SPL XII - Commencement Thread

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McMeghan

Dreamcatcher
is a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis the 5th Smogon Classic Winneris the Smogon Tour Season 14 Championis a defending SPL Championis a Past SPL Champion
Big Chungus Winner
I'm not gonna spend time on the bluri logs and Lavos interview because those have been discussed in details already, and Luigi made a great summary of the situation especially with his background as a TD.

I will just add that Callous should stop being slandered for his SPL ragequit that happened now close to three years ago. I was probably his closest teammate at the time and I've long burried that hatchet, just stop trying to bring the past to people who've recognized their wrong and apologized. Especially when the wronged parties have accepted it and moved on.

As already mentionned here, and anyone who's been around the tour scene knows, the other managers aren't faultless either (to nobody's surprise because nobody's perfect). I'm sure Callous and Jabba were originally picked for their achievements and contributions, and now it feels like they got removed for some kind of personal agenda when you could find similar reasons to demote people in place or remove other managers if you wanted to.

Anyway, I'd rather have someone like Callous who's done so much for the community even if he had his flaws here and there. Funnily enough, I strongly disagree with Laurel's post but I really think this is the actual reasonning behind the SS push over Callous's removal. We're so concerned with public image nowadays that anything slightly outside of the norm gets buzzwords attached to it and paint you as some kind of unsavory nutjob. Lol @ "Callous was an adult and knew what he was doing", yeah because I'm sure everyone is a saint who stops doing mistakes as soon as they blow their 18th candle (that goes way beyond the Smogon realm by the way). Get a fuckin grip.

Callous has shown to care more about the actual competitive Pokemon scene and has supported it personally way more than 90% of this website.

Anyway, I'm just rehashing words already uttered by other people at this point, but I wanted to speak on the issue if only as someone who was close to him during that infamous SPL of his.
 

gorgie

formerly Floppy, now Rock hard
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...
haha you're actually being serious. that's wild
 
give tigers to TPP and FlamingVictini, they're both cute and competent users :puff:

Aside from last snake, flamingvictini did well in every team tours he has been in + he won ost and made 1 or 2 classic playoffs so he's good in both cg OU and most old gens. TPP was a fantastic presence in snake for us and he did well getting some nice wins + he was very good at scouting, and he's competent in cg OU.

Give flamingvictini a second chance :heart:
 
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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...
That's intentionally missing the point there, holmes.
 
the wording of these decisions is ridiculous and chosen in such a way to distort what actually happened and make it reflect very badly on callous. hunted down a players phone number??? multiple ppl have debunked that in this thread lol. i also contacted players outside of smogon/discord (with their consent of course) and there was never a single issue with it.

ss seriously needs to rethink where they stand on these issues because this opens up a really ugly can of worms. callous did not dox nor harass bluri but contacted him WITH his consent.

"platforming a banned user". yeah we seriously gotta talk about this one LOL. im not sure how discussing pokemon with lavos reflects on callous or how it has anything to do with the latter's bigoted view. where is the line drawn???? what's allowed in regards to interacting with banned users? how about spl/snake teams that allowed lavos (and other banned users) into their team chats??

seriously this decision has absolutely 0 thought behind it. its a joke that the td's wrote "new information came to light". you guys knew about this and only reacted because of public backlash.

callous should get back his manager spot and ss should answer everyone's questions in the thread as well as explain exactly what is and isn't allowed in terms of interacting with banned users, how it relates to smogons public image etc etc. we need more transparency
 

M Dragon

The north wind
is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis the Smogon Tour Season 17 Championis a defending World Cup of Pokemon Championis a Past SPL Champion
World Defender
First of all, I can totally understand why atomicllamas or MajorBowman were annoyed with the original decision, since Callous did cancer for them in SPL 9 and now he was selected to manage instead of them, that have been in the tigers for a long timer.
However, I am 100% sure that the TD team has discussed about this a lot and they have decided that Callous managing Tigers with Jabba was the best decision for the tournament.
If the TDs had decided against giving Callous I am sure that nothing would have happened, because everybody understand that there some new great manager sign ups competing against returning managers in every team.
However the issue was that the TDs made a decision (which you might like or not, again I 100% understand why llamas or bowman were annoyed) and was reverted 3 hours later at 5 AM euro time:
a) when most TDs were sleeping
b) giving 2 bs reasons nobody really believes. The "hunting down" has already been proven false, and making a video with Lavos where they only talk about pokemon is one of the most ridiculous reasons to revoke someone's managerial slot I have ever heard

Therefore the obvious conclusion to this is that it wasn't the TD team who decided this, it was the SS team, and that is very dangerous for the future of tournaments in this site, since it completely invalidates the TD team, who are supposed to run the tournaments, as explained by Eternal Spirit and Luigi in their great posts (and I am not going to repeat their points), and this is the biggest issue here: we have a group of people where most people don't even play tournaments making decisions that affect a big tournament such as SPL while invalidating a decision made by people that are involved and run the tournaments in this site.

