Rivals is in chaos. Rivals is in chaos. Nobody knows what's going on. Everyone's at each other's throats. Everyone's pissed off. Everyone's mad about every other reason under the sun. Someone needs to bring balance. Necros getting no hate for no reason. Oh, sorry. Right. Necros getting hate for no reason. Um, I wouldn't say it's for no reason, but is it blown out of proportions reasons? Absolutely. The But like the thing is it's unfortunate. Okay, this doesn't really have to do with the support thing. I I I'll speak on that really quick. I feel a little bad for the guy for a few reasons, but the big one is unfortunately uh he's going through uh sudden big streamer syndrome where he doesn't realize when he gets baited into talking about something like that, just like midstream like being like upset about something. um might be used against him later, right? And when you are a 500,000, 2,000, hell, even 3,000 viewer streamer, that [ __ ] doesn't really ever happen. Once you cross that 10k threshold, whether it's on average with drops or not drops or whatever it might be, um or you become like one of the bigger people of a game, that shit's going to come back to bite you in the ass so goddamn fast. not so bad. And so you have to learn that like yeah your your other friends can say that and get away with it cuz there are many of streamers and and many people that probably are looked upon very respected or very respected in the community, right? He's an adult. He can understand this. No, no, no. You What do you mean what consequences? There should there isn't any qu there isn't consequences for being tilted at a video game and just being like I play against these this role. This role sucks. Not today. Like dude, 95% of the people just look at that and they move on with their day, right? But it's it's the narrative has been shifted and also been like amplified, put under a microscoped and hardcore looked at. Like 95% of the time it just you just you just move on with your day, right? No one ever thinks of any actually more than 95 99% of the time it doesn't end up being anything. But like when you become that bigger streamer now, you has to be a little bit careful because that doesn't happen. That doesn't That doesn't happen. Like whether you like it or not, that doesn't happen. It literally doesn't h like I I could I could name you 15 streamers from rivals that I have heard say the exact same sentence, whether serious or joking that quote supports are boosted. And I've never seen any of them dragged into any of it. Never seen any of them. So that's his problem. He's learning it for the first time that now he has to be a little bit more careful and he can't say [ __ ] like that. That's it's not going to fly. Even if he doesn't I don't know if he totally believes it or not. incoming. You got to be a little more careful there. Are you a necroympathizer? Uh, I sympathize with a person who just had a big explosion of growth and now has a lot of eyes on them and said something that was definitely stupid. It definitely wasn't right. Um, but it wasn't like he slurred at someone or or talked about someone's uh identity or or or or tried to like go after someone. He talked about support role like just not like being the least power or sorry using his words he said support is boosted that's wrong that's just stupid is support definitely looked at as the least skillful role by the majority of players absolutely not saying I believe that I think it's stupid people people look at it that way absolutely whenever someone's struggling in a game they always tell them to go play support they always tell them to go play rocket Tell them to go play Mercy in Overwatch four in a row. It's what always happens. Okay. Is it right? Nope. Amazing. Do people still do it anyways? Yep. Does that mean the man should be getting death threats over it? No. That's where I'm just going to sit. I'm going to sit on the other side. No, you're wrong. Like, you're stupid. Genuinely stupid. Birdman jokes about it every single time and nobody seems to care. Double kill. We'll leave that one right where it is. Um the know where's no though. Know where's no regardless though man. Regardless just everyone just needs to take a bit of a breath cuz like the rhetoric is wrong. The way people act like towards like support being like the least or least skillful is also wrong. It's a teambased game man. You win as a team, you lose as a team. That doesn't mean you can't b it about your teammates. I do it every goddamn day. If I get a game and I got some absolute [ __ ] can on DPS, I'm flaming them to my chat or to myself in my head. You can't stop me from flaming someone in my head. You can't do [ __ ] You have no power over my brain. You got nothing. That being said though, that doesn't mean that their role is bad. That doesn't mean every DPS player sucks. Same thing for support. Same thing for tank. You know, you know what tilts me the most? When I play off roll. If I play off and I get a [ __ ] tank player on my team. Oh my god. I'm like this mother is the worst [ __ ] on the planet. Like like I'm