I’m not wondering if he has mental issues, I am absolutely certain of it. (I say this while full well admitting I have issues of my own)
At his core, po is subject to a persecution complex. He sees himself as some protector of true fun and growth as a player, hating virtually all bans in a competitive environment. In his story, smogon and smashboards are the forces of evil trying to destroy all variety in their competitive games (actually somewhat true, see their overzeaelous bans of far too many damn stages in Smash 4 and how they treated the Miis; see below for more on that). The problem is a lack of nuance or range in thinking. That is, po thinks he’s the only sane man and the only one with a true appreciation of gaming.
This has been going on for years. When it turned out I was unaware of a few interesting games in the 3DS library, he offered some as good examples of the system’s game variety being wider than it seemed and immediately presumed I was going to attack him for his remarks. Then it branched into an absolute unyielding hatred of whatever characters (except Bayonetta) are top tier at the time, as a manifestation of the idea that every single one of their users is a soulless ‘tier whore’ who only plays for victory at any cost. That somehow, he is the one true guardian of playing out of a love of one’s character. Again, there are tiny shreds of truth here: A shitload of people abandoned sheik once she got nerfed. Tons gave up on sonic once he was toned down. Those are both true. Same with diddy and his stupid hoo-hah combo.
The problem is po refuses to accept that some people are genuine fans of the playstyle or character and used them before their ‘top tier status’ was known, that some continue to use said characters so long as they don’t fall TOO far (Make a character suck enough, and no amount of identifying with them is going to overcome how futile using them is. You move on, any reasonable person would). To him, absolutely nobody bought Final Fantasy 7 back on the PS1 and enjoyed a tale of Cloud, Tifa, and a half-dozen others fighting to save the planet while exploring their psychological issues. Nope, literally every single person playing Cloud just cares about his excellent hitboxes and damage output. Acknowledging any other possibility deals far too much damage to his delusional view of reality. And he desperately needs to be right, or else his stupid little crusade (which I suspect he has been on for a decade or so, just with nouns changing as he shifts from game to game) is all for naught.
It’s a shame. po is intelligent, and his passion for gaming is obvious. He mis-uses it by tearing into absolutely everyone though, because he cannot see past his persecution complex. Frankly, I’ve given up on him. He outright voted for an avowed sexual predator, someone who in less than two months in office brought about a genuine “vhere are yoor paperz?” deportation incident in a university classroom I was in, mid-lecture.
po has mental issues, and they’re ones that rob him of his potential to be a wonderful friend and a great ambassador of the competitive spirit. He reminds me of an old Star Trek episode, where a lost colony is found by the Enterprise and its survivors beamed aboard to be taken back to society… except for the colony’s leader, who opts to stay behind rather than lose his status as a leader. It only takes him a few minutes of wandering the now-vacant community to realize his folly, now trapped forever alone when it is too late to change that. po is just like that guy, and I fear he won’t realize it until he too has been left behind in a vacant community.
Second worst. The worst are the likes of zero and mvd, who pushed to have interesting characters excluded from the roster without any real exploration of how they could be fairly included. Who used their position as ‘elite players’ to bully tournament organizers into bending the rules to suit those whims. po is not as bad as zero and mvd. He is nonetheless bad.
