cw: homophobia, homophobic slurs

This past weekend, I had the absolutely incredible opportunity to commentate Genesis 3. Aside from being one of the best weekends of my life on its own merit, Genesis was lent a special kind of magic by the fact that I actually got to go on stream and talk about this game that I love so dearly, and that has given me so many of my best friends. What’s more, I opened up the very first day along with Vish — someone who I’m happy to call my friend and who I look up to. It was amazing — my casting can definitely use work, but just to be on that stage and have this chance was life-altering.

Post cast, I said thanks to Vish and we joked around a bit, and then I stepped of stage and checked my phone — something I hadn’t had the opportunity to do while up there. I had a Facebook group chat filled with messages that I scrolled through. Then I noticed that one of my friends had screenshotted and posted this:

To be honest, I laughed it off. Twitch chat is full of assholes. I guess it was a bit startling to see it actually directed toward myself, but what else is new? I posted the screenshot on my Twitter with the caption “LMAOOOOOO” because it was my genuine reaction to just laugh at it — after all, I am a bi man. I didn’t really think about it again — and the next day, when I was asked to hop on for some impromptu commentary, I certainly didn’t have any doubts about doing it because some dumbasses were calling me a faggot on the internet.

Genesis passed. It was one of the singular best weekends of my life. When I finally returned to the dreary realm of real life, I decided to rewatch my commentary VODs on Twitch with rechat enabled. This is something I usually do — I have a pretty thick skin, and if Twitch chat is complaining about me there’s usually a grain of truth in that. I laughed when I saw the first “gay” comments pop up — half of it was just because my hair had been pushed into my eyes by the headset in what was admittedly a pretty stupid looking way. But then I saw the plethora homophobic comments, and I started feeling a little different. I still didn’t feel personally offended — the fact of the matter is, I’ve been lucky enough to have a really smooth “coming out,” if you can even call it that, and the word faggot doesn’t have enough malice associated with it for me personally to make a difference. But I did start thinking.

The thing is, it’s easy to just say that this is just Twitch chat being dumb as usual. That’s the safe answer, where we don’t have to think about our community. But when you actually think about it — how many times have you seen or heard a smasher, sometimes even the more prominent ones, call something gay or faggy? I’m guessing it’s more than once. Even beyond blatant homophobia, gay jokes run rampant in the Smash community. To some degree, that’s become a painful expectation. We’re a gaming community, and so by definition we must be a little offensive, the logic seems to go.

But Smash isn’t a typical gaming community. I say with 100% honesty that despite any issues I’m raising here, the Smash community has been the most welcoming and warm group of people I’ve ever met in my life. My career, my friends, everything about my life has been changed for the better as a result of the people here. That’s exactly why such an argument rings false — we’re better than that. We should know that by now. And for the most part, we do — I think most people, if asked, would say the same thing about the quality of this group of people. Just this weekend, we had a female smasher crew battle that drew a huge crowd and was honestly one of the hypest part of the event. That’s not to say we’ve tackled that issue either — far from it. But that something like Smash Sisters even happened is a testament to the genuine goodwill and dedication to cooperation that exists in this community. I see comments on reddit and the like saying that the community is accepting of everyone all the time.

So when I see stuff like the stuff I saw in Twitch chat, it makes me think about how true that is. That’s not an isolated incident. It may be the worst of the vitriol that you can find, but it’s not an outlier. And here’s the thing — the Smash community wouldn’t be what it was today if queer smashers hadn’t gotten involved. I’m not even talking about those who are out, either — though their bravery in being figureheads in the face of this can’t be applauded enough. Fact of the matter is, it’s almost a certainty that some of the people who are responsible for what makes this community so great are closeted. In fact, it’s more than almost a certainty — it’s 100% true, because in the end the people who make Smash what it is are the players.

Like I said, this isn’t all that personal for me, and this isn’t about me. If I were to leave this community, it would be no great loss — and I’m in no danger of doing that.But I guarantee you one of those friends you made at Genesis this weekend, one of the people you sat down to play friendlies with, was queer. Maybe they’re out. Maybe they’re not. But what would be tragic is if they somehow were excluded from this community, or felt not wanted, or were unable to contribute what they bring, because of the stupid language we’re still using. That would be a great loss indeed.

So when I turn on a stream and hear a top player calling someone a faggot, or see it in a Facebook group, or hear it at a tournament — it makes me sad. I believe that this community is one of the most purehearted and good ones in the world. I believe that more than most things. So all I’m asking for — all I really wanna say with this whole, long, stupid article, if you can even call it that — is that if we really wanna keep saying we’re so accepting, which I truly believe we are, we gotta back it up. I’m not gonna say that Smash wouldn’t be what it is today if everyone had been calling each other fags — because that did happen, and it’s thanks to the people who were hurt by that and still stayed in the scene that we’re where we are. But we’re still going places. I don’t know how you could watch Genesis and not think that. And we’re gonna go there a lot faster if we practice what we preach.

Thanks for reading, if you did. Hope I’ll see you at the next tournament.