Encyclopedias vs. Masculinity: How Competitive Resources Fail

[cityscapes]

There still isn't a good place for threads that are about this community rather than of this community, so I'm just putting this here.

Improvement resources for competitive games and other hobbies exist in a marketplace. Within that marketplace, they're evaluated not on raw helpfulness but on how palatable they appear to potential audiences. By examining the marketplace and its resultant products, it's possible to see just what it is that everyone wants out of competitive games in the first place.

"Encyclopedia" resources attempt to sound authoritative by coming off as impartially as possible. It's difficult to discredit a resource reliant primarily on objective and readily observable information. Though many encyclopedia resources are literally about objective game facts such as the details of statlines or moves, many others, such as community VRs and analyses, instead reflect "impartial" shared views of the metagame.

The problem with such resources is that they actually have nothing to do with getting better at the game; essentially, they're LLM-like reproductions of discourse about Pokemon in an attempt to sound as correct as possible. When someone rates a team by saying "Pokemon X is unviable and you would do better to use a viable Pokemon like Y", what they're doing really has nothing to do with critical thinking; instead, they're appealing to discourse they once heard from people who were thinking critically.

From this process, resultant resources always have less information density than the discourses that they're based on, and on top of that some of the finer details are always lost. Even worse, there's very little discernment as to the quality of discourses, so something repeated enough times by enough people can easily become conventional wisdom. This is the case even if those people don't "actually play" themselves and are simply hallucinating something out of thin air that "feels correct". When I criticized analyses in this post, I looked at them from an ideal perspective and described how even a perfect player would struggle to convey helpful information through that structure. But I didn't even mention how I've seen analyses made for completely unviable sets, things no one is actually using, or how QC teams can forcibly remove perfectly viable sets in an attempt to "keep things conventional".

It's understandable how such resources might alienate a new but somewhat seasoned player looking to make waves in the tournament scene, so it's from here that we arrive at the other side of the coin. "Masculine" resources play off the influx of disaffected players who have soured on encyclopedias. They present themselves as proudly partial, aiming to "cut through all the bullshit" and mold knowledgeable nobodies into real players.

Let's look at an example, in fact what inspired me to make this thread. In this video (and in his subsequent challenge), Vert identifies Pinkacross's channel as an "encyclopedia"-like resource which aims to "prey on new players", and derides him as "unqualified" and "fraudulent". Afterwards, Vert advertises his own tutoring services and makes the claim that offense is easy, simple, and not "pussy" compared to slower styles.

There isn't really anything special about Vert's videos, other than that they were made in 2025. Even then, there exists this BKC video from a couple months ago in which he reminisces fondly on CTC's legacy. According to BKC, CTC "invents turns of phrase and language just like he does Pokemon sets and teams and metagames". Most of these turns of phrase involve describing someone as sucking dick or otherwise getting penetrated:

any1 seen t1? FREE ass rocks. thats how u play bw. also OFC arii stella has made ZERO plays in his entire life and wastes spore goddamn this tran puttin this game on his back wo clicking ONE attack. OFC michael scott comes into the scene and SEXUALLY HARASSES breloom and tar for multiple turns, but it seems like arii is the one working for a paper company cuz he blank tf out and gettin dundered in the mifflin by big rak. on t 25 he needed to go to zam on the trick idk what ww was like if u predict an attack u roost if u predict rak u go zam if u predict trick u go zam what does ww do for u???? so u predicted the trick but u decided ww was the best play not even gettin em up to possibly click sedge later on w lant??????? bruh,,,, anyways kev outplayed so hard for so much of the game that it was over by t25 anyways.

The key thing to note here is that especially in conjunction with an otherwise masculine persona, "invent[ing] Pokemon sets and teams and metagames" is also characterized as a masculine thing to do. Thus, by successfully performing these things, CTC becomes a patriarch to whom deference is obligate, at least according to most of the competitive Pokemon community. In other words, succeeding at Pokemon is primarily a means to the end of being seen as a complete man by peers.

