Goddamn I remember this website. I always used it as obvious proof that Santa was real to my friends. This shit makes me miss being a kid.

Yeah I'm not sure why I tried using "whom". I'm pretty bad at knowing when to use it.

Anyway I'm sick and need to sleep and this thread isn't going anywhere so I'm just gonna dip out

I know, right? I don't even think we need suicide hotlines when all you need to do is just stop being suicidal.

That's a dank meme and I don't know how the English language works.

To be clear, are you saying that comp players being rude to pub players is a solution, not an issue?

Yeah, and obviously the process is as quick and painless as flipping an internal switch to the "Don't be suicidal" setting, right?

How can a grown man possibly be this naive?

http://puu.sh/dxYEq.png

Why do people around here think it's cool to be apathetic to issues regarding their community? Why even bother posting?

My man, are you for real.

e.g. making a player leave a server/stop playing the game by verbally harassing them.

How much time did you spend trying to find a definition of "bullying" that kind of almost didn't exactly match my usage of it?

Also nice ad hominem again.

Speaking of things stated and restated, let's not forget that I've said a million times that I never said people aren't allowed to shit talk in a competitive environment.

"I'm allowed to be a dick to people on TF2 because they can just stop playing!"

That's literally the definition of bullying, dude.

"It's fucking insulting to see some candy-ass man-child try to use that to back up their own agenda."

Good ad hominem. Why are you even posting if you aren't willing to take this seriously?

Damn, nice analysis man. Why didn't anybody ever think of that before? If you're thinking of killing yourself, just... stop! Novel.

Really though, knock this shit off. Please 180 your beliefs on this subject. I don't mean to sound like a peer guidance counselor or something, but come on dude. Like, yeah, it's naive to count on the world changing for you, but it's just as naive to believe that a person who's suicidal or lacks self esteem can just change on the fly, like flipping a switch on or off.

Are you victim blaming every single person who's ever been affected by verbal bullying since the dawn of time?

What's wrong with you?

Thanks for the input. It's not like you're the upteenth person to strawman the fuck out of every single post in this thread, so your post is an overall great contribution.

@clockwork and basically everybody else pointing out that a competitive gaming community is inherently "toxic" by nature:

I totally agree. Thankfully nobody really said that players aren't allowed to shit talk. Among random examples of shit talk, smobo pointed out comp players picking on pubbers for no reason and comp players aliasing as and using racist/homophobic language. That's not "shit talk". That's not "the spirit of competitive gaming". That's just being an asshole. I'd say that's something we should strive to knock off. Be as toxic to your teammates and opponents in a competitive environment as you want, but it's not a stretch to draw the line at racist/homophobic remarks.

What I've been saying is that the hub of competitive TF2 shouldn't tolerate language like "nigger" and "faggot", let alone condone it. Thankfully, the post I brought up on page one has since been downfragged, so that's good to see.

Basically my point is not that this community should try to be all hugbox-y. On the contrary, I said that's not the point I'm trying to get across. I just think there should be a little house cleaning on the hub of competitive Team Fortress 2.

How many times is this argument going to be posted? Why is it so hard to understand that TF2's comp community can't get away with what, say, Counter Strike gets away with?

1) Counter Strike has a thriving competitive scene. TF2 does not.
2) Counter Strike is actively supported by Valve as a competitive game. TF2 is not.
3) Counter Strike is largely known as a competitive game. TF2 is not.

And again, stop setting up imaginary arguments where you're being asked to stop shit talking. Just knock off casual racist/homophobic remarks on the fucking hub of competitive TF2 and don't bully people in pubs. That doesn't represent your community well.

"pointing fingers will solve NOTHING."
"Looking at you smobo and ploxo."

bruh

I mean, yeah. I even said that other communities are way more toxic and offensive than ours. But like I also said in that post, they get away with it because they don't really need to give a shit. CS is way bigger than TF2. No one really bats an eye at communities being nasty in CS because if you wanna get into a competitive PC FPS, then you get into CS. But if someone is to ever consider getting into comp TF2 over CS, then browsing the "hub of competitive TF2" and seeing people casually throwing around "nigger" or whatever variation of it and getting +frags isn't exactly going to convince them that our community is just like CS, except our comp scene is much much less popular and not even supported by valve.

I'm not saying tftv needs to be a total hugbox where nobody is allowed to be even just mildly offensive, but first impressions are all we really have. The ball's just not in our court and running around saying "nigger" and "faggot" as adjectives for "person i don't like" is not how to attract potential new players.

Nice strawman.

I'll take you seriously for a second though, and just fill you in on the fact that people have quit comp tf2 because this community can be very toxic, and since this game has a very small comp scene with no valve support, there's no reason to play unless you enjoy the community.

Players in CS and MOBAs put up with toxic, childish assholes because there's payoff and the community is fucking enormous. If someone in this community feels like they're just surrounded by dicks, they'll just leave. And a lot have.

I don't see how we can ever hope to have people take this community seriously when stuff like this is not only allowed to be posted, but actually receives +frags. I know this is a singular event but we don't have a big enough playerbase to get away with this shit like the dota or league playerbase does. Like avast said, cs and mobas have worse communities than ours, BUT they get away with it because they don't need to make a good first impression. Their games are already at forefront of esports, mobas especially.

Regardless, by this point, I'm pretty much convinced that there's no real hope for the competitive scene really ever getting big. At best it'll stagnate at stuff like 1.5k viewers for HL grand finals, and that's fine by me. However if we are still concerned with helping the scene grow, there needs to be an effort made around here to promote a slightly more PC environment. It's cool if you say shit like "salty ass nig" in your mumble channel around people you know aren't easily offended/totally okay with that language, but this is a public forum and behavior like this really just doesn't belong here. It makes us all look bad and this community can't afford that.

It's not because he lost. He said in a stream during a scrim (or a match, can't remember) that this was his last season, win or lose, and in a stream prior to the grand finals he said that he was quitting competitive tf2 because he's got too much shit going on in real life to continue playing. I didn't realize that he was dropping tf2 altogether though, so that's very sad to hear. I'll miss his stream very much, but at least he's giving his fanbase one last hoorah.

Anyway, like him or not, stabby was an incredibly important figure in our community, namely the highlander side of it. Even if all he spawned was steel spy mains, new players are new players, and lots of people learned about competitive tf2 thanks to his efforts to expose his viewerbase on youtube to it.

i think lange's camera and microphone are ridiculously high quality and he's prettier than ever in this vid

also he's pretty much right. hl is the only thing that seems to have much life left in it nowadays.

great choices

this album is the best christmas album of all time tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BVYDdl2M0A