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Alison
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in reply to @ikuyo's post:
Speaking from the point of view of someone who isn't a speedrunner and not part of that community, what is the biggest problem?
It depends on who you ask, but I'd say it's likely the bros (derogatory) who keep insisting that "the overrepresentation of trans people in the speedrunning scene" is some kind of issue that merits "analysis" or "investigation".
That, or the pervasive belief that the validity of a run as a speedrun hinges on its inclusion as a category on a leaderboard, sometimes ascendant as a belief that only runs that have categories on SpeedRun.Com morally speaking are speedruns.
This is pretty much where I'm going, yup
I'm very fed up with the uptick of speedrun drama content that focuses on cheating. It is a very no prevalent issue that not only already has a reasonably agreed upon way to be handled, but it's also quite rare in the gran scheme of things. People really forget there's no such thing as a single unified speedrunning community, that there's a large amount of runners who just do it for themselves (much like the many long distance runners who will never top marathons but dedicate their time to feel good and improve tier PBS in 5k and such), and that there are larger issues
As mentioned above, transphobia is a problem in some communities. Handling of abusers and other misconducts is very hit or miss among different games as few communities even bother setting up codes of conduct and don't have clear ways to address it. Accessibility and availability of games and resources to allow people to even get started is a problem particularly for arcade and portable games that aren't easy to record. Leaderboard centralization is a big deal now that src is owned by a corporation.
Thank you both for the clarification. I was aware that there was some level of toxicity within some speedrunning communities, but I didn't know how pervasive it was. Especially in regards to the transphobia and abuse. All the speedrunners I have or currently follow have had open, supportive communities. So I'm genuinely shocked by this (just from not having personal experience) and at the same time not surprised because the dudebro (derogatory) mentality has always been an issue in gaming in general.
I think one thing worth keeping in mind is that speedrunning on balance isn't especially toxic or anything like that, it's more that the speedrunning community is bad about things like handling of abuse and transphobia in the way that a lot of online communities are. The speedrunning community is possibly tinged by the heavy presence of gamers, and thus Gamers™, but there are also counterweights to this, so it's hard to say.
There is a lot of room for improvement there, though, just as in all online (and offline) communities, and society as a whole.
The problem, then, is that a lot of energy and attention gets diverted into drama around cheating and cheating allegations, and while you can care about more than one thing at a time, it tends to make everything easier when you're not distracted by non-issues, and it would be better for everyone if the people who made takedown videos of cheaters instead spent the production time on better things.
All these have other examples by the same person, or by someone else entirely.
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Pedos: Remember when cheese defended his mate, and ESA actually removed the people calling out cheese for being a pedo defender before actually banning all of them shortly after, but shortly after restored everyone's positions but in the same time making cheese a "face" so to speak?
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Bigots: Remember when a GDQ face and their partner wanted to force people that refer by it/its to go by other pronouns that don't represent it?
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Bigots²: Remember when ESA refused to acknowledge a person's gender? The next event had certain communities such as Sprash say during donations "Trans Rights" and constantly pushed that (thank you to the community I'm in). Too bad ESA will still happily show Harry Potter without any destain.
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Elitists: Remember the Resident Evil 4 situation where they wanted to hardcap to only verify runs that were 30 minutes slower than WR instead of simply putting in place a scrutiny when a run is below a certain threshold like Luigi's Mansion?
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Ableist: Talking about Resident Evil 4's Elitism. WaifuRuns. Last I checked. They still haven't apologized.
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No care on health at events: As COVID is still very much a thing. ESA at the start never made masks mandatory. GDQ did and still does. Can tell you there was a different rate on who got sick at which event because of those that didn't/did wear masks.
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Stir up Drama: After the pre-recorded Cyborg Ninja run at SGDQ'22 which was covered by some video game outlets. Resident pickup artist & Nazi Karl Jobst bullshitted information and padded a 20 minute video which could've been explained in less than 5 two weeks later.
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Drama: "This scenario that occurred outside and never involved the community should be forced into the community, and we're going to force you to pick a side." I read it, you're all adults. Act like it.
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Creeping: I mean it could be worse it could be--
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Unsolicited Sexting: Fuck.