I'm judging him so goddamn hard the entire time. Right. Come back here. Probably even unfairly. That's just how it is though. People get people get emotional. People get upset about things. But like at the end of the day though, right? If it actually hits a certain point, you got to learn to disengage and you got to go. Okay, this has become too much, you know. Dive deep. Once you hit the point where everyone goes, tinted goggles, support is very important. And so is peeling for support. Can't have one without the other. Period. Yeah, I mean the back half is true, right? Peeling is so important. Can't have one without the other. Support is very important. That's true. dive DPS in general have rose tinted glasses is not true. I don't know what it is. I have I feel like the state of our world has made everybody so tribal and it's always a thus versus them, right? And it's like dude, these dive DPS players are not an oppressive class of people that are coming for your home, right? like to to describe people constantly in those aspects is so wild. The same thing happens when people dude I you know what's funny if you followed me from Overwatch years ago I said like a year or two ago in Overwatch that I noticed this weird trend happening that people would use the term content creator like a slur. It was weird. Not saying it is right like pump the brakes. I'm just saying like they would use it in a way that it was right like almost like a dehumanizing uh term. It's actually caught on in the last like two years, right? Like you see like movements happening where like streamers ruin games. You see movements where uh influencers ruin things, right? Like trips to Japan, right? Do you know how many influencers probably go to Japan every day every year and they're respectful, they make good content, they talk and they they do really good [ __ ] but you only see the one dumbass who like gets in major trouble and like up for everybody and everyone sees the one major dumbass, right? And it's like that doesn't mean all of them were bad people. One there's one bad person. Then it's what the age of cameras and things being around. It's like yeah, don't get me wrong, it's not just one like I'm just saying in in hyp like hypothetical terms here. It's one person, right? One that sparked the big outrage. And so I it's so interesting to see because there's also the narrative of like creators or influencers or streamers or whoever like hard force their narrative. That's not really how like the internet works though, right? And I'll give you an example. One down. If you make a YouTube video about something, right? Like the only way it goes viral or people want to or watch it is one of three ways. one, it's giant rage bait and like people are there to argue. But the rage bait can't be clickbait because if it's clickbait, right? Like let's say let's say I'm like a very like every video I've ever made is like a news video, right? Like I've always told the truth of like a reliable source and then one day I put an I make an hourong video and I title it aliens come to Earth and then it's just like I don't know a video just looking at a stack of paper, right? There's a good chance, right? Like that people will click on it, watch it for six seconds, go, "Oh, this is just clickbait." and then click off. And the way YouTube or algorithms work is go, "Hm, that video is clickbait. People don't like it. I'm not going to recommend that." And they don't recommend it. The other way that works is where if you make a video that's just wildly against the narrative, like wildly against what everyone else says or whatever everyone else believes, so far so that nobody can agree with it slash like, "Okay, you're absolutely on your own on that one. It won't do well." There has to be a shred of truth. There has to be a shred of relatability, right? I'll give you a good example with that. If you tried to make a video talking about Overwatch 2 years ago saying how good Overwatch is, unless you're in that Overwatch space, nobody was going to watch it and people would wouldn't give a [ __ ] cuz they're just going to go, "You're dumb." But you know what would get a billion views? Talking how bad the game is. Because people are like, "Yeah, I know that's bad. Why do you think it's bad though?" And they want to hear about it, right? There has to be a shred of truth. And so where that applies here is that quote unquote enforced narratives that people are say happens is a reflection of the community because even though in a lot of ways a lot of streamers and stuff like that are extremely privileged people like they get to live the dream, right? That doesn't mean they're nefarious. That doesn't mean they're like out to get you. That doesn't mean they're out to like ruin your ruin your day, ruin your game, right? A lot of times unfortunately one they're just gamers. two, they're sometimes not that bright. Sometimes they'll be really good at the game, but they just might not be that bright socially or might not be that bright with just like reading the room. That doesn't make them bad people, though. That