u/zywh0

at times some bullshit comes out with horrendous album covers that annoy the fuck out of me and make me wish to not open the site. i just wish i could select an album and ask not to show again or something like that, or just at least censor the album cover. like one of my friends has a severe phobia related to snails, to the point that he cant look at them because it causes panic attack, and there was like an album cover including snails. so it'd just be way better if one could mute whatever album / album cover, like some already are censored by default

It's the organizers fault. This event had almost the same problems when the qualifiers were happening in Chengdu, China. It didn't get as much attention as there were no top teams there, the only good team was Rare Atom. It was the same with delays and the stream and everything, and the players even had to play outside what looked like a parking lot. It's the only big event that was held here in China, and since first impressions are always important, I feel it just put a bad light on the whole country. We are passionate about counter-strike, and hate to see these kinds of things happening to pro players here.

I feel sorry for the players, they're the real victims, hope they at least get their well deserved prize money.

tl;dr The organizers are inexperienced, and it all fell apart because of them, don't hate China for it.

to preface this, i was in russian community during my most active phase of my gd career in 2018-2021 and since 2021 i was basically in both while leaning more into the english-speaking community as my english got better. so im not discussing here any type of russophobia, but discussing an unpleasant trend im observing

i saw polterghast defend some edgy shit from russian community arguing that, the culture is different and being edgy there is more accepted (or not exactly defended, but well, argued for understanding i guess). that much is true, however, i genuinely think most of russian community is genuinely fucked, because they consist of kids/teenagers in an echo chamber without a proper understanding of english to be exposed to the english-speaking community. and the russian-speaking community is dominated by Eiriley and Vernam, that influence the russian community enormously, constantly spreading the xenophonia and nationalism, and labeling almost all people from the western community as stupid and "burgers" (they do use the "burger" term as in offensive national insult, for everyone who's not russian-speaking). as the young guys exposed to this, they get more edgy to the most stupid and absurd point, and do not see anything wrong with it, as their unfortunate idols and majority of the community promote that shit and despise the criticism towards it, which leads to the very edgy nazi references and whatever the hell servax tweeted. but i do not think it's just because if you are from post-soviet country you are more edgy, as the culture is. It's a part of the problem, but it's definitely not THE problem. If you look into other spaces, for example Counter-Strike, none of the players are as edgy and dumb, they stay professional and smart. However gd players from russian community are comically edgy, completely unprofessional and obnoxious, that it doesn't really have to do anything with culture, but the fact that those young guys are being in echo chamber and being influenced by the same edgelords, ending in a loop

as a member of both communities, it actually makes me despise the russian gd community, not russian community in general, as it can be toxic in other games, as dota 2, counter strike or whatever other competitive space where people can be toxic, but not to this level of being obnoxious, and i really which stuff like this wouldn't happen, but it's the unfortunate reality

it is also definitely not a one off case, there are multiple examples of this stuff stemming exactly from russian community, as servax now doing literal ai cp with wpopoff, arshadow putting nazi germany references in kocmoc unleashed, nickname friends screaming "sieg heil" on the moment of green bullet completion, multiple other creators putting nazi symbols in their levels for the sake of being edgy. and then the russian community defending their players and downplaying the criticism. it has gotten extremely bad and pitiful

im not sure why exactly i did this rumbling wall of text, but i guess i wanted to give a perspective since i am actually in both communities, and most of the russian-speaking guys lack english or almost dont interact with it. but i definitely think it's the problem of this specific community, and the people that are most influential in the space. the inexistence of any sort of professionalism, ethics and empathy from most of the russian community is actually shocking and sad to see. it definitely wasn't as bad few years ago, but the community got marginalized, and the average age of the community is the easiest to influence and to normalize this overly edgy behavior (i actually think that term "edgy" is completely underselling the sheer degeneracy of situation, but i'm unaware of a better term). this is sad.