SPL XII - Commencement Thread

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I’m not sure how some of you fail to see the issue of a 30-something year old Callous tracking down a teenager’s personal information and contacting them.

Callous was an adult then and an adult now. He knew exactly what he was doing, there is no “he learned from it, it was in the past”. This type of predatory behavior is not acceptable and that doesn’t begin to even scratch the surface.

Not to mention the fact that Callous gave a platform to a closet racist to spread his bigoted and antisemitic views across the community...
-Oh great monk, what is the secret to happiness?
Monk: don't bother arguing with morons.
-i think that's not true.
Monk:You're right.

Edit: I didn't know it was illegal to call minors on a phone today
 
Talking a bit serious now, to be totally honest, Tigers shouldnt even get taken off tennisaces hands, just to start with. You can argument he doesnt play the game as much as other people do (and cant really bring much help in almost all formats as consequence), but the dude has been there since the start, is known for having average to good performances on the sheet year after year, and since when i started being there he always gets to have very respectabe lineups in everybodys eyes, even in PRs (that are always very biased as whole). Last season he finished last, with me and Roro shadow managing a lineup of people like Robjr, Eeveeto, Tace and dekzeh, with all of us underpeforming, and i can tell tennis did everything he could for the team. Sum it all up with his vocal and kind leadership, and the fact Bowman is a very respectabe staff member and i cant see a single reason as to why they werent picked. Very sad for tennis to end his way like this.

It all being said, talking about what actually matters atm: If callous, by the perspective of the TD team was a name to make up for the role and was picked for that, he should never get knocked out. Thats not even disrespectful to him only, but it also hurts the TD team in a way we should never see publicly. The arguments against him are weak, he didnt get punished on forums by doing everything people used as argument against him, and everyone knows how passionate he is about managing. I dont agree with some of his attitudes and already talked with him about my concerns multiple times, but hes for sure not a threat LOOOOL. If it was reported by someone (the guy that he "doxxed" specifically), you could even have an argument, but the way it all have been handled is not just a shame, but also just shows how smogon has a serious failure in the way its moderated. Whoever did it, basically just throwed the Eos power (im saying Eo cause hes the Head TD, but i actually mean the whole TD team) off the window. I strongly think you guys should redo this decision, even if i love llamas, its just unfair to the whole tournament community.
 
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I wanted to give my thoughts about the Callous situation since I was kinda involved in the phone number thing:
,For an off-site tournament, hunting down a player's phone number and making a very intrusive phone call to ensure they would play their match‘
There was never a ,hunting down‘ for the phone number of the user Callous tried to contact. The guy wasnt the most active player anyway and didnt show up for some of his games. We had each others phone numbers and it was the best way for me to get him online to play his games. Callous hit me up a few times to message him, but I wasn’t available 24/7, so he asked if he can get his number. I asked the guy if its okay and he agreed immediately. Calling this a huntdown isnt an exaggeration, it is simply a lie. And I have no fucking idea how Energy calls it tracking down his personal informations, dont u have something better to do? Like making 2000$ a day and having sex every evening like you used to.
Also my sign up doesnt matter for most people anyway, but Im deleting it out of protest against this decision. I hope more people do the same
 
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UD

BeerLover
What a completely absurd and unjust ruling by the TDs and Smogon Staff. To use information that was so clearly available to them when they made their managerial selections as reason to renege on one of them is a terrible look for a website that apparently is concerned with little else apart from its public image. It certainly does not give a damn about competitive Pokemon.

I have zero interest in participating in anything on this site going forward. Shame on you Big Baby Whiners for instigating this, and shame on the staff members who are responsible for making this decision.
 

august

you’re a voice that never sings
is a Community Leaderis a Tiering Contributoris a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis the 8th Smogon Classic Winnerwon the 5th Official Smogon Tournamentis a Five-Time Past WCoP Champion
OGC Leader
back in 2017 i had to call ricardo's phone number multiple times during wcop finals because my man was dead drunk in a ditch in the streets of lisbon while having a game to play against motherfucking bro fist and i never got denied from managing over this fact even though it was semi known (hell, tony was on that wcop team and eventually got promoted to td)

free big d*ck callous
Echoing pearls sentiment here. Myself and multiple other members of team US Northeast have had to call BKC on his landline telephone to try to get him to complete his matches. I was not rejected to manage World Cup for doing this (which, suddenly appears to be a relevant tournament to be picked to manage(??) ) and to me it is abundantly clear that SS has decided to pick a fight against b*g cock callous, a man who has done more for the old generation tournament scene than any other single person. Seems like a bad decision to me.