just means them that just means they're kind of a dumbass. You know what I mean? That just that's that doesn't mean they're bad. They're just a dumbass. And so neutralized. It's sad a little bit that in a time where this new game faces its first controversy, which by the way is mostly the ranking system's fault and mostly the shift in meta's fault and also the honeymoon phase is kind of wore out's fault that the first opportunity to maybe be like we should work together towards was a change. Everyone's already turned on each other and it reminds me of other games where this has already happened. Um, and I feel like that's how you lose people really quick. I think that this is probably the most damaging thing so far. Not not just the comments that were made, the reactions to the comments that have been made. I think that the silent majority of people that just watch the Tik Toks, just watch the tweets, just watch the Reddit posts, just watch the YouTube videos, watch all of these things and go, "Whoa, what the happening over there? That's kind of weird. I don't know if I want to I don't know if I want to that doesn't look like too fun anymore. That doesn't kind of looks kind of toxic. Even the anti-toxic people come off as toxic on strangers. I have a few friends that are not in any space as all. They don't really use gaming Twitter or YouTube. They know I exist, but like that's it. And I asked them, I'm like, "Oh, what do you guys think about the rivals thing?" And they're all like, "Huh? What rivals thing?" I'm like, "You don't you don't see the support strike?" Like, that's three. Another one off my list. What's that? They know now, but like as of like two or three days ago, they had no idea. I don't know. I probably that went way more than I wanted to to to. But all in all, I think it's gone way too far. I think it's gone way too far. The issue is though, streamers have an influence and need to be aware of what they say. To my knowledge, this like infamous Necros clip is from season 1 after just like a random rank game, right? It's not like a It's not like he was like making a video or making a statement, right? Like when you stream 12 hours a day, don't get me wrong, not saying it's a good thing. Not saying I should have said that. still think it's stupid, but like probably didn't even cross their mind. Double kill. It didn't have anything to do with this season, you know? Not saying it was a good it was a good statement. I still think it was stupid. It's just like dumb thing to say. It's not true. Doesn't matter how tilted you are. It's not totally like you were He wasn't I don't think in that moment you were trying to use any influence. If anything, it's more like your influence is being used against you, if that makes sense. Thought he was rage bitting. always says that [ __ ] for content. You know, maybe I'm just so out of the loop. Maybe I'm too old at this point, but like I think rage bait is so cringe 95% of the time. I think there can be funny ones. I could probably tell you as the streamer, I probably deal with more rage bait in my in one day than you deal with in a month. And that's nothing like I'm not trying to use that as a flex or anything like that. Like the amount of people come in in my chat every single day try to rage bait. Like if I showed you like what my matches look like every single day. If I made a compilation of every single time I got into a game with no streamer mode in a game and like every single day, at least like five or six times a a day, there's always like someone trying to [ __ ] talk or someone trying to get us something out or whatever. It's just like the new norm. It's it's it shouldn't be, but it kind of is. No, such a nothing burger. They'd just be crying. I mean, I don't think feelings are invalid or anything like that, but there's a there hits a certain point where you're like, "Okay, this shit's just gone too far, man." Are you participating in the support strike? Ah, yes. The support strike. You want to talk about the support strike? All right. I I've been asked this like 95 times the last couple days, but uh two things. One, uh I wanted this video to go up first cuz it was I did this like four or five actually. No, I did this like 5 days ago or 6 days ago. This was before the support strike really had started. This was like the beginnings of the rumblings of it. This is before the Necros clip went mega viral. It's before all the Tik Toks started. Regardless though, I've been asked a bajillion times and unfortunately you guys guys already kind of got a little bit out of me cuz at the start of stream everyone was asking why what do you think about the necros thing? And you know what the thing was really sad was the the the you know I'll show you really quick before we get into anything. I'm going to show you this first. This was really sad. This is really sad. Hey guys, sometimes you find people you disagree with on the internet. That doesn't make it okay to send them death threats. Remember that. Smile. He's getting death threats over the whole thing and it's like at what level has it