Europhoria
Smash Lord
So, as many of you are aware there has been a situation going on between Kirbykaze and Unknown522. The Toronto community had a pretty long talk about how we were going to handle the situation. We tried to include as many relevant members of the community (see: drivers, hosts, TOs, OG members) in the call to get the widest array of opinions and to make this as fair as possible. This was something over 20 of us were involved in (some people couldn't be in the Skype call due to other commitments but we did try to take their voice into consideration).
As a group we decided to ban Unknown522 from our scene's tournaments and large public smashfests for a duration of a year subject to his behavior. Ultimately if people want to have Ryan over to play smash, go to his house to play smash or allow him to attend their tournaments out of region we have no control over that. We can only post how we came to this point and let everyone make up their minds on their own. Hopefully they'll respect our decision and realize that enabling him to keep playing smash and continuing his current pattern of behavior would actually be hurting him (even if you find out decision cruel, etc). This was strictly done by our local community without any outside influence - I can't stress that enough. How the smash scene and other individual communities on a whole react and choose to handle Unknown is 100% in their hands.
To clarify about the ban itself - when we say subject to his behavior, we mean that we want him to get help. That's not really up for debate in terms of him being able to come back to the scene at one point. His public responses to the whole situation speaks to how important this point is. A large part of the reason behind this ban was to make Unknown522 face his issues. So if he genuinely changes and makes progress on this here was a unanimous sentiment within call that we would be willing to look at shortening this term. It works both ways though. If he doesn't seek help, doesn't start accepting responsibility, etc. then 1 year is not the end; the ban could be infinite.
As for a brief explanation on why/how we came to such a decision I'll offer this. We don't really have an evidence.zip for you guys to read. Nor do I intend to list of every possible outburst he's had. If you don't want to believe Kirbykaze when he says these things happened, unless the people who witnessed the events want to come here and argue with you or publicly give their side, you're going to have to take our word as a community that people saw the violent events in question and that we wouldn't act in this manner if we had no evidence to support our position.
Personally (and this was echoed by several others) I feel that it's hard to impose this on a friend. The fact that so many people in the community are so close to him made this difficult for us and is a contributing factor in the complacency we had to allow his behavior to continue for so long. We want him to get help and come back. That being said, a lot of us expressed a great deal of embarrassment during the call that we've let this behavior go on for 6 years. I can't stress enough that this is a pattern of behavior and not the GTA community over-reacting to an isolated incident. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbHjjU-p2bw These matches for example had to have the audio removed and music put over them as a result of his behavior. He has had outbursts in the US (throwing the chair at RoM2, his huge outburst towards Hungrybox at TGMTSBCO, choking Inui at NEC, etc.) that have been angry/violent. It's unfortunate it took us this long to act, or that it took such an event to get us into action.
Ultimately our choice is about what's best for our community. It's not hard to perceive this as us trying to police their personal interactions outside of smash but that's genuinely not what this about. This behavior has driven a lot of people away from our scene. While it took KK going public with the abuse he took away from the game in the context of their relationship to get us to act we all agreed that there was more than enough on the table to take this course of action regardless. There's no desire to get involved in their personal lives but as it's greatly affecting our community we don't have a choice.
I don't really intend to answer questions but you're welcome to inquire, etc. Maybe someone else that was involved will talk about it. I'd like to ask everyone to be respectful and conduct yourselves in a manner similar to how you did it Kibrykaze's original thread. Don't make any stupid or rude comments. I'm sure there will be a moderator or two floating around to monitor for that
Edit: We weren't sure where to post this, if Tournament Discussion would be more relavent mods can move this wherever.
As a group we decided to ban Unknown522 from our scene's tournaments and large public smashfests for a duration of a year subject to his behavior. Ultimately if people want to have Ryan over to play smash, go to his house to play smash or allow him to attend their tournaments out of region we have no control over that. We can only post how we came to this point and let everyone make up their minds on their own. Hopefully they'll respect our decision and realize that enabling him to keep playing smash and continuing his current pattern of behavior would actually be hurting him (even if you find out decision cruel, etc). This was strictly done by our local community without any outside influence - I can't stress that enough. How the smash scene and other individual communities on a whole react and choose to handle Unknown is 100% in their hands.
To clarify about the ban itself - when we say subject to his behavior, we mean that we want him to get help. That's not really up for debate in terms of him being able to come back to the scene at one point. His public responses to the whole situation speaks to how important this point is. A large part of the reason behind this ban was to make Unknown522 face his issues. So if he genuinely changes and makes progress on this here was a unanimous sentiment within call that we would be willing to look at shortening this term. It works both ways though. If he doesn't seek help, doesn't start accepting responsibility, etc. then 1 year is not the end; the ban could be infinite.
As for a brief explanation on why/how we came to such a decision I'll offer this. We don't really have an evidence.zip for you guys to read. Nor do I intend to list of every possible outburst he's had. If you don't want to believe Kirbykaze when he says these things happened, unless the people who witnessed the events want to come here and argue with you or publicly give their side, you're going to have to take our word as a community that people saw the violent events in question and that we wouldn't act in this manner if we had no evidence to support our position.
Personally (and this was echoed by several others) I feel that it's hard to impose this on a friend. The fact that so many people in the community are so close to him made this difficult for us and is a contributing factor in the complacency we had to allow his behavior to continue for so long. We want him to get help and come back. That being said, a lot of us expressed a great deal of embarrassment during the call that we've let this behavior go on for 6 years. I can't stress enough that this is a pattern of behavior and not the GTA community over-reacting to an isolated incident. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbHjjU-p2bw These matches for example had to have the audio removed and music put over them as a result of his behavior. He has had outbursts in the US (throwing the chair at RoM2, his huge outburst towards Hungrybox at TGMTSBCO, choking Inui at NEC, etc.) that have been angry/violent. It's unfortunate it took us this long to act, or that it took such an event to get us into action.
Ultimately our choice is about what's best for our community. It's not hard to perceive this as us trying to police their personal interactions outside of smash but that's genuinely not what this about. This behavior has driven a lot of people away from our scene. While it took KK going public with the abuse he took away from the game in the context of their relationship to get us to act we all agreed that there was more than enough on the table to take this course of action regardless. There's no desire to get involved in their personal lives but as it's greatly affecting our community we don't have a choice.
I don't really intend to answer questions but you're welcome to inquire, etc. Maybe someone else that was involved will talk about it. I'd like to ask everyone to be respectful and conduct yourselves in a manner similar to how you did it Kibrykaze's original thread. Don't make any stupid or rude comments. I'm sure there will be a moderator or two floating around to monitor for that
Edit: We weren't sure where to post this, if Tournament Discussion would be more relavent mods can move this wherever.
I was part of Fogel's group - he hosted some tourneys in ottawa years back.
