EPT
I'm writing this because I believe that I do owe everyone in the community some sort of an apology. I would like to apologize for the following things.
1) Apology regarding my poor choice of words in my description of Brood War
2) Apology to everyone in the community for creating such a drama
3) Apology to everyone who had ever supported me for whatever reason
4) Apology because I am going to be selfish.
First, let me apologize to the e-Sports community as a whole. I did not intend to imply that such games did not meet the ideal that is e-Sports, that is, a pure form of competitive gaming made up of passion and hard work of thousands of gamers, staff, and the community. I apologize for those remarks, and frankly, I wish I had chosen my words quite a bit better, and as some people have pointed it out, I should have used "spectator sport" as a replacement. I do apologize for my terrible misuse of the word, and the confusion it has caused and causing many of you to respond to such nonsense. I specifically would like to apologize to djwheat and Slasher specifically.
One thing I'd like to clear up is that I didn't write the original reddit post to try and piss anyone off. I know that there exists a comment on IRC from the TL Staff Channel that suggests otherwise but if the person had read the comments that came afterwards they'd have realized I made the comment simply because of what had happened (IE: My poor choice of words created a lot of backlash) not because I stirred something up on purpose. That's one thing that I really want to clear that specifically.
Secondly, I would like to apologize to the community for creating such a drama. This is something that I can't really say "I did not intend to do", because frankly when I get that emotional I have no idea what I'm trying to accomplish nor what I even want. It's a flaw that I always had, something that I have struggled in the past, not just within this community, but in others too. In addition I would like to specifically apologize to Hot_Bid and Kennigit who put up with quite a bit of my shit over the time I've been at TeamLiquid. They're pretty amazing people. I'd also like to apologize to Lee and Adam from MLG for putting up with my bullshit in the nicest way possible. You guys are really awesome, and you guys honestly deserve someone better.
Thirdly, I'd like to apologize to anyone who ever supported me. I want to say thank you, but at this point, I feel bad enough that I don't think I can even say that.
I've been meaning to leave the community for a long time now. I've talked with a few people prior to MLG Orlando and they knew that MLG Orlando would be my last event. I'm sure this had affected quite a bit of how I did during the event, so I'd also like to specifically apologize to the MLG staff in addition.
There are two reasons why I had decided to stop. One is that, throughout all of these events, I've seen al ot of negative things come out of me and slowly overtaken me. I remember someone tweeted me saying that I was turning a bit more negative about a month and a half ago. I started to get quite whiny and I'm sorry that everyone had to put up with that. There are quite a number of other bad traits that I've noticed out of myself during the events, and I personally felt as if that I needed to improve quite a bit as a person before I could ever consider doing something like this again. I'm not the best person in the world. I've always been quite negative, and I'm sure everyone noticed that I'm definitely not confident in myself. Hot_Bid jokingly calls a lot of the things I say "humble brags" but that's something I never noticed until he repeatedly called me out on it. Same with all of these things you guys labelled as "attention seeking behavior" -- I'm finally willing to admit that you guys are probably right regarding that and I just simply do not realize it. In the end, I'm not a mentally healthy enough person to handle things like this in the long run, and I recognized that. This is why I responded in the the way I had done, I think I was just looking for an exit at this point.
I think this is why I let all the negative backlash get to me. At least I believe that I've done quite a bit of service to the community, and so when people started attacking me and my contributions even as a simple backlash to my poorly written article, I got quite frustrated.
While it was demotivating, I was wrong to be demotivated. After all, the only reason I joined the scene was because I believe there was a lot of content out there that I thought the foreign community could enjoy. I was being quite petty, because I was ignoring all the people who did appreciate what I did and essentially catering to the vocal minority.
And so, I apologize.
And to everyone who sent me PMs on TeamLiquid, or left really awesome advice on my emo-drama-queen blog -- thank you very much. I really appreciated your kind words and the wise advice many of you guys have given. I especially want to thank Tyler for his posts in the thread.
Lastly, I'd like to apologize, because I'm going to be very selfish. I haven't explained to you my second reason, and that reason is that I had decided I was going to concentrate more on what I currently do in academia. There's an asian idiom that goes something like "You can't chase after two rabbits at once". The point is that e-Sports is something that is extremely distracting, at least at the level that I have took it in. There is no way I can handle both at once and make a real difference in either. Sadly, while there are a lot of things I'd like to do in e-Sports, there's a lot more I'd like to accomplish in terms of academic research (surely, of course, quite a bit of my research will be e-Sports related).
I'm also being selfish because I'd like to concentrate on myself for the first time in my life. You know those people who always lack the self confidence to ever properly take care of themselves? I'm one of those people. I've always been attracted to online communities and finding ways to help out these communities, but given my personality flaws, it's something that I know that it is not sustainable. I want to take the time to concentrate on myself and improving myself so that if I ever do come back to a group setting, I'd be able to contribute without being a pain in the ass (just ask Hot_Bid).
Once again, I'm sorry. I want to thank every single one of you, even those who may have disapproved of me. Given the amount of bullshit this has caused, I'll make sure to have learned something from it so that it wasn't a complete waste of your time.
Thank you.
PS: A major apology to the banlings. Holy crap, those are a lot of reports D:
