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The original was posted on /r/starcraft by /u/BloomisBloomis on 2024-09-07 00:15:03+00:00.

I live my life in the 3K - 3.2K MMR range, and aside from the occasional outlier, everybody I play is within 200 MMR of me. When I win (which of course, I do roughly 50% of the time), it never occurs to me to gloat about how much better I am, because the little voice inside my head just points out that no, I’m NOT way better than that guy. I’m very evenly matched. That’s why the server put us together. So I’m not a smack talker.

But on a philosophical level, should anybody be a smack talker in the MMR-based match system? Aren’t they all in the same boat as me? Whoever you just stomped, don’t you have to figure that your skillset is basically just as flawed as theirs? Like maybe you hit them early, and they were bad at defending your 6 minute push. Sure, you could type “ez”, but there’s some reason that you aren’t 1000 MMR ahead of them. Maybe their macro is just way better than yours. Maybe they can handle tier 3 units in a way that has always eluded you. Maybe it’s something else entirely, but no matter what, it’s SOMETHING. There’s some facet of the game where they make you look as silly as you just made them look. Your MMR quantifies the total package of your quality as a player, and it’s basically the same as that guy’s. If he’s shit at Starcraft, then so are you.

As far as I can tell, there’s really only two reasons* that you can match with somebody who is actually much worse at the game than you. Either you just learned something new that you are putting into practice this week, or you’re smurfing. Those are two scenarios in which you should not be running your mouth. Whether it’s “omg you suck as bad as I did three days ago” or “actual competition hurts my feelings so bad that my tiny peen and I sandbagged our way down to your level”, there’s little to nothing for you to be proud of in this story.

The one that always makes me scratch my head is when they call you a noob. It’s a truly brainless insult under the best of circumstances, because there’s nothing wrong with being new to a game, but if your opponent is new to this game, and has yet to learn much or maybe anything about how to play properly, and they’ve got functionally the same MMR as you … delete your account, bro.

Anyway, am I missing something here?

* SERRAL CAVEAT: If you’re reading this, go ahead and talk shit. The server matched you with somebody way worse than you because that is all that exists.