What constitutes disrespectful?

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

So I'm relatively new to the tournament scene but I wanna make sure I ruffle as few feathers as possible. I've seen lots of different opinions on what constitutes "disrespectful play" and I wanna make sure I don't do those things accidentally. I know this is MAJORLY subjective, but I want to maintain a good rep amongst the players in my area.

When I play online, for example, to me there's a difference when someone taunts after a ko or when they taunt if I've clearly self-destructed. I used to think it was disrespectful if after beating them a couple times and then they beat me, they immediately left because they "didn't wanna ruin a good thing", but i've had to legitimately leave after a match in this situation for multiple reasons and I can't communicate that with the mic so I tend to give the benefit of the doubt from now on.

 

[gmBottles]

I think its only disrespectful if it is done just to make the other player angry. Other than that, anything goes generally.

 

[The Carpenter]

I can tell that you are asking this question because you are a committed Christian and do not want to cause scandal. I can tell that because I am a devoted Christian myself. The way I see it, there are really only two ways to be disrespectful. The obvious one is to actively try to annoy or anger another player, the other is if, after unintentionally annoying or angering someone (and perceiving this or being told so) to continue the action that caused it and or to not apologize. I guess to be safe just don't do taunts, I never do, mostly because I see no reason to (and I usually need that time to charge Luigi's cyclone anyway lol.) I highly doubt that there is much you could do to accidentally tick anyone off, when it comes to competitive play the objective is to win and that means using whatever tactics are necessary to win and everyone realizes and expects that from any opponent. The term "disrespect" is often used in smash to describe an action such as jumping way off stage to spike a launched opponent but the term is not really used to suggest that the action taken was disrespectful toward the player. It's just a term used usually in a situation where an extreme move is made disregarding the danger of it or using a certain attack knowing that it may be punished but taking the risk anyway. An example would be going in for a down air on a falco that is throwing out up tilts. This means "disrespect" toward the character of falco and the fact that falco's up tilts are likely to have more priority than the down air by going in for it anyway. It's cool to see another serious Christian who's big into smash, if you ever wanna talk about anything feel free to message me!

 

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

I do understand that you gotta play to win, but I've seen a couple strategies that seem like they might be frowned upon, like a certain major player's near-Kirbycide play. I can't tell if that's community consensus or one person whining, however.

 

[The Carpenter]

I know that Hungrybox has kind of a bad rep because his play is considered gimmicky but it's really not justified bad rep. He's a good guy as both a player and a person and though there are many people that frown on his play style there are also many who defend him (myself included) saying that it's ridiculous to look down on someone for the reasons they are good at the game while at the same time they are someone who always behaves respectful towards others and never talks any crap about anyone. I feel like if someone gets mad at another for doing nothing wrong, that's on the former person, not the latter. After all, even our Lord himself was ridiculed for countless things even though he never did a single thing wrong his whole life. I can very well understand that having people that think ill of you as a player is of course a situation is something that you would ideally want to avoid but I highly doubt it will be anything you have to worry about. Honestly situations like that are pretty rare (that is at least from what I've personally ever seen or heard.) I also don't think there is really anything out there that is unanimously considered annoying or taboo, it's just that there will always be some particular people that will be needlessly salty about this that or the other; why I've even seen people that will look down on others simply because of the particular character they play, which is of course absurd. I do think though that generally speaking, most people in the community don't care how you play as long as you aren't actively trying to tick people off or talking crap.