As much a people will try and correct everyone that uses it in this way and enforce that the word ‘scrub’ is in fact a mindset, a mentality for players who impose artificial limits on their playstlye. It still doesn’t take away from the fact that ‘scrub’ as a skill level insult is used by *everyone *in the FG community, from top players to random stream monsters. I have heard pretty much every top player use the word scrub to describe just any kind of crappy play, mashing or random DPs etc. It’s pretty rare to hear the other usage of someone having a restrictive mindset, at best I’d say 10%.
I understand that people don’t want or like their scene to be associated with straight up insults on a player’s skill, especially a scene that’s trying so hard to grow. But, it is what it is. Barking at people that it means something different and considerably less insulting doesn’t really make it so. The people have spoken as it were.
Hell being called a scrub is basically what drives me to get better at fighting games. Also now the older meaning of scrub is now pretty much what “salty” is today.
Let me try taking a shot at this subject:
When you are playing a game you are playing to win by definition. It’s impossible to be “playing to lose”. Even if you plug in fucking Super Mario Brothers and try “playing to lose” by tackling a goomba on purpose to kill off Mario, you are just playing to win in a different set of rules. (With your new goal being “to kill Mario” which you are clearly getting at=Winning.)
There are no “competitive players” as there are no “casual players”. Everyone is a “competitive player” because you are always playing to win.
There are just better players and worse players, and there are just players who enjoy the games more and players who enjoy them less.
You get better at the game and invest time in it because you enjoy it more, and you are skilled enough to do it.
You don’t do it because you suck and/or you don’t enjoy the game.
People don’t like being in situations which are impossible to overcome for them.
Put a bad player (who cannot improve) against a really good player, and he will get mad and proceed to slander everything and everyone but himself. “You have no life”, "you play this 24/7 ", something about girls and getting laid, yada yada.
But put a good player (who can improve) against a really good player, and he will have the time of his life using all his strength to overcome the challenge. (All while the really good player is getting bored and would rather spare with a player that’s even better than him.)
