You could be right! I've just come across a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot of people who sure did think they were better than everyone else for liking vidya game numbers more than others. And you only need to spend about 90 seconds with any group of WoW players who treat that game that way to uncover a social environment as disgustingly bigoted as anything you'd find on 4chan. And those guys sure didn't hesitate to utilize slurs of all varieties when putting down anyone and everyone who dared to care even a little bit about anything other than what the 3rd party website that ranked them said about how big their numbies were, at every available opportunity.

"Hardcore" Pokemon players could be different, I dunno. And I'm certain it's not a 1-to-1

I know I shouldn't generalize, it's not a thing I appreciate when others do. I just have a built-in bias because the most vile words I have ever heard another human speak came from number-centric WoW players who thought you were a lesser human being if you didn't care about your numerical parses as much as they did theirs; it is a type of person I struggled with for more than a decade, during which time I never met a single group of "hardcore" players who, as a whole, managed to avoid this type of behavior. (And many of the people who started out as players of the game exhibiting this behavior, are now high-ranking members of the company.)

Okay fine but even then it’s nowhere near the edgelord cesspool it once was.

but maybe I'm a lib for that as it would probably just be performative

True but we also don't want kids to unknowingly repeat Nazi dogwhistles. Maybe that's why Smogon gets zero attention in official spaces, turns out Nintendo doesn't want anything to do with a community whose name is a reference to gas chambers. I'm just mind-boggled that people don't see this as that big of an issue.

"Yes my community is called SS88 but we are different and mature now and getting more popular than ever"

Yeah that sounds reasonable to me. There’s of course going to be heavy backlash from people who have grown attached to it but enough people will get over it.

Because it is peak white liberal performative nonsense to change the name. It's exactly what every white city dwelling liberal does when they find out something has a dark past, they change the offensive part (or do an overreaction, an example could be made for the prime directive in star trek) then pretend everything is still all hunky dory while doing effectively nothing material.

Maybe I've just had too many encounters with liberals who just never really cared at all to begin with to say that.

I know people who are friends with the guy who runs it and he's cool from everything I've heard

Digimon

Yeah I support our troops, V-Pet troops.

MEDABOO-O-O-O-O-O-TS

SICK DNB

"go getcha friends"

ITS TIME TO BATTLE

ROBATTLE

TO THE TOP!