emulative culture in smogon's posting

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There's a degree of emulation in most communities, irl and online. In forums especially people want to be listened to and there tends to be a set of celebrities who are considered cool, whether they're moderators and people want to get power or because they're influential and people admire that and want to fit in. What's more unique about Smogon is that it's been around for a long time and it has an elitist legacy. Furthermore, although every forum has its running jokes and history, Smogon's is not always straightforward and runs back a long time, so you get even more people awkwardly imitating old jokes that nobody laughs at anymore or referencing old quotes that they don't understand the context of, etc.

Also there's a subconscious level of being impressible, people just pick up the conventions of the community they're in even without realising.

I just think it's natural, sometimes it looks really awkward but we're probably all guilty of copying people we think are funny or cool at some point. People do bandwagon a lot though.

this was areally pretentious post I'm ashamed of it but w.e

eta: I think the worst is when someone in the community publicly calls out another user or just decides they don't like them, and suddenly that user is completely ostracised by everyone else and even users who are equally as unpopular as that user (I mean of course they can have their own prejudices, but I'm just saying people quite blatantly do this when you'd expect them to be a bit more sympathetic or not engage in it, I'm not blameless either) bully said user to try to elevate their own standing... that's nothing new though, that's just human nature. It's worse here though because Smogon has a lot of people who are competitive and confrontational and there's more leeway on that than, say, the Neopets boards. (poorly written sentence)
 
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You have a bunch of awkward kids who in some cases have very little social interaction, of course they're going to pick up shit they think is cool.

To this day though, I never have and probably never will understand the point of all this lil b based god bullshit that is going around smogon.
 
MikeDecIsHere said:
You have a bunch of awkward kids who in some cases have very little social interaction, of course they're going to pick up shit they think is cool.

To this day though, I never have and probably never will understand the point of all this lil b based god bullshit that is going around smogon.
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From reading your first sentence, I'm pretty certain you have actually understood what's behind all that bs lol. But yeah some months ago I wondered what all the fuss was about and it's apparently something not limited to smogon but the internet in general...
 
I only like posts that have fewer than 5 people liking it. If there are too many likes that means it's too mainstream.

/me is hipster
 
jumpluff did a really good job of summarizing this topic.

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Jorgen said:
What's with the title of this thread? Are you writing a college thesis about Smogon or something?
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Character development and its relevance within subcommunities: An extensive exploration of Smogonite tendencies

Dominating traits in proportion to desired admiration in an internet environment: Cracking the Smogon factor

Acceptance within jugular quantum restrictions: The realisation of biscuit management
 
Jumpluff's post shows how Smogon is a lot like high school, I guess. There's a lot of cliques and some of them are considered cooler than others. I think there's probably two main groups who drive Smogon's posting culture: the elite, outspoken competitive battlers and the popular, outspoken a forum users. They're like the jocks and cheerleaders (you are now picturing Rodan in a cheerleading outfit). When these guys latch on to a meme, and I mean meme in both its definitions, it usually reverberates down through the rest of the community until the groups who started it realize how annoying it's become and begin to shun people who do it. That's how most memes work on the internet: there's like a 2 week grace period where you are free to use it before you become that asshole posting Metang@ in every thread.

jumpluff said:
eta: I think the worst is when someone in the community publicly calls out another user or just decides they don't like them, and suddenly that user is completely ostracised by everyone else and even users who are equally as unpopular as that user (I mean of course they can have their own prejudices, but I'm just saying people quite blatantly do this when you'd expect them to be a bit more sympathetic or not engage in it, I'm not blameless either) bully said user to try to elevate their own standing... that's nothing new though, that's just human nature. It's worse here though because Smogon has a lot of people who are competitive and confrontational and there's more leeway on that than, say, the Neopets boards. (poorly written sentence)
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Agreed it's really bad that this happens, but from my experiences on the internet I know this isn't something that's confined to forums like Smogon based on competition, in fact, I think it's probably better on Smogon than on some other gaming forums I've been an active part of. I was on one forum a couple of years back for general Nintendo based stuff, there was a clique of users from the off topic forum who basically ran the show on account of one or two of them being moderators. The only way to get accepted into the sections of the forum that they frequented would be to basically kiss ass and agree with their opinions on things. The reason I think it's better on Smogon is because there's another way in to the community not based on your opinions or posting habits at all. If you can back your shit up with your battling, you can earn some respect and find yourself being accepted without even having to make many posts. There's some real bottom feeders here who only accepted because of their battling abilities, we're talking the kind of genetic accidents that don't last five minutes in a social setting without leaking some bodily fluid down their pants. But they're accepted here regardless of their posting ability. That kind of makes you proud, doesn't it?
 
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