Edit: Also s/o to Energy for one of the worst posts in the history of Smogon. Making those serious false accusations to someone without having no idea about what happened is for sure the one of the dumbest thing I have ever seen in this subforum. This post only shows the kind of person you are. Gl irl you will need it if you behave like that.
 
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Making this decision on the basis of an off-site incident that was not even an incident, which other managers have admittedly done in larger, on-site tournaments as well as an innocuous call with Lavos is farcical.

Just like my adv friends Linear and UD, I will not be participating in future tournaments on this site. (Ironically that leaves me with Pokemon Perfect, which is run excellently by Callous himself)
 
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...
Dig your nose deeper in the mod's asscrack. You might get picked this time lmao
 
CALLOUS11/20/2020
It was my first year managing POCL and our BWer was Bluri, a talented player with a history of behavioral issues and quitting/returning to the game over and over again.

Things started out well enough. He won his first two or three matches but then he started getting complacent and whipping up teams five minutes before the match and charging in and indeed he started losing. By week 5 he’d quit the team and left the chat.

So we make playoffs without him and he reappears and messages me during the end of the final week and asks to play again. I’m very hesitant and skeptical. I tell him if I play him he has to be absolutely 100% sure he’ll play and promise me and we won’t have a sub, so he’ll really be screwing us if he bails. He promises me he’ll play and is motivated. I submit the lineup with him in it.

Three days later, he’s gone. Well let me tell you... I started messaging every single user I could find, including those I’d never even spoken with before, asking if they knew how to contact him outside of the game. Eventually, Melle gives me his phone number.

So, from the US to Germany, I call him via WhatsApp. He picks up the phone. I tell him the following- “Hi, this is CALLOUS, your POCL manager. I just wanted to let you know that if you don’t put down FIFA and get your ass back here and play your playoff match I will swim to Germany and I will fucking kill you”. And then I hung up.

He returned and played his match and we went on to win the tournament wink

This is what callous said so, are we all gonna act like callous never said to a minor(?) that if he doesnt play his game he will go to Germany and kill him and did right after hung up phone ? It speaks for itself but it could have some real consequence lol on any person, even if he's minor or not it remains a serious violation of law , the doxx reason is obviously stupid cause bluri did accept but he never thought that a 30yo man will menace him , the lavos reason is also useless and i dont even take it as a argument, although SS had to make this decision they manage a site with thousand of minor they cant stand without doing anything when they see someone that impulsive manage the most prestigious tournament of this site , they never impacted TDs choice but if they did it now its for a serious reason ,nothing at all against callous but u cant give management to someone that impulsive.
The argument of people changing doesnt works for his case, especially when callous said before manager reveal that he lose sleep over pokemon, that he is being snappy with his wife cause of pokemon add to that this quote of him Yesterday
"You guys know how devoted I get with these things. I'd do the auction at my mother's funeral and use her casket as the table for my phone if need be. I will make it happen on my end. But I definitely strongly prefer a Sunday if at all possible. I can do any time at all on a Sunday." it shows for sure how much he is motivated but its also shows that he is ready to do whatever (^threatening someone), Note that this was for POCL so i will let u imagine what it will be for a stressfull tour like SPL.
 
This is just disgraceful. If someone as high-profile and dedicated as Callous can have something like this taken from them so easily, who's to say that the SS won't try to ruin somebody else or start targeting other users under false pretenses because they don't like them? It's a terrifying thought, and something that nobody deserves.

While I don't have any stake in this particular tour, I love this site and most of the people I've met on it, and it's a damn shame that something like this is happening. This needs to be fixed now, unless we want this sort of thing to become commonplace. Remember that this could happen to YOUR lot tomorrow.

tl;dr free callous, the decision was stupid and sets a horrible precedent
 

Vulpix03

is a Tiering Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnus
RUPL Champion
CALLOUS11/20/2020
It was my first year managing POCL and our BWer was Bluri, a talented player with a history of behavioral issues and quitting/returning to the game over and over again.

Things started out well enough. He won his first two or three matches but then he started getting complacent and whipping up teams five minutes before the match and charging in and indeed he started losing. By week 5 he’d quit the team and left the chat.