gone too far? Necro sucks. Dude, I have no problem if you don't like certain people on the internet. Listen, like we're not like friends. We're not like close, right? Not today. Um, but I do empathize a little bit. Not cuz like Yeah, he's a dumbass for like saying like supports are boosted. You already got a little bit out of me, right? I don't even know if this is all going to come in together, but like dude, every role in rivals is important. You win and lose as a team, right? Like, but there are there are stereotypes toward against support, right? I'm not saying it's the way it should be. Um, double. I'm just speaking objectively. Uh, and unfortunately, Necros has fallen now victim to big streamer syndrome where he just came he kind of popped up. Not trying to throw people under the bus, but I know literally I could name 15 streamers right now. Not so fast in rivals that have said the exact same sentence of support players are boosted or saying whatever. Uh I haven't personally because I think it's stupid. I think I know I've played these games for years. I know for a fact that every role is goddamn important. Unfortunat and and people always say things are easy, right? Like oh it's easy. No, no, it's not, right? Like, yeah, objectively it is easier to play rocket support mechanically than it is to play hella. That is not a secret. However, you cannot play that rocket every single game and have [ __ ] positioning and [ __ ] whatever cuz you don't play support and climb, right? You can absolutely flex onto it, right? Like if you get a game where you have three DPS players on your team and you're like, I want to lose this game. I'll flex as support, right? And your other two DPS are actually good DPS players. Yeah, you're going to win those games. You're gonna be like, "Hell yeah, I'm a great support." But if you queued up every single goddamn game on support and you don't actually play support and you actually don't know what you're doing, you're not going to win. You're not going to win a ton. You're going to win, but you won't you're not going to be hard climbing, right? And so like, yeah, of course there's skill. Like any any person with a brain could tell you there's skill there, but that's the point. 90% of the time stuff like that is said is like either tilted and they don't actually mean it or uh they're memeing or baiting, which is a whole other problem with the internet. Like everyone is just baiting 95% of the time. And like this isn't a flex. I get rage baited by people like all day long. I get I see I see a 100 200 500 messages a day that are just bait in my chat trying to bait something or in Midame like in rivals like once like the stars expire and like names actually appear. Do you know how often like people are like specifically trying to run and chase me down every game? Uh trying to clip farm. Uh trying to get a YouTube video, trying to get a Tik Tok, right? Like it happens every day. like they're constantly trying to bait out a reaction out of you. And Necros hasn't learned yet that he's getting baited, whether he's intentionally doing it or not, or he thinks he's doing the baiting, but it's the opposite. Uh he's the one getting baited for content or to kind of make him look bad, right? And it's like, yeah, he's kind of a saying the the sports is boosted thing, but then like then it comes to light that like that's a season one clip. It's not even this season, right? And it's like you could have okay like the season Cloak and Dagger was really strong. You could turn your brain off and pick Clo and Dagger every game and win a lot of games. Nothing against the Clo and Dagger players, but on average the character was auto aiming and it was really strong. You know what I mean? That would be a good example of a time where like ah, you know, you get a lot of value for a little a little little input there. You know what I mean? like not not no flames. It was just so like not saying that's where the clip is from, right? But like regardless though, you could take a moment like that and then put it somewhere else and it gets hard amplified and it goes crazy and it's like it's kind of sad in a lot of ways because a lot of people's complaints in their like the way they've spoken about things is not invalid, right? Like for example, I see a lot of people come back that like say supports are like the most like flamed. People always get mad at them. They're always flaming their supports. That happens to every role, man. And I'm not trying to take that away from you cuz it sucks and it shouldn't happen. But it happens to everyone. Like it really does, you know, and I have empathy for you cuz like that shouldn't happen. But got one. As a tank player who's has a history of playing hero shooters, historically tanks were actually the first to get blamed in Overwatch for a long time. Tank diff. Everyone always loves to say tank diff. It doesn't happen in rivals as much because unfortunately most your games are solo tank. Like you're not going to blame the one guy playing by himself. You're like, "Yeah, he's by himself. It's whatever." Uh, but