As someone who's been in the speculation scene since Brawl was announced, the Grinch leak was, in my opinion, hands down THE WORST thing to ever happen to this community in regards to speculation.
As stupid as Chair Theory was, it was at least fun, in a 'turn off your brain' kind of way, and was ultimately harmless in the long run.
And box theory, while MANY people hated it, besides the occasional scuffle, it came down to "You either do or don't believe it".
And, to pull from Smash 4 for a bit, although the ESRB leak had much more devastating implications, it really didn't take 'that' long to be proven as real, meaning that, while yes, the debates were bloody and heated, as soon as the gameplay dropped, I'd wager that most people had accepted it as truth by that point.
The Grinch leak however, I don't think I'll ever look back on fondly. The fact that it split the community roughly 80/20, with the 80 being "Team real" and the 20 being "Team fake".....
I'm going to be blunt. I had VERY good reasons to believe that Box Theory was indeed real, in part due to the source that approached ME(No, I won't tell you what they showed me to convince me), so seeing this fanbase be led astray by, what I considered an obviously fake leak was rather upsetting.
My biggest gripe though is how much of an ass a LOT of people on TeamReal became.
When I had to sift through "Boxcucks BTFO", "Box Theorists on suicide watch!" or "Virgin Bin" posts, or how people who actually wanted Incineroar were just "Virgin Bin bandwagoners", this behavior was ****ing unacceptable.
And this didn't help, AT ALL, by the amount of people who probably joined here off of /v/ JUST to have a laugh about "Muh Grinch Leak" and throw all their ****ty memes like......Steve anal vore all over the place. Funny how I'd wager 9/10 of those people flat out have never shown their face here again after the Direct. They didn't join here to discuss, they joined here specifically to be a ****.
Even when TeamFake brought up legitimately good counter-points, everyone just stuck their fingers in their ears and screamed "NOPE, CAN'T HEAR YOU!"..... I'm sorry, but no, no matter HOW much you compress an image, that doesn't excuse the disappearance of very noticeable background elements.
In short, I really have three things to say:
1# Can we stop the whole "THIS GIVES ME ESRB LEAK VIBES!" when discussing image leaks? For the LOVE OF GOD PLEASE? People were "GETTING ESRB VIBES" from the ****ing Agnes leak, and we all know how that turned out. The ESRB leak is like a unicorn. You will probably never see something like it again.
2# When Vaanrose says something, for the love of god LISTEN. I don't know why he puts up with us, but Vaanrose pointing out the inconsistencies with the background should have thrown MASSIVE shade against the leak, but instead people simply dumbed it down to "COMPRESSION DID IT!"
3# Can we, please, stop acting like Smash is special? When the Box came out, I was 100% sure that the person who had approached me was legit, but the Box Theory debates waged on and on because "Nintendo would NEVER! Smash is SPECIAL!"
Nintendo leaked Lucario, Jiggs and Ness in Brawl.
They leaked Ganon in an offscreen indicator in Smash 4.
They leaked an ENTIRE ROSTER for Fire Emblem Warriors.
For the love of god, stop putting Smash on this invisible pedestal, because Nintendo sure as hell doesn't.
Honestly, I just needed to rant, I'm glad the Grinch hoax is dead, and while I'm not happy we only did get two more characters with Piranha Plant, I feel like this should be a wake up call to everyone to stop and ****ing think. Scrutinize images. Don't 'GET ESRB VIBES', and for the love of god, when people like Vaanrose say something, listen.