently bad. In fact, most of the best teachers I had were "jerks." If you are serious about anything, eventually you'll find that very strict mentor/teacher/rival who doesn't really care about who you think you are. But one common trait of such people, is that they demand excellence, and will be strict on you because you are not satisfying their expectations. You will see this trait in many of the elite coaches, symphony conductors, researchers, professors, etc. And with the right team, they produce very excellent results, because you can learn a lot, as long as you are willing to learn. Next time you're pissed off because someone was a jerk, I suggest you actually try to understand what they were saying. It is quite possible that there was truth in their statement. At which point, they were really just being blunt with the truth. I personally think its worse to be a douche that can't accept the truth, than to be the jerk who doesn't communicate the truth in a way that the recipient doesn't feel bad. Sure, if someone's just total fail at real life, you wouldn't want to play with them anyways, but I find that a lot of elitists are actually quite reasonable in real life separate from video games.

Note that I'm talking solely about players, not rule makers. The role of a player and the role of a rule maker is a completely different subject. The main point I want to make is, nobody cares who you think you are. We just want to play the game, and if you are good, we'll appreciate you more for what you contribute to the game. On the other hand, you shouldn't really care who you are either. Stop getting pissed off at people for being jerks, because its really stupid if you refuse to acknowledge the truth. Stop thinking you are special, and start working towards actually becoming special.

In other words, stop playing whatever mediocre soul calibur you've been playing, and start playing the actual soul calibur you should be playing.
 
I thought I was going to find something I can get pissed off at, but I'm surprisingly not finding anything.

Well done.
 
Guess what? I'm a godamn elitist, too. Always have been, always will be.

But I'm also a realist, and I respect other people and other communities. I don't presume to know what's best for everyone else, even though I do presume to know what's best in general. The difference is that I can recognize that other people have different needs and desires. I may hate basketball, but I don't have a bad word to say about the players or the fans, and I wouldn't tell them how they should be playing or enjoying their favourite sport. All I ask is for that common courtesy to be returned.

I also don't think you need jerks to have a successful community. It's true that some people use a hard coaching style, but there are just as many (more in fact) nice, caring successful coaches and teachers. Maybe you'll only keep the hardest around with a bad attitude, but if that's all you keep then you're looking at a dead community. The people with genuine drive will stick around either way, but if you want anyone else to have a chance then you're better off being as accessible as possible. Besides that, most of the people thought of as jerks are though of that way because they're jerks, not because they play real hard and don't give any quarter, or whatever other cliche you want.

And I'm going to bring this up again, there's no end-game in a win-at-any-costs mentality. What exactly are you winning? There are no hot ladies or fat wads for the guy who muscles his way through by being as big a dick as possible. For 99% of the players, at any level, the only thing the can hope to win is a good fucking time, and if you're going to be a jerk then you've already lost.

I look at very experienced, elitist communities that run in well-established, competitive games (more competitive than any FG), like Starcraft or Counter-Strike, or Quake/Warsow. Without an influx of new players they're all going to succumb to natural attrition, and, except Counter-Strike, they're trying to find ways to embrace new players. As elitist as the players are (and they're as elitist as they come, you have to be when you're still playing decade old games in a flooded market), they're starting to recognize that they still need to get new players involved, and it's no good to have someone try out their game only to be face fucked for 45 minutes while being called a complete scrub. They leave and never come back. And the community dies a little more.

But I don't want to ramble. That's all a little off-topic. It's true that we should accept mediocrity (who does?), but that doesn't mean that we should just take what we're given. Newsflash: Devs have no fucking idea how to properly balance their games. This is obvious to the point of being a competitive axiom. There's no reason why we shouldn't discuss the game, or it's balance, but it still have to be withing reasonable limits: and the reasonable limit here is that we don't know enough, there haven't been enough major tourneys, and we can't change the rules while regionals are ongoing anyways. Everyone needs to sit tight and start collecting data before they spout their next theory, because nobody has any real evidence yet. You want Hilde dealt with? You'll have some real ammo if Nats has Hilde in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. You don't have any while people are still winning and placing with every other character. Cool your jets.
 
yea, scrubs are assholes and should be treated as such! second-class citizens! scrubs are gay, and i don't think they deserve to be married to each other! they shouldn't be allowed to vote or own land either.
 