if this game had say roll Q and it was two tanks, two DPS, two supports every single game, I am going to go out on a limb and say the tank would probably be the one that gets flamed the most. Listen, and I'm not even trying to say like, oh, tank players have it worse. I'm not even trying to say that. I'm just trying to tell you that everyone has the issue. It's just a problem with gaming. And unfortunately, no offense to rivals, okay? I think this is a great game and and and this community has been awesome in a lot of ways, but it's also a melting pot of every other community. And so, you get a lot more toxicity in this game uh than other hero shooter in the room. Uh and and unfortunately, I also hate to bl it to you, there's a very large majority of people that play this game that are former Overwatch players that quit uh because of whatever reasons, right? And a lot of them site toxicity. A lot of these people are the same people who who quit those games for toxicity and then came here and then also be toxic. I can tell you my experience of playing Overwatch the last few last year. It's actually way less toxic these days. It's so much better. And I'm not trying to tell you that as like a oh go play Overwatch. I'm not even trying to say that at all. Right? I'm just saying that as like just a a observation. And so when a lot of people who all liked one thing stop playing that one thing, right, and go to something else that's very similar, of course the communities are going to be very similar. This whole thing has gone way too far. You know, it's gone way too far. It's sad for a lot of reasons, but my my biggest one, my biggest fear for it is not actually uh the comment that was not just the comment that was made. Don't get me wrong, the comment that the comments that are made are not great, but it's the actually the full situation of what's happened because don't forget most players who are playing this game are the silent majority. They're casuals. They don't really interact with like content. They might get a random Tik Tok, right? Like they don't watch streams. They don't watch YouTube videos very often. Maybe the start of a season to see what's new. They probably see the million the tons of Tik Toks and tweets and stuff like that, everyone blowing up over it and they go, "Holy [ __ ] what the hell is happening over there and they see all this quote toxicity and they experience it as well in their own games, not just support players, tank players and DPS players too, and they go, "Wow, this community is kind of off the rails, right?" And it kind of creates this perpetual cycle where here they come. the the narrative right now is to blame Necros specifically, but then there's like a subverse of that which is like streamers in general or content creators in general for that toxicity, but then they amplify it to a much much more aggressive degree. Like let's say their toxicity was on a four out of 10, they crank theirs up to like a seven out of 10, right? and their four out of 10 probably shouldn't have happened. But the seven out of 10 response is is just as bad right to that. And I think that probably scares people away more than anything. I think that that this is the first major crack. And I wouldn't say it's just like one person's fault. It's a lot of people's target. Let's all pull it back to the original point. Target neutralized of the quote supports are boosted, whatever you want to say. uh the people argue that is a narrative that has existed in the hero shooter genre for years and it's stupid and it's wrong and it should be changed about the supports and nerfing. I think that the best thing that could come out of this whole debacle is people learn not only to respect supports but learn to respect every role and every role takes skill and there's people that come out there and say, "Oh, DPS is the most boosted role now uh because the rank system." Technically, you're not wrong because the rank system, but that's the problem with the rank system. Uh, but people will say DPS is the least impactful role. That's not true. Play a game where they're [ __ ] hella kill six every fight and you'll change your mind real quick. People will say uh tank is the least impactful role or the most impactful role regardless. It takes everybody to win. And so my hope going forward from this is we've all learned uh every role is impactful. Every role deserves uh to be supported. Every role deserves to not get flamed every come back here. And maybe this is maybe a bit of an ass. Got one. If you load into your games and you get some on your team who starts hardcore flaming one of your teammates, flame that guy back. Everyone say be like, "No, you're an idiot. Why are you flaming that guy? That guy's fine. Stop being an asshole." Because the only person who ever says anything mech is the person who's actually getting flamed. And then everyone else spectates, right? But if you get into a game and someone's being an [ __ ] to someone on your teammate on your team, why not just be like, "Hey, why are you being an [ __ ] right? Why is nobody nobody says