So we make playoffs without him and he reappears and messages me during the end of the final week and asks to play again. I’m very hesitant and skeptical. I tell him if I play him he has to be absolutely 100% sure he’ll play and promise me and we won’t have a sub, so he’ll really be screwing us if he bails. He promises me he’ll play and is motivated. I submit the lineup with him in it.

Three days later, he’s gone. Well let me tell you... I started messaging every single user I could find, including those I’d never even spoken with before, asking if they knew how to contact him outside of the game. Eventually, Melle gives me his phone number.

So, from the US to Germany, I call him via WhatsApp. He picks up the phone. I tell him the following- “Hi, this is CALLOUS, your POCL manager. I just wanted to let you know that if you don’t put down FIFA and get your ass back here and play your playoff match I will swim to Germany and I will fucking kill you”. And then I hung up.

He returned and played his match and we went on to win the tournament wink

This is what callous said so, are we all gonna act like callous never said to a minor(?) that if he doesnt play his game he will go to Germany and kill him and did right after hung up phone ? It speaks for itself but it could have some real consequence lol on any person, even if he's minor or not it remains a serious violation of law , the doxx reason is obviously stupid cause bluri did accept but he never thought that a 30yo man will menace him , the lavos reason is also useless and i dont even take it as a argument, although SS had to make this decision they manage a site with thousand of minor they cant stand without doing anything when they see someone that impulsive manage the most prestigious tournament of this site , they never impacted TDs choice but if they did it now its for a serious reason ,nothing at all against callous but u cant give management to someone that impulsive.
The argument of people changing doesnt works for his case, especially when callous said before manager reveal that he lose sleep over pokemon, that he is being snappy with his wife cause of pokemon add to that this quote of him Yesterday
"You guys know how devoted I get with these things. I'd do the auction at my mother's funeral and use her casket as the table for my phone if need be. I will make it happen on my end. But I definitely strongly prefer a Sunday if at all possible. I can do any time at all on a Sunday." it shows for sure how much he is motivated but its also shows that he is ready to do whatever (^threatening someone), Note that this was for POCL so i will let u imagine what it will be for a stressfull tour like SPL.
You clearly don't understand the situation or the context of this story (it's an exaggerated story). Pls refrain from discussing something you don't know shit about.
 
you can argue whether callous deserves the spot or not (im not really as big of a fan of him as others wrt the lavos stuff so im not gonna speak much on that end), the most pressing factor here is that the way ss handled this is absolute horseshit. the decision to overturn this within like an hour of managers being posted seems sus as fuck. most tds weren't even around at the time, bkc literally had gone to bed like not that long after the managers were publicly announced and a good number of others presumably weren't online given european etc. could this not have waited for like, half a day? not only to get input from other tds who werent around on the situation but to actually see the full details wrt the phone story were true before coming to a conclusion? what gives this situation some sort of immediate urgency given the auction is like, 3 weeks from now minimum?

transparency among site staff has been an issue for god knows how long now and this thing is especially bad considering that they basically fucked the td team over without any real discussion amongst them. like do we even know who decided on this? the main thing im getting from the management of this is that ss still has an intention of just doing things in secrecy. regardless of whether the td team made a mistake giving callous the manager spot, why even bother having them in the first place if ss is just going to intervene rashly in the way they did?

e: this is not an endorsement for callous ftr
 
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You clearly don't understand the situation or the context of this story (it's an exaggerated story). Pls refrain from discussing something you don't know shit about.
Having context or not calling someone that left the team and didnt gave feedback and telling him that u will kill him and hung up right after will for sure having consequence on this person so ye next time refrain from talking if u wanna defend someone that is not mentally healthy
 
Having context or not calling someone that left the team and didnt gave feedback and telling him that u will kill him and hung up right after will for sure having consequence on this person so ye next time refrain from talking if u wanna defend someone that is not mentally healthy
My dear 2-post account friend, before you tell us how to, or how not to run our tours why don't you hop onto your main alt and take all the accountability that comes with it.
 

Iguana

formerly mc56556
I'm glad to see the sentiments in this thread cover a lot of what I'm also thinking/feeling between last night and now. I write this post with a sense of solemnity; ordinarily, in a situation concerning a user tracking down and utilizing personal information of another Smogon user against their wishes, I would very much support a Smogon/PS auth decision to act and to disqualify that user from a position (or perhaps do more, if the circumstances warranted it). However, this does not seem to be the case here.

