Well, normally I would have laughed as well, but it marks a disturbing trend I've seen from today's gamers...
You're all *******s.
You sound like the punks that play Halo: Loud, belligerent, offensive and, (most annoyingly) unfunny. Yeah, let's tear down someone to make ourselves look bigger and stronger, when all it does is weaken an already fragile community. The Smash scene (save for a few stubborn old Melee'rs) is in the hands of you youngsters now, and it can only grow if we accept EVERYONE REGARDLESS OF SKILL into it.
I was going to go into a long speech, but I'm tired of being the voice of reason, sounding like someone's dad... So from here on out, I'm just gonna take my belt off and start spanking you rooks like your parents should have done long ago.
Deezy, go fetch Daddy Po a switch...
Hahahahaha. Love that last line there.
But seriously, Po has a very good point. When I first joined the smash community back in '06, I loved it because everyone was real cool and willing to help me out, which was very different from most gaming communities. In Halo, for example, new players are constantly insulted, yelled at, etc. yet they continue to play it (for the most part). Why? First off, Halo has always been insanely popular, and a lot of people stick with it just because it's so popular and everyone else is playing it. Melee, especially now, isn't so popular anymore, and so it doesn't have that same immediate appeal as games like Halo do. Secondly, Halo is online, which makes it very easy to play with other people. Melee requires you to travel to get the full experience, which a lot of people aren't willing to do, especially when they are first starting out and get roflstomped by everyone.
So, what does Melee have Halo doesn't? An awesome community. Like Po said, most people in the Halo community are douchebags. People in the Melee community are much more accepting of new players, which helps to encourage people to stick with it. So, I imagine everyone can realize what would happen to our community if we started acting like the Halo players and bashed new/less skilled players instead of trying to help them. The Melee community would die. Simple as that.
Brawl might live on, at least casually speaking, since it is still relatively new (when compared to Melee, anyways) and because it has online capabilities, but if people continue to bash new players, Brawl's competitive scene will die off as well. Sure, people will still play online for fun, but there would be no more tournaments because there would be no new players to attend them, and the people who play now aren't going to keep playing forever (although it would be very funny to see an old man playing smash
)
As much as I hate to admit it, the Smash scene isn't doing too great right now. It's hard enough as it is to get new people interested in such an "old" game without people being *******s to them just because they're not skilled. Smash has a pretty steep learning curve when you first start getting into the competitive scene. Hell, I still get owned by pretty much everyone I play, but I don't give up because, even if someone 4-stocks me twice in a row, they're good sports about it. They just say "good games", shake my hand, and sometimes even offer advice. Actually, this goes for more experienced players as well when I think about it. Newbies aren't the only ones who don't like playing with *******s.
So, in short, if we want the Smash scene to live on, people need to NOT be douchebags and help the new players develop a love for the game, and to treat our fellow smashers with respect.
P.S. I'm really tired right now so if anything in that rant seems rather random and/or incoherent, sorry. Just let me know and I'll try and fix it tomorrow... Must sleep now...