Hi, Saltnori here but this time with a more serious article. Many of you have probably seen bullying in one form or another, especially during your early years at school. Most of you also have either been a bully, been bullied or simply watched bullying happen and did nothing about it. However, have you ever thought about the bullying happening in your card game locals?

Today’s article is going to be a bit different. Instead of the usual meme deck profile I want to just gather up my thoughts and share with you guys. Lately I feel like I’ve made a terrible mistake and I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to you guys. This is kind of based on what recent events. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it for some time but I feel like I should or I just won’t be able to get it off my chest.

I admit I’m not the best writer since I normally don’t write about things outside of memes and shitposts. So if the article seems kind of weak, I apologize.



MY BACKSTORY (Kind Of…) TO WEISS SCHWARZ

Maybe I’m wrong but I always thought that people who played card games were kind of nerdy. To elaborate, I found that people who play card games for a hobby are socially awkward compared to normies. You’ve seen it before; there are people who go outside and play football and then Yu Gi Oh players who just all stink in one room together. Even within a card game community though, cliques will form and it’s only natural that a small minority of people will be rejected by others.

When I first started playing Weiss Schwarz, I thought it was a genius idea to make a post on my local Weiss Schwarz group Facebook page to show how passionate I was about my most favorite anime set available in the game- Fate/Zero. My plan was to be accepted into the community by showing how much I appreciated this show and I thought by sharing similar interest and ideas that I could make friends easily.

Boy, I was so fucking wrong.

Everyone thought the post was cringe-worthy and as a result I was treated like a meme. To make matters worse, I got easily salty when I began playing the game and people started to talk about it. In fact, one of my current weiss buddies said this the first time I encountered him at a different locals long ago:

“Don’t be like that Saltnori guy. He’s known as the Salt King around BC Weiss Schwarz.”

Little did he know that the dude he was trash talking was right in front of him. Yeah it was pretty damn awkward. From this experience I basically learned that first impressions are very important. I fucked up big time and as a result people had a rather negative impression of me… and trust me, it stuck for a while. Even now, when I’m a lot more chill with bad games (like a proper adult!), those past impressions of me still stuck with a few people and they assume I’m really bad with handling losing games.

I remember this time where I made fun of one of the players online for liking Charlotte in my own community (that anime was shit btw) and then there was some serious backlash towards me. I honestly thought it was funny at the time and that others would probably find my joke amusing. It turned out that person was a well-respected, skilled Weiss Schwarz player and everyone roasted my ass because I was being a dick. Had I not been so edgy, I could have avoided all of this and maybe proven myself to be an actual human being instead of being such a shitty asshole. In retrospect, being more careful and respectful towards others instead of trying appear like an edgelord would have resulted in an environment where everyone could have potentially gotten along (I do believe this person is chill with me now).

SO HOW IS THIS RELATED TO BULLYING?

So the reason why I’m even talking about this when I wasn’t necessarily bullied is because I think a horrible impression will lead to rejection within any community and this can eventually lead to bullying. Lately, I’ve noticed after the most recent WGPs and Regionals that it’s really hard for people to accept those around them who made a really bad first impressions. For example, after a big tourney people usually go for dinner (fucking Bushiroad not giving us lunch breaks) and split into their own circle of friends but some individuals have trouble fitting into these groups.

I won’t name anyone but I’ve seen time and time again where people hesitate before going to these dinners with people they don’t necessarily like. Groups will even refrain from their usual talkative behavior when eating with “rejects” because they can’t enjoy themselves where these individuals are close by. As a result, I think people who make these mistakes have a lot of trouble making close friends down the road within the card game community. As someone who made this kind of impression, I believe it took about 2 years or so before most people didn’t mind playing casuals with me more or even inviting me personally to hang out after Weiss Schwarz events.

However, I never thought that something like an initial rejection could lead to bullying so quickly until now.

I realized that when people hate an individual enough, they will start trash talking relentlessly when they find other people who agree with them. This kind of behavior can be contagious and spread quickly within a small community which will obviously lead to prejudice against the victim. At this point, the victim is helpless against the public opinion and has close to zero chance of recovery.

Not only does this result in a bad experience for the victim but it becomes a toxic environment overall. On one side, everyone apparently hates this one person and labels them as “autistic” or “cancer” . On the other, the victim hates the community and doesn’t want to come back because his or her experience was just so unpleasant lately. Essentially both sides suffer a negative experience.

How come I’m making these bold claims? Lately I’ve feel like I’ve taken part in bullying someone.

HOW I ACTUALLY BULLIED SOMEONE AND FAILED TO REALIZE IT UNTIL RECENTLY

About last year, a new player joined the Weiss scene close to where I live. Let’s refer to this person as “Bill”. At first, no one really had issues with this person. Bill was getting rides home from other people since he lived a bit far away and even joined a few dinners. However that didn’t last too long.