Firstly, what I'd like to say is this is not going to be some dumb "free so-and-so" crusade with little evidence and mostly for the meme appeal. I hope to discuss some of the evidence publicly leveled against Callous to disqualify him in this decision.

The evidence coming to light that can be seen above in the logs is pretty convincing in favor of Callous' vindication. At face value, a user obtaining personal information of another user without their consent and for the purpose of threatening them to play their tournament match is really bad. But, this has been debunked. Read the logs above. Callous was able to contact this user with their consent, and issued no concerning threats to them. As other users have mentioned in this thread, this isn't even irregular. Luigi and august both explicitly said that they've called users on their teams before as managers. Will they forever lose out on opportunities to manage future tours? And how will it be explained that they were able to manage tours in the past subsequent to their calling teammates? The inequality of applying this ruling against Callous and not others is highly questionable and likely will spark many debates in the future should this stand as is.

The Lavos interview is concerning, no doubt about it. But how concerning is it? I listened to the interview at the time (though somewhat reluctantly considering the interviewee), having fairly recently joined the Discord that Callous and others run. Callous didn't give Lavos free reign to use hate speech or to express his intolerance. If I recall correctly (and it's been a little while since I've heard it, so please forgive me if I've forgotten something egregious), the worst things that happened in the interview were Lavos espressing his dislike for Elodin, a user he did target before he was banned, and calling Smogon auths idiots. Yes, neither of those things is great quite obviously. But how does this reflect back on Callous? Callous has a YouTube channel in which he narrates high-level games, auctions, and occasionally speaks with other players. I of course get the desire here to protect PS and Smogon users; if someone were to encourage a banned user they're interviewing to reveal and discuss someone's doxx, that would be reprehensible and probably ban-worthy. But nothing like this happened in that interview. It was genuinely to get Lavos' take on a variety of confined subjects, particularly regarding competitive Pokémon. Callous even questioned Lavos about his behavior in the past. It's not as though Lavos got a free pass there to espouse alarming views.

Furthermore, and this gets right into my next point, the interview was publicly known and available. One of the things that's troubled me a lot between when this decision came down last night and now is that all this information to disqualify Callous was public. Many people knew about the Lavos interview, and also about this story regarding Callous reaching out to one of his players in the past. Anyone could have reached out to him and asked about this, and he'd have told them the story and the truth. This wasn't some coverup; Callous didn't hide the Lavos interview or this story, and in fact, I believe both are still publicly available in the Discord that he and others run. But here's my point about all this: Why weren't these pieces of information used to disqualify Callous initially? Moreover, why are they only being leveled against him now?

Where does this stop? Will a future SPL manager that contacted a player years ago through another communication medium to get them to play a tournament match be disqualified, given the Callous precedent? I don't particularly condone that, but how far will attempts to disqualify a manager extend? What actually concerns me as a precedent-setter even more is the potential for outside interference. Senior Staff pressured the TD team--or, more importantly, what was left of the still-awake TD Team last night, which didn't include many people--to disqualify Callous. Considering this sequence of events, is not the conclusion that the TD team couldn't make this decision and had to be pressured in order to do so? It's hard for me to think of a more concerning situation to the integrity of this tour than to have even a very qualified team of moderators that governs Smogon like Senior Staff compel the TD team to disqualify Callous. Where is the independent ability to govern their most important tournament and to make decisions that are best for it? Will managerial selections for the big Smogon tours have to be run through Senior Staff now? I have a lot of confidence in the TD team, and to see the way in which this decision was taken out of their hands concerns me immensely.

To recap:

-The calls to Bluri were not abusive and the way by which Callous obtained their number was with Bluri's consent.

-The interview with Lavos may not have been ideal given his concerning history, but it is questionable at best to use such an interview that was not aimed at spreading malice to disqualify Callous.

-The information used to disqualify Callous was publicly known and available. To level it against Callous after his managerial selection suggests acquiescing to public pressure by some and not an oversight.

-This decision sets a concerning precedent for outside interference to force the TD team's hand. The TD team is very qualified and fully capable of making decisions that are in the best interest of Smogon and PS tournaments.

The TD team decided that Callous was qualified for this manager position and awarded it to him over other candidates. It should take entirely damning evidence against Callous to overturn this, and I personally believe this is not the case here. I am calling on whoever is responsible for this decision (normally, I'd charge this to the TD team given that this is the most important Smogon tournament of the year, but it seems outside forces are playing a significant role here) to overturn this and to reinstate Callous + Jabba as the managing team of the Circus Maximus Tigers.
 
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