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By Steven Asarch
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The Super Smash Bros. community has always been torn when a new game releases. Melee purists believe that their game is the ultimate FGC experience, while players of the newer games, like Smash 4 and Ultimate feel that they are just as competitive. As long as there have been sequels, there have been Smash Bros . fan boys that say the players of the other game just aren't as "hardcore" or "talented."
On Saturday, a couple of top Smash players started to feud on Twitter over Melee being a part of the overall Smash community. Team Liquid's Saleem "Salem" Akiel Young, known best for performing well in Smash 4 tournaments with Bayonetta, called out Melee pro and Team SoloMid star William "Leffen" Peter Hjelte on Twitter. Leffen placed Solid Snake in the bottom bracket of his tier list, angering Salem who believed the character to be top tier. MVD, a player for organization Panda Global, had won the first SSBU Majors event with Snake, which was enough reason for the character to be high tier.
The pair went back and forth for a few hours, insulting each other on the public forum. " Melee players only know Melee and not other smash games," Salem said. "This is the most pathetic thing I've ever read," Leffen clapped back. "Average high level player who gets carried to a few wins by bayo thinks he can talk about skill in other smash games (crying laughing emoji)."
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The drama continued to spread and Salem accidentally created a community meme. "Melee isn't part of the actual smash community and I'm not saying that because I don't like them. I'm saying that based off of years of research," Salem said in a tweet. This confusing and debatable statement was quickly picked up by the community and memed about all over Twitter.
In response to the community turning him into a laughing stock, Salem released a Twitlonger on Christmas Eve. Titled "Years of Research", the Twitlonger goes into detail about how Salem feels that the Melee community has always looked down upon other titles in the series. He believes that a rift created by "toxic streamers" and their communities has been slowly ripping the scene apart ever since Melee fans managed to collect a prize pool themselves for EVO 2013. He claims that the Melee world wants Nintendo support, but doesn't want other Smash games to receive the same love.
Salem than goes after Leffen, going after the player's toxic past. Leffen has been known to trash talk and was banned from all Swedish events in 2013. "Though people ridicule him for these types of things here and there he always gets back to it because nobody actually cares what he does since he's a top Melee player," Salem wrote. He then pivots over to Joseph Manuel "Mang0" Marquez, Cloud9's top Melee pro, who he said was "someone who constantly drinks and does whatever he wants and doesn't care about anything." Mang0, who had not been a part of any of this controversy, did not seem happy with the call out.
The Smash community has not been happy with Salem's response. The original tweet has over 1,000 replies, discussing how the streamers, players and events for all games have helped the Smash community evolve and grow. YouTuber and Smash event organizer Sky Williams, went in on Salem hard saying "I should not have clicked this." In over a dozen tweets, Williams points out that Salem is "hurting" but his attempt to "invalidate some of the best forefathers of Melee " has only brought more members of the community together.
Melee players have also been responding to Salem's claims. Weston "Westballz" Dennis tweeted that the top Melee player is going to train "and beat the research and ignorance outta salem." Adam "Armada" Lindgren tweeted that this was the "dumbest tweet of the year."
Whether you play Ultimate, Melee or Brawl, you are still part of the Smash community.
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