This past weekend, the fifteenth installment of Northeast Championships was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While the tournament went off without too many major hitches, an issue regarding the conduct of one of its attendees quickly made the rounds and sparked discussion on what should be done to make our community events a more welcoming and safe space.
Fortunately, this didn’t sit well with a member of the community named M’Ellis. Instead of shrugging the problem off and adding it to the list of shitty things that have happened in our scene, the Dustloop moderator took action, contacting individuals for their stories, talking to tournament organizers about rectifying problems, and generally refusing to be complacent a day longer.
M’Ellis recently released a lengthy piece about what they’ve experienced over the past few days to provide thoughts on how we, as a group, can correct poor behavior moving forward and become a better community for it. With their permission, we’ve included the piece in its entirety below, with only a few edits made to help readability. Please take the time to read it through because the more widely these issues become known, the quicker we can make steps to correct them.
So over the past few days I’ve been kind of going in on certain community things on Twitter and social media, so I figured I wanted to fully explain how I feel about the situation. This past Northeast Chapionships was an absolute blast and it was great seeing all of my friends who I never get to see, and it was even better meeting people I only knew through online circles. Seriously, it was a blast. But watching two of my friends be negatively affected by an individual’s behavior over the weekend wasn’t great. The fallout especially upset me and prompted me to start questioning why we allow this behavior in our community, and what can I do to help put an end to it.
The biggest thing that stuck out to me was the amount of people I talked to who acknowledged this behavior existed, and also acknowledged how negative it actually is. Almost everybody I talked to had something negative to say or a story to tell, and a few more said they were uncomfortable even being near certain people. Here’s the kicker though: they only said this to me in private, and they shrugged it off as, “Well, these people are just idiots, what are you gonna do about it?” That is absolutely scary. Complacency like this in a community is enabling this bad behavior to continue mostly unchecked, and more and more people are having negative experiences because of it. This leads to the people engaging in this behavior not facing any consequences. What’s worse is that it seems to be a big social faux pas to talk about this. I get the impression I’m creating problems where there are none, that it’s easier to turn the away and try to just ignore it and focus on other things.
Well, you can only ignore it for so long and it’s time we stopped doing that.
So to see what I can do about this, I decided to talk to tournament organizers and influential members of the community. A decent handful brushed me off, as if to say this isn’t a problem, or more specifically this isn’t their problem. They said “nothing can be done until somebody is physically threatened or harmed.”
First off, what an amazing standard we have set ourselves as a community. We need somebody to physically harm somebody to punish them? We have to wait for that to happen? Or if somebody is harassing, bullying, or emotionally harming another it doesn’t warrant any action? Okay, I think it’s time we start changing that.
Secondly, it’s extremely disappointing for this to be viewed as not a problem. The fact my friend was degraded and felt like shit at your event? Eh, not your problem. The fact a member of the community has been repeatedly associated with dangerous behavior in group settings? Eh, not your problem. Somebody has potential to be harmed, bullied, harassed, mistreated at your event? Eh, not your problem.
I think it’s incredibly irresponsible. The community has given the power and responsibility of our experience to the TOs, but some view this as not their problem. The people in position to make a change don’t want to. Whether that’s effort they don’t want to expend, or they don’t want to upset the status quo, whatever. TOs, if you can’t or won’t have this conversation about this, you are failing your community and should reconsider what your responsibility to us actually is.
Other members of the community tell me, “Don’t do this, you’re stepping on toes, you’re making us all look bad, just focus on the good instead.” Yeah, this is probably the least productive thing we could be doing right now. As ideal as that sounds, it doesn’t actually do anything about the problem. Sure people are going to see the good and want to come up, but then they might come out and run into this type of behavior or have a negative experience. People will hear about the bad as well, whether you want them to or not, and them asking, “What did you do about it?” and us responding, “Well, nothing,” is not going to make us look better. In fact, all it does is encourage people to avoid us and label us as a community which harbors these types of things. I don’t want to see another person decide not to come out because they’re worried they could be mistreated. I don’t want to see another person leave because they were mistreated and we didn’t do anything about it.
So this is the problem we’re left with. How do we fix it? First off, people who feel they are mistreated need to be able to speak up and have support for doing so. The social pressure to “just be chill and fit in” is very strong, and I know people don’t want to shake things up or put more of that spotlight on them. For those who have friends or acquaintances who’ve gone through this, help them. Help talk to people, help make it be heard. There are TOs out there who are willing to listen, who are willing to work with you, but they need to know there is a problem or they can’t help.
I also know the feeling of “even if I do say something, nothing will be done.” This is untrue; if we can come together as a community, we can change things for the better. I know some TOs are failing us, but there are those who are willing to listen. And those who refuse to listen, can be made to listen. This is something the entire community needs to come together and discuss and work towards. Together we can help each other out.
This also is not about a single individual. A single individual did spark this entire thing on my end, but in all honesty it is about all of the behavior from multiple people that has contributed to this. It is not a single person causing problems. This isn’t about taking one person down, it’s not about witch hunting, it’s not about vindication. It’s about setting better standards for ourselves and recognizing what the problem really is. It’s about coming together and making something more of this entire thing we are doing. If you want this community to mean something more, to become a wonderful place for everybody involved, we have to work hard and make it through some rough things. But we can do that together.
Yes, I know there will always be bad and we can’t change that. I know no matter how hard we work there will always be problems and the chance of people being hurt. I recognize and accept this. What we can do is stop standing by the sidelines. We can work to prevent this from happening nearly as often, we can work to make it a healthier and safer place.
If you’ve stayed with me this far, thanks. If you want to help, please share this, share the sentiment, start speaking up and contacting your TOs and community leaders. We can help make this better, it’s just going to take some effort.
Images courtesy of Robert Paul