-tim
 
Just to finish my thoughts: i didnt even mention the fact he has an interview with Lavos cause like, thats absurdly irrelevant LOL. Are you basically saying he cant talk with a banned user? Lavos is a ridiculous person for sure, but he was banned from smogon, not from Earth. He being a dickass doesnt change the fact hes good at the game LMAO. Im done.
 
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Luigi

spo.ink/shadowtag
is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Top Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis the Smogon Tour Season 27 Championis a Past SPL Champion
Ok cat's out of the bag, everyone knows by now that the decision was forced on the TD team by SS, which in my 3 years as a TD has literally never once happened, no matter how controversial of a decision we decided to take, we had full autonomy. I say this to illustrate how unusual this is.

QQ said in smogtours that SS has the authority to make tournament decisions, and sure, at face value i guess that's literally true, but notice how SS never interferes with the running of a section by the leaders of that section unless something catastrophic is happening, like the 1v1 situation earlier this year or that time Ubers decided to rig a vote. It literally never happened in tournaments before. But let's grant it that they can act in a catastrophic situation, is this one? The 2 reasons Eo provided in his post are: a) the call to bluri and b) an interview with lavos

The call with bluri being in any way abusive has been thoroughly debunked, there are literally logs of him giving consent to Callous having his number 2 posts above, and people calling their players to get a game done has happened in literally every single team tournament in this site for the last 5 years. I've personally called both Dekzeh and Tiba to get off their asses and play their wcop games before. Literally anyone that has played a team tournament before has seen this happen.

The interview with Lavos might have been more problematic, Lavos has been known to say some very inflammatory stuff before so i initially thought this was the main reason, but i listened to it earlier today and it's insanely mild. Like the worst things Lavos says are that Elodin is a moron and that Smogon leadership is bad. These are 2 mainstream positions held by the community at large. Like get a time machine and ask tournament players if they are satisfied with the direction smogon is going in at any point in time and tell me if the answer is positive. Beyond that, "giving a platform to a banned user" means what exactly? you can't talk to banned users anymore? There's a very common practice in tournaments of having banned users in your chat, and not to throw anyone under the bus here but it's an open secret that last year the bigs were shadowmanaged by Bushtush to give an example, who was at the time indefinitely banned. The official manager of that team was stone cold... who is managing the same team this year. Is this not giving a platform to a banned user? (note: not saying dave shouldn't be allowed to manage at all, just that it's a ridiculous situation to hold having interviewed lavos against Callous, especially since Lavos didn't even say anything outrageous, nor did callous agree to the even mildly spicy takes Lavos had)

Which leads me to believe that either there is a third, real reason why this decision was made or just that it was made by people that have absolutely no clue about tournaments. There is another problem here of accountability, since before BKC whistleblew on this the entire fallout was gonna be on the TDs, which means that either SS mandated that the TDs would get thrown under the bus, or Eo decided that he'd rather the TDs absorb the blow than SS, both of which are problematic for different reasons, but i digress

To get to the point, what i want to know from SS is: What about Callous being a manager is so terrible that SS needed to (in unprecedented fashion!) overrule a decision taken by the TD team
 

peng

fuck xatu
is a Community Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I have no idea why this couldn't just be settled with a post saying "SPL managers shouldn't be trying to contact players by phone number, please keep it to discord / forums in future just for in case". Why is stripping him from manager necessary?

Its a 5 year old situation and the guy who got contacted isn't even bothered himself. I understand wanting to be extra secure on player safety given a handful legit predatory events over the years but this clearly isn't one of those situations. Was callous even asked for his side of the story, or if he would intend on trying to contact irl again? Really doesn't seem like it.

Understand the concerns from site staff but this seems like a disproportionate response.
 
smogon: has a child predator problem

smogon mods: lets prevent the guy who once (5 years ago) texted his (apparently underage) player, albeit with that player's full consent, in order to make sure he played his game from managing this year. that will for sure show our community how seriously we take child abuse and will certainly not spur any negative reactions
 
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