Being a woman myself, this rhetoric obviously doesn't really reach me (and is on top of that pretty gross), but I do want to talk about how "masculine" resources more generally don't work. They typically function in the form of hierarchical cults of personality in which initiation entails adherence to a basic, unspoken set of principles, which most initiates (being ambitious teenage boys) readily adopt: questioning of "the establishment", what "exciting Pokemon" is, wanting to be a high-level dynamic player.

The problem is that entering into such a cult of personality is just adhering to more arbitrary dogmatic principles that have nothing to do with actually winning the game. If you can't move beyond the fantasies in your head of sweeping great players with your super heat innovations and actually sit down to view the game as it is, you won't get anywhere at all. A player who can only use offense and doesn't understand how to defend is not scary. A player deathly afraid of being seen as "gay" by their peers is not scary. Ironically, the less you care about game results or the opinions of people around you, the easier it becomes to actually innovate and grow as a player.

Though I described this sort of mentality as "masculine", it can be readily applied to other hierarchical ideologies as well. Here's another example of how in-game dynamism and "excitingness" have been used in order to legitimize a hierarchy outside the game:

The next important anti-Semitic chess player, who wrote hateful tirades without even the thin justification of self-preservation, was Emil Joseph Diemer, of Blackmar-Diemer Gambit fame. Diemer was a Nazi Party member and anti-Semite, though later he became even more obsessed with homosexuals in chess than Jews in chess. His theories on Jewish vs. German chess were much the same as Gutmayer's: German chess was said to be romantic and good, while Jewish chess was risk-free, defensive, and evil. Diemer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, before it came to power, and became 'chess reporter for the Great German Reich'.

What a loser. His gambit isn't even good or exciting at all.

Anyway, I think it is possible to make resources that don't fall into either of these traps. I don't see all resources as falling on a spectrum between "encyclopedic" and "masculine"; rather, both of these are but two possible options in a game brimming with possibilities. However, I confess that I'm somewhat pessimistic towards how much will actually change. I believe that most people who play competitive Pokemon are looking for mild distraction and/or masculine wish-fulfillment, and things will probably stay that way. However, it might be possible for something real to happen on the fringes. Isn't everyone else getting bored of these social structures?

 

[Adeleine]

Coming at this mostly as a former GPer, but I had minor contributions as a player during the halcyon days of Gen 7, including a couple articles and some resources chatter.

I'll also note this is a more "masculine" versus "encyclopedic" perspective. It's where I've arrived after years of doing and watching and thinking about the process, and a place many other people can have different strong perspectives on.

I've long bemoaned how rarely people occupy the intersection of "People who have sophisticated understanding of Pokemon strategics/dynamics," "People who have knowledge of a specific metagame / etc.," "People who have the time and motivation to play Pokemon and write content," and "People who are good at writing / explaining," all in one. With all combined, we can take the best from both of your worlds as much as possible. With any of these missing, actually teaching the game beyond a surface level is really hard, and something I see almost all site resources fail at.

People who occupy different parts of that skill intersection can work together, but our content structures generally don't facilitate that. They spread talent very thin, across dozens of metagames, hundreds of Pokemon, and almost double-digit generations. To me, part of the solution to our resource failings has to be scope. The less we focus on, the more we concentrate talent, and the more breathing room we have to do more than the minimum. There's other, more granular things, like how GP is more about putting a veneer of professionalism on content versus addressing fundamental strengths and weaknesses, but the scope question permeates everything.

Like, we could bring the encyclopedic world and masculine world together by having multiple high-skill critical thinking players provide different perspectives on a part of the game, and have multiple people good at explaining and knowledge help mold that into something more about understanding, and less about blind following – especially given the multiple perspectives at hand. That's a level of depth and care we can't imagine for current content because we're too busy pumping out piles and piles of largely unhelpful cookie cutter labor.

This seems hard to actualize in practice, because "being spread thin" feels baked in Smogon at this point. Like, it's no coincidence there are all these different metagames and generations and everything people care about. It's a community that tells you "Hey, here are a billion things, pick what you like, and if you don't like anything, make #1,000,000,001."

And at some point, a lot of people have a lot of fun creating for and playing in the micro-metagames, and like, fun is good and what we're here for. I get that. I'm glad that different groups of people get something out of playing the game differently. Bigger picture, the cat is probably out of the bag on whether Smogon will be centralized or federated, too.

