I've been thinking about some things lately and I've decided that I'm retiring from insider stuff. Of course, I'm going to keep speculating because I've done it forever but I've come to realize that it's not good for the "mental health" of the community. Based on things I've witnessed, things I've learned about past events, and people I've interacted with, I don't think it's worth it anymore. The literal moral fatigue that seems to be a common issues in some of these circles is telling. I used to joke about it a lot but, yeah, a lot of insider culture is kind of awful and plenty of other retired insiders have spoken on it but it's gotten to the point that it's not funny anymore.
I used to mention it a lot but a common quote that I used to tell from the NoA source is "this isn't fun. Why would anyone want to do this?" After being it in more than a year, it's gotten to be too much. Even the NoA source said that they were going to retire after the VGAs and roughly half of the Private Discord has been like "yeah, I don't want to do this too much longer..." I've met some cool people like Slender, Rummy, Nazyrus, and of course the NoA source by being invited to the group but it's become like watching the news, seeing awful things unfold and people do awful things for e-cred and fame and it's nothing short of exhausting some days.
If fewer people listen to what I have to say because of this announcement, that's fine. Both Paragon and KronoXIII gave me some surprisingly sage advice on this topic in recent weeks and Paragon's particularly stuck with me. To paraphrase "Despite being 'cancelled', I'm still here." That's oddly comforting. Even after the community hardcore dumped on both of them, they still came back. Why? Because they cared about the community. It was never about efame for them but simply contributing to the community and that's pretty groovy. That said, I quickly became nostalgic for the days where I was just a theorycrafter and able to piece together things with public information. All and all, that's always been my place and that's cool.
Like I said, this was never meant to be a long-term thing so "retiring early" is kind of an easy decision to make. I'll just go ahead and say this, you know who you are, and if you're an insider that's just kind of burned out on the whole thing, I can assure you that the community will welcome you back as "regular joes." I hope this doesn't upset anyone because it's not meant to. It's just recognizing that the Smash community already has a plethora of problems and one of the core pillars of speculation shouldn't be one of them. Of course, I'll still answer questions and I have no intention of doing a "dump" of private info because, again, privacy and trust is still important to me. I hope you all are perfectly fine with just being Fatmanonice, the guy that overthinks everything, again.
One last thing I want to say: the NoA ambassador is a real bro and I honestly wish him the best in life. I know this has been stressful this past year but it's been greatly appreciated. Even without the info, they're still an incredible human being and I hope they recognize this when they retire. Still, thank you for everything and especially helping me revive the Geno fanbase when it was at its most defeated. It means the world to me so thank you and best of luck in the future.