@Page:This post was not talking about rules. Nor was it talking about whether we should insult scrubs. Nor was it about playing to win at all costs. Nor was it about respecting other communities. In fact, I'm pretty sure that you're just raging in an irrelevant thread.
 
I don't like brickwall posting, but I honestly disagree with your logic here on a lot of parts.

The reason why we end up with such hostility on message boards (not just FG communities, but elsewhere on the internet) is because there's some unwritten insistence on segregation by title, if not necessarily by skill. It's bad enough that no one can see each others' faces on the internet, but people have a hard time recognizing a fundamental fact: we're all people. We're all just guys who play and enjoy the same game. No one gets to be the ubermensch, even if there's a large division in skill. As students of American history, we should all know full and well that segregation promotes discrimination.

Maybe it's not true in your case, but elsewhere the idea of 'elitism' produces nothing but negative results. Allow me to allude to a story:

Some years ago I got into World of Warcraft (don't judge me for it, I quit a while ago). I thought because it was such a highly established community that I'd be able to meet good people who were willing to help me out (and did I need help indeed. It's not exactly a game one can master on one's own). I would often frequent the official forums with legitimate questions, penned in such a way to ensure readers that I did in fact have higher than a 3rd grade education in the English language and seeking legitimate help to get better at the game, so that I may one day join the higher ranked players. More often than not, I was met with the most bizarre response:

"learn2play n00b"

Why in the world would anyone say that to me? I was completely new at the game, and had perfectly normal questions to help myself get better at the game. And, isn't that why I posted questions in the first place? Why in the world would someone treat me like that? It's like if you were lost in a city, and you asked someone for directions, and they just outright tell you "Buy a fucking map you noob". Where in the world does this attitude come from?

The answer was simple. Whether I liked it or not, I was a noob. I was separated from the other players in character level, game experience, and everything else that makes a player "elite". They have this predetermined image of "what a good player is" and "what a noob is", and by their slim standards, I fell into the "noob" category. But why does this give them the right to say that to me? Because by their own categories, I was different from them.

Obviously this is an extreme example. We all know that World of Warcraft produces the DUMBEST people on the internet, but it's an example nonetheless. I myself managed to persevere and collect tidbits of information that very few people were nice enough to hand to me and mature enough to be able to survive on my own in the game, but what about other players? It's possible that someone told to "learn2play" could be easily distraught by the very notion, and even discouraged from learning. In fact, while I was in mid-game, I always often wondered why there were players who got as far as I did when they acted like total retards, and I have a hypothesis on why this might be. Imagine a player, fresh out of the character generator, looking for help and eager to learn the game just like I was. He is immediately put down and ridiculed for his lack of knowledge. Instead of seeking out knowledge on his own like I did, he is discouraged and offended, and decides "If he doesn't want to help me, then I'll do it myself. I don't need his, or anyone else's opinion", and therefore sets off to learn the game on his lonesome. He comes out as a total wreck 20 levels later, and anyone who tells him he's bad (legitimately or scornfully) is met with retaliation from the stubborn player. And all of this, because no one was there to help him when he asked for it.

The TL;DR version of what I'm trying to say is this: No one likes being called a noob. No one likes being told they suck.

It implies that "mediocrity" is bad, and I understand that it is, but I don't feel that it's proper to facilitate better learning by putting a negative light on it. Segregation between "elitists" and "noobs" only suggests that being a noob is unacceptable, and that it's NOT okay to be new and/or fresh to the game. Honestly? I don't believe in "tough love". I believe in methodical encouragement, using facts and experience to help someone along by pointing him in the right direction, without ever implying that he was ever in the "wrong" direction. I believe to teach someone, you must show them the way forward, without any notion that they are "behind". Positive encouragement leads to a positive outlook.