And there's other types of obstacles too, like, honestly learning the fundamentals versus just sheeping takes a level of effort that not everyone wants to do, no matter how good you make the resource. (In hindsight you basically already said this.)

But imagine how much talent we could accrue, and how much care we could bake in, if we we said "You can play what you want, but for resources specifically, there are Agnostic Resources for the fundamental Game of Pokemon you can apply anywhere, and then specific content for OU, VGC, a couple other of the site's strongest and most passionate communities able to handle producing high-level content, and maybe some more casual stuff rotates in and out for freshness."

 

[chroma_2903]

these are a lot of really really good points! i hadn't really considered things from the masculinity agenda-y kinda lens and while i think that specific regard is, like, extremely varied per individual case of it happening with very different contexts and whatnot, etc, it is for sure still exceedingly present and exceedingly problematic as a whole. any step that can be taken to phase out that aspect of the presentation of independent comp resources is a worthwhile one.

as someone who has been trying to lock in and improve at mons in general due to a mix of factors (liking pokemon, being really solid at building for some reason, boredom, i find comp mons quite fun, i like strategizing, blah blah) i think the biggest thing holding back resources aimed to help with that is a lack of focus on more straightforward fundamental principles that are present throughout 99% of higher levels of mons play, as touched on a bit above. even with my limited mons experience i think this is pretty identifiable as one of the core things that makes mons a headache for newbies such as myself. take, for example, the pokemon tcg. there's a lot of underlying principles present at higher levels of play such as sequencing and prize mapping, and on a slightly smaller scale prize deduction and deck cycling. deckbuilding is going to look different based on the rotation and format, even with some underlying rules of thumb (similar to mainline mons!!), so that's less important but enough so that i wanted to touch on it. these principles are present in like, every single format ever! barring some edge cases like tcg pocket not having prize cards, etc, but these are of course very specific scenarios and generally, basically all rotations are going to have stuff like prize mapping. it's just too inherent of a thing to higher levels of the game.

funnily enough, the tcg is also kind of at a deficit for resources like this, but some still exist. while I'm not too well versed in the youtube scene for it, or online as a whole honestly, there are a lot of people in the hobby both irl and online that'd be happy to at the very least give one a few pointers. but the main difference here is that the tcg is actually a bit more approachable in this regard for a complete complete newbie. swing a cat in a search engine of your choice and you can probably find at least one good general resource on sequencing in the pokemon tcg. i think tcgplayer had an old simple article on it, even. you'd be much harder pressed to find a good general resource on, say, positioning, for the mainline games. i think some of that stems from singles and doubles being really different and formats seeming like an endless behemoth of different structures, as well as probably a million other things that elude my memory at the moment. this is really bad for 'getting started' resources because not a lot of them focus in-depth on baseline principles that can then be applied to most formats instead of the other way around; learning a format to try and get better at baseline principles. while this is not a definitively bad thing to do, it encourages the learning of things as they pertain to one format in particular rather than root things that apply to lots of formats. the lack of high quality underlying principle focused resources creates more of an audience for end-all 'masculine' cut-the-bullshit resources, which encourages the existence of more daunting encyclopedia resources thanks to the usual succinctness of the former, and so the cycle continues.

i'm getting bored of writing this and the z-a dlc is about to drop so i'm going to wrap this up for now and maybe come back to it later if i so desire. but if you twisted my arm and forced me to choose something to do about the current state of smogon and how it handles comp, i think placing a HELL of a lot more emphasis on like three or four specific formats (ou, vgc, dou, bss??) and the underlying principles that both relate to each other and how they vary between these four specifically. giving people more of an approachable baseline, like "oh so this is how this doubles meta works in conjunction to this other doubles meta and these two singles metas, maybe i can apply this knowledge to other less-exhaustive metas". almost like a stencil i guess. and then supporting the billion other formats at a less exhaustive level. obvs this is just a spitball but i think a lot of mileage could be gotten out of a system like that

 