anything? Everyone respect. Everyone's just a watcher now, right? So it's like be the change you want to see." You know what I mean? So it's like when I get a game and someone on my team's getting hard flamed, a lot of times I'm like, "Yo, chill the bro. Like relax, right?" I'll always tell like try to tell them to pump the brakes a little bit. I'll tell him like, "Hey, hey, hey, hey. Even if that guy sucks balls, like even if that guy sucks and he's not good, I'm going to tell you a secret to climbing in in a hero shooter." You want to know the secret? You want to know why I climb higher than you? Even though I'm not the most mechanically gifted player on the planet, it's because I don't tilt my teammates and I let them get tilted more often and I never give up. I'll never give up. Even if I'm tilted out of my goddamn noggin, I'm still trying my ass off. I had some game like three weeks ago where I had some guy just rage baiting me the entire time. After two or three games with this guy, I just started flaming him back. I did not care. I was flaming the absolute out of him for just like 20 minutes straight. But you know what though? I was still locked the in trying my absolute best to win even though they weren't because they had broken at that point and they were like you you [ __ ] talk. They're [ __ ] talking me. I don't care if we win or lose. I literally said throw, [ __ ] Start jumping off the map. Go start doing it. I want to watch. You know what they did? Did they? They didn't. They didn't jump off a single time. You know why? Because I don't care. Like, you want to You want to start throwing your own game? That's on you. I'm not throwing this game. You're still kind of a [ __ ] but I ain't throwing this game. You're throwing this game. And I dig that in mentality into every single game. And I will always try my best to win and help your teammates win because yelling at them and telling them they're [ __ ] and telling them they suck and that they're boosted and all this [ __ ] is never going to get you to win. Being positive to your teammates is a million times better than being negative to your teammates. And if you really really can't help it, if you're really tilted and someone on your team sucks, just just just keep your mic muted. Just don't say [ __ ] That's it. So, round it all off. What do I think about the support strike? I think we've all been a little too mean to each other overall. I think support players have been the butt of everyone else's jokes for a bit too long. Every role is important. stick around. But at the same time though, we got to we got to stop this whole wild narrative thing that's going right now. It's gotten out of hand. Everyone needs to pump the brakes a little bit. Chill out. We can have a good discussion. We can talk about why things are not good without everyone going full tribal. It's not us versus them. We're all in this together. Okay? Accept that new rank system. That shit's got to go. That shit's stupid. Here they come. I don't care if they're adjusting it. Everyone should be getting the same points, win or loss. If you want to have if you want to have performance-based, I'm okay with it. But it should be an extra two, three, four points max. Like if I pop off, instead of getting 25 points a win, give me 29. If I [ __ ] the bed and we lose, instead of losing 25 points, minus 21. I'm okay with that. If you if I'm getting less than half for a game that I swapped, that's dumb. Like that that that shit's just stupid. Like I think we're all we should all be united in that department. Um regardless though, I think it's gone a bit too far. I hope that people will kind of chill it a little bit overall because this game is really good and don't think you should damage what we currently have. And even though a lot of people might think they're on the quote right side with what is going on, you are probably doing damage that you don't realize um and might not see for a long time. So, I'm just going to ask nicely just to pump the brakes and chill out a little bit. If that means like not playing until the the next patch when they change support stuff and because like there's a patch apparently coming, do that. Okay, do what you got to do, right? But just pump the brakes a little bit. But is there a right side? That's a great question. No, because all of this is perception anyways. And the perception for a long time was that support is the quote unquote least impact or sorry the least respected slash least difficult easiest one on the team. In reality though it's not everyone's important. My my whole take on the entire thing chill out. That's all. It's not wrong. Like they're they're not even wrong. But like the point's been made. I think everyone needs to like let off the gas a little bit and see if these changes end up being good. these changes don't end up being good. Okay, I'll be the first person. I you know, I'll I'll make you a promise. If these changes still suck that are coming, I'll be the first person in line that goes, "These changes suck." Especially for supports. I'll do that for you. Sound good?