We don't need elitists, and more to the point, we don't need the word "elitist". We're all just guys who play games.
 
ABI- There are nice elitists, jackass elitists, and self proclaimed elitists.

Nice elitists will help those worse than themselves get better at the game. They are the ones who write guides to help out new players and generally answer questions in a respectful way assuming respect was given from the start.

Jackass elitists are the type of people who really just don't give a shit about newer players. They tend to only want to play against people they know are good and anyone else is a waste of time. This extends to being rude as well, like in your story saying something condescending like "learn to play" when the person is asking a legitimate question nicely.

Self proclaimed elitists are the ones who think they know what they are talking about and think they are good when they are actually not. You might as well just call them trolls, but again there are some people who can be a mix of nice and self proclaimed (think they are the best and try to help though they just haven't come across the competitive scene is a good example).

Of course there are also non-extreme versions of the nice / jackass elitists, but yeah I agree that being a jackass just to be a jackass is counter productive for a communities growth.
 
iKotomi said:
@Page:This post was not talking about rules. Nor was it talking about whether we should insult scrubs. Nor was it about playing to win at all costs. Nor was it about respecting other communities. In fact, I'm pretty sure that you're just raging in an irrelevant thread.
Click to expand...


So you think your thread is irrelevant?
 
iKotomi said:
@Page:This post was not talking about rules. Nor was it talking about whether we should insult scrubs. Nor was it about playing to win at all costs. Nor was it about respecting other communities. In fact, I'm pretty sure that you're just raging in an irrelevant thread.
Click to expand...

My post was on the general topic of elitism. Upon rereading your post, I don't quite get what you're point is. A declaration that we should "Stop playing whatever mediocre soul calibur you've been playing, and start playing the actual soul calibur you should be playing." has no real meaning. Where are the people (that anyone cares about) advocating poor play? Where are the internet phenoms not getting slapped down for their baseless shit-talk? I don't see an overabundance of mediocrity around here (besides the fact that most of us are still learning what a relatively new game). All I see is a wall of text designed to incite, but not even the reason for that.

But I am tired, so maybe I'm just missing something.
 
While I agree with the initial post in essence, I'm not sure I'd call that elitism. Elitism more often than not is about being highly exclusionary (hence the prefix), which in turn tends to be unhelpful. It has more to do with believing that people who don't meet certain, often very lofty criteria just aren't worthy of your time. I suppose I can concede that there are varying degrees of elitism, though.

On one end might be: "Look, I'm willing to help you learn the game, but if you'd rather mash out random moves than even try to get better, I'm going to go find someone else to play."

And on the other end you've got: "You don't know what a 2-in-1 is? Get the hell out of my face so us longtime ST players can finish our eight-person tourney and then go pick up our kids from school."
 
how about if u will write guides and answer questions to help out new players BUT u wont play against new players unless they are decent... i think thats not that bad bad...
 
t3h_mAsTarOth said:
how about if u will write guides and answer questions to help out new players BUT u wont play against new players unless they are decent... i think thats not that bad bad...
Click to expand...
I don't see what elitism has to do with playing/not playing with poor players...

Most people leave soon enough or get frustrated if they can't beat me, and I also leave when I can't beat someone else.
When you can't win any match, and the opponent wins every rounds with more than half their life, ...I doubt that there's much to learn in these cases for anyone.

The way I personally see it, those who never lose and keep playing the same people who are no match for them, don't play to have fun. They play to win. Their satisfaction comes from looking at their win/loss ratio, not from a good match, and giving themselves a pat in the back.

But some people supposedly enjoy getting repeatedly beaten... So I know that some people see it that way too.

I only wrote that because refusing to keep playing against players who are much lower in skills isn't necessarily an "elitist" thing.

It might be considered elitist to only play those who offer a challenge, but it should also be considered noble to avoid giving a bad experience to those who don't.
 
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