[a quylthulg]

i like this post, thanks; my general thoughts follow. no guarantee is made that what i'm claiming disagrees with anyone else or even that i am claiming anything at all.

the impartiality of even stuff like details of stats and moves isn't unimpeachable i think. for instance some resource sections have speed tier lists, which are as objective as possible, being basically just lists of numbers pulled from the game, but the fact that those numbers in particular are given and arranged as they are and so on isn't "impartial" - there's some evaluation of whether speed tiers are valuable in general, which pokemon are worth putting in those lists, etc.
analyses are certainly less impartial, when i've written analyses i've made an attempt to say things that are generally considered true by good players but i don't cleave to that entirely. i think that generally the most "accurate" vision of a metagame is some average of good players' visions, so i try to impart that or something similar when i write, but of course who i consider to be a good player, how i discern what good players believe, and so on are partial.
i don't think that the goal of vrs and analyses and so on is to be impartial though. i think every player has their own perspective on a metagame; what i feel is good and how i think games should be played and so on may be very different from another player. i think the goal of vrs and analyses is to give something approaching a boilerplate generic perspective of a metagame that the new player can adapt to their own experiences rather than having to create out of nothing a vision of the game. if i give a player a team with no description of how to use it they don't have enough understanding of the subject to get any sort of purchase on how to begin playing, but if i give them a broad-strokes "when kyogre comes in go latios, and when latios comes in go to snorlax" they can start with a model of how the tier works that they can improve as they continue playing, which lets them actually get good much faster than starting with nothing even if switching latios into kyogre is in fact wrong 30% of the time. given this, stuff like analyses being shallow and generic is a feature-not-a-bug, they're just the bird's-eye view of the metagame without any detail because the detail is always different for different individuals and the point of the resources is to allow people to add their own detail.

of course, this understanding may be itself a departure from the encyclopaedic paradigm, but i think at least part of the issue you're identifying is one of misinterpretation rather than an inherent issue with stuff like vrs - if someone criticizes a team simply by referring to the vr isn't that an issue with the critic rather than with the vr?
having said that i think that a significant part of the criticism is correct - pokemon can't effectively be described in a vacuum so modular standalone analyses of individual pokemon doesn't work very well. whenever i've written analyses i've had trouble with the "team options" section because everything in the analysis depends on team, and the amount of information i'd need to convey in two sentences to describe kyogre as a teammate for snorlax would sorely tax my already overused semicolon key. the lack of overview articles similarly feels like an issue of implementation rather than direction.

in terms of the "masculine" paradigm i tend to dislike claims of "cutting through the bullshit" - i think bullshit is pretty subjective and it's hardest to smell your own. people claiming to be uniquely lacking ideology invariably just can't see their own. veering completely off-topic, i'm reminded how [f]ascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy. the masculine paradigm is constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating "good play" i suppose.

i wrote this without editing when i should have been asleep so please forgive me any incoherence or missing-of-the-point.

 

[Ironmage]

To an extent, I think that general discussions of fundamental strategies are ironically not what new players are looking for. Maybe it's just me, but getting interested because of a specific thing seems more likely than liking the competitive metagame as a whole. An overview of standard teambuilding practice doesn't directly answer "how do I use X?", and may not answer it at all if X is on the gimmicky side. The individual mon analyses are not optimal for figuring out full strategies, but they still end up being widely used (and perceived as useful) because they address a common type of question. So even if a single recommended starting point exists, the first page a person reads still has a reasonable chance of being somewhere else.

I think that trying to centralize information around a couple formats can run into similar issues when it comes to starting points. As an example, I've basically only played [Natdex] Monotype casually, because I've always liked making monotype teams. If I was interested in going more competitive, articles on How Stuff Works in OU [, How Natdex OU is Different from Restricted OU, ] and How [Natdex] Monotype is Different from [Natdex] OU would be backwards: the discussion of fundamentals are for a format I have no experience, not even casually, to make use of. I would already be needing to learn a particular format (one that I honestly have little interest in) in order to understand the context of the basic play patterns, so I'm already discouraged from attempting to learn the game top-down rather than bottom-up.