Although it wasn’t exactly like how I made a terrible first impression, Bill ended up playing his cards badly after a month or so (which is ironic because I find him to be pretty skilled at Weiss). I personally thought the way he played the game against people was not a fun experience. For example, he would act like the world was ending when the a game was going wrong but as soon as he was favored he would actually become cocky as hell. I understand that it’s good to take the game competitively and winning is great, but there needs to be a balance of control over your emotions in a game especially when a large part of that game is based on luck. However Bill just let out his feelings in a way that just left a bad taste in my mouth. I eventually started to avoid playing casuals with him because it was just so unpleasant.

In addition, I felt that Bill was trying way too hard to “fit in” with the crowd. I thought he always made exaggerated claims about himself such as “being a professional DOTA player” or “got a free flight because he had connections”. I don’t know how many of these actually ended up being true but because he did this so often he basically became the boy who cried wolf. I do feel he was doing this to one-up people so he would be some “cool guy” but it just ended up backfiring on him because whenever I asked people about him they just replied that they found him annoying after a while.

I guess the combination of him boasting and being unable to handle his games in a friendly just didn’t work well because after a while it wasn’t just me talking behind is back. In fact everyone in the room except for a select few began roasting his ass over time. This eventually snowballed into a situation where everyone just had this terrible opinion of him, even those who barely knew him or haven’t met him yet. How do I know? Because I started it…

My biggest mistake was trying to bottle up my feelings and it ended up exploding one day. Before the bullying began, I thought the whole situation was pretty sad since I’ve sort of been there before. So I tried my best to be polite and not to make fun of Bill. I stayed quiet even though he really started pissing me off with his negative attitude. I also didn’t really like the way he interacted with the people who played against him in tourneys and it started affecting me. It didn’t help that Bill was just loud during matches especially when being over-dramatic. Once he was so distracting I was almost convinced to stand up and sock him to get him to shut up but I was able to stay calm and silent. Over time however, I started to hate the guy more and more until I forgot why I was even trying anymore. I started not wanting to go to locals because just seeing his face would ruin my day.

This resulted in a chain reaction where I started badmouthing Bill behind his back and everyone else joined in. Until that point, the people who played Weiss in my city didn’t bother to really voice their opinions on what they thought of Bill. However my clear hatred of Bill clearly incited hatred and trash-talking to the point it spread like wildfire. It was evident since we started seeing less of him and people who used to give him a ride to my locals stopped going with him.

What originally was good intention became bullying. I became the very person I was trying not to become. Not only had I contributed toward making an unplayable environment for Bill but the majority of the community became filled with animosity. A day of locals couldn’t go by without someone dropping Bill’s name from time to time and people just treated him like the biggest joke.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

I feel like the people at my locals and I approached the whole situation too passively. Instead of speaking up and telling Bill I didn’t like his behavior, I stayed quiet and as a result I became too fed up and exploded. I think what happened was that none of us wanted to be the first one to be the one to break the news to him. I’m the most guilty one here because I wasn’t being honest with myself and as a result, I ended up probably hurting him the most.

What we should have done instead was confront him sooner instead of just letting him doing what he wanted. Had I talked to him about my problem earlier on, things probably wouldn’t have escalated to this extent where I only felt better by badmouthing him often.

This is going to sound pretty messed up but I still haven’t actually apologized to this guy yet and unfortunately I have no plans to anytime soon. I still dislike Bill a lot and I feel like I’m just not ready to talk to him about this entire thing. I realize that’s pretty immature of me but I just cannot stand this person whenever he’s in one of those dramatic phases. I promise myself one day though that I’ll do it otherwise I’ll just be a coward forever.

In spite of what happened, I have faith that many of you who read this blog will realize the error of my ways. Don’t let this happen to you. Even if you want to have no part of it, I highly encourage you to speak up if someone is making you feel uncomfortable even when you’re playing a card game. From my experience, being passive only works in the short term. Bottling up all those feelings will end up with everything exploding all at once. Of course how you approach the situation matters too… telling someone to shut the fuck up super loudly in the middle of the room while everyone’s playing their games won’t really end well.

You should also try to not to join in trash talking if you’re in a room full of people just badmouthing certain people out of hatred. Once in a while it’s okay to vent but if you keep it up over time, the negativity will really start to impact everyone else.

There’s probably a bunch of other things I want to say but this article has already gone long enough. If you haven’t already realized, I’m a very hypocritical person since I’m giving you advice on how to handle bullying while I’m doing all these bad things. It’s really hard sometimes to just be a genuinely good person these days. However, at the bottom of it all was this wish where everyone could just have fun in a room turning anime cards sideways.

Next article will probably be another deck profile. Thanks for reading as usual and if you don’t mind, let me know what you thought of this one.