 

[Adeleine]

Yeah, we understand that "learning how to play Pokemon" isn't what everyone is here for.

city: I believe that most people who play competitive Pokemon are looking for mild distraction and/or masculine wish-fulfillment, and things will probably stay that way

me: learning the fundamentals versus just sheeping takes a level of effort that not everyone wants to do, no matter how good you make the resource

But shouldn't we teach people Pokemon anyway, for those who want to learn? Isn't that the justification behind our resources? Our materials (usually) don't teach people effectively, so why not try something new?

There's compromises we can make, like, creating sample sets for micro-metas without devoting the time and effort level for actual analyses. (We already do this to an extent, but more out of necessity than a clear vision, at least when I was involved.) Sure. For an already pie-in-the-sky idea like "centralize the community whose bones are steeped in fragmentation," compromise is a pretty easy thing to tack on and agree to.

Combining the macro and micro can happen deeper, too. If we explain the role of setup sweepers in general, and a specific Pokemon in Natdex Mono has a setup sweeper set, we can say "To learn more about using this mon you like, check out our guide on setup sweepers!" I'm sure there's lots of integration like that possible.

If I was interested in going more competitive, articles on How Stuff Works in OU [, How Natdex OU is Different from Restricted OU, ] and How [Natdex] Monotype is Different from [Natdex] OU would be backwards: the discussion of fundamentals are for a format I have no experience, not even casually, to make use of. I would already be needing to learn a particular format (one that I honestly have little interest in) in order to understand the context of the basic play patterns, so I'm already discouraged from attempting to learn the game top-down rather than bottom-up.

You've misunderstood us (Chroma & I). We're not asking for this. We're asking for general explanations that then apply to the specific metagames. If you understand the principles of slow pivoting, you can apply those to both OU and Natdex Monotype, instead of using OU knowledge to then learn Natdex Monotype. That would indeed be a dubious approach, given how many people playing micro metas are intentionally turning away from OU, as you note.

"How Stuff Works in OU" is useful content because we host millions of OU matches, versus thousands for smaller metagames, not because OU is serving as a bridge to Natdex Monotype.

 

[a blue banana]

I don't think I can contribute to the discussion on how competitive resources can be made more general instead of specifically tailored or dogmatic, but I understand your point on "masculine" resources based on what I've seen from general competitive discussions on this site, as well as the Discord servers. In my opinion, some of the ways players give their opinions on what Pokemon, sets, teams, etc. are good or bad can make them sound more authoritative than they should be, and I feel like the usage of words like "fraud" is related to your point.

 

[Drifting]

I don’t think it’s really that deep

Pokemon is too contextual, shifting, and protean a game for what you call encyclopedic resources to be useful beyond a surface level. Analyses are by necessity broad in scope, slowly updated and often written by younger, non-jaded and accordingly lower skilled contributors, to the extent where they’re mostly useful as basic sample sets (albeit often outdated/unoptimal ones especially in reference to EV spreads), likewise, a VR can give an outsider a perspective on what Pokemon are used most, but are useless regarding actual gameplay where the only metagame that matters is one localised to the 12 Pokemon on the field, and videos like those made by Pinkacross are clearly targeted towards newer players, largely consisting of explanations of surface level concepts and fun pop facts and ideas (which is not a knock against him he does those things well).

Even outside of gameplay and in the builder, where resources are in theory more relevant like Sample Teams and common educational concepts like FWG or Fairy Tale Cores, which are good for new players, Pokemon metagames are cyclical, diverse and nuanced to the extent where the skillset to actually build a good team is beyond what these resources can teach. The only way to improve at this stuff is time invested, a lot of trial and error, working with other great players and intensive study and self-reflection (which a newer player is incapable of doing).

I also think you’re assigning a false motive to what you call masculine resources, when it doesn’t seem to be trying to be actively educational. Vert’s video is clearly satirical and it’s pretty easy to find games where he’s not loading offense (though it is important to note the context that in SV offense is strong and incredibly diverse enough that you can succeed just relying on all the different flavours of offense available to you) and playing on the timeless comedic observation that stall is boring as fuck and that taking pleasure in it probably means you’re a dork. His criticisms of Pinkacross are based on the fact that his qualifications (reaching the top of ladder) are the level not at which a paid coach should be, but is in fact the level where paid coaching becomes plausibly useful at all because below that level there are too many mistakes being made to meaningfully isolate and improve on and you can already improve at a fast rate by just grinding and practicing, perhaps with the free resources that do exist (this is an opinion I generally agree with).

As for CTC, I think it’s fair to assume BKC is making reference to phrases from Blunder’s videos like goob/sheist/stunt or die/heat which are omnipresent in the Pokemon community, as well as his Cypher lyrics, petty trashtalk and quirks like calling himself the Based Goatman or whatever rather than referencing 2010s era Internet locker room talk (which was not a Smogon unique phenomenon when you consider some of the biggest online creators at the time included LeafyIsHere and iDubbbz and shit who were just rattling off slurs and other obscene shit like it was nothing, this is not to excuse it of course because even at the time it wasn’t acceptable behaviour, but it was common behaviour nonetheless).

Vert and CTC just adopt these overtly macho and hyper confident temperaments and ways of speaking as a persona and character both for personal amusement and to build up a cult of personality around themselves, I presume. Yes, they do invoke their in-game prowess as a part of this masculine persona but that is just what sports and games are. Competition is inherently about being better than others and literally exerting your will over them, ideas that are traditionally thought of as masculine. All sports have that element of masculine wish-fulfilment, and that’s why countries invest so much money into the Olympics, to show that they’re the strongest and coolest or whatever. The only thing that makes it sometimes a bit silly in eSports specifically is that a lot of nerds play this shit and have no idea how to be graceful with high-status, just look at the notably cringe bad boy personas of Leffen and formerly Hikaru Nakamura. I think comparing them to the anti-semitic propaganda of a literal Nazi chess player is an obvious gross exaggeration.

Really, what would be nice to have is better, much more granular, sophisticated and advanced resources alongside the beginner-friendly stuff that exists, but the amount of players able to create stuff like that is small and the amount willing is even smaller, and often a lot of their best insight into the minutia of the game is in ramblings, like Stresh’s infamous 24 hour straight essay in the Smogtours discord. When I helped with the Smogon YouTube channel and later started making YouTube videos myself I always envisioned myself making a “Drifting’s Dojo” series where myself and others would break down concepts for intermediate to advanced level players, not with the goal of teaching them new information per se, as they’ve likely passed that point already, but moreso with the goal of changing the way they think about these parts of the game on a more fundamental level. But turns out making good resources is hard and shit, and I’m lowkey very lazy. Oh well.

 

[chimp]

Maybe this is a hot take but I think it’s OK if we have mostly resources for beginners and I think it is OK if they are kinda cruddy or spend some extended time being outdated.

The only way to really get good at Pokemon is to just play the game and be involved in the community. There is no resource that can make someone instantly better at the game. In the education work there is a concept called scaffolding, essentially the idea that learners need to reach their objective on their own, with support provided by their instructors or tutors.

Eventually, like scaffolding on a building, the supports are taken away once the student is able to complete their goal independently. That is what the Smogon sets / sample teams are (or atleast, should be). I run a league with alot of new players, many of which neger touched Pokemon a day in their life. They take the smogon sets and they play and either decide to keep improving or don't. But the fact that these resources exists gets them in the door, and that is often the hardest part.

Right now l am teaching a bunch of 6th graders about ancient history. The resources we use would probably make an expert scoff at how their vaguity makes them inaccurate. I'm certainly no expert Egyptologist. I've taught units where I was learning the material the week before I taught it. But this is fine, this is part of the system, this is how it is supposed to work. Students need to get the basics, the core foundational principles, before moving on to more depth. We call this "Smogon University;" no university throws its first-year students into master's level courses.

Smogon is scaffolding. It is the support for new players to get involved enough so they can find the resources that work for them. And those resources are out there, off-site though they may be. That's fine, that's ok. That's part of the process. I have argued in the past that we should have a "more resources" section on each Pokemon's analysis that links to YouTube videos or other articles written or created by experts and vetted by the tier's council / QC team. I think this would help even more.