Yesterday I was playing in a tournament on the accursed Star Wars, wherein I had an awful game with almost no flips, and ended up taking last in a four player group by 500K points. After the bonus counted up, I screamed and obscenity and stomped off to cool down before the next round began.
Later in the day, a woman in my group, a newer player who had only been involved in the tournament scene for about a year, pulled me aside and told me that was the most unsportsmanlike thing she had seen since she started playing, and she wanted me to know that she thought it was awful. And you know what? She was right. I mean, Ive certainly seen more unsportsmanlike things, but it was awful, and I was really glad she called me out for it. I thanked her and apologized and I think we left things on good terms, and it left me with a really important reminded that this is only pinball, and the last thing I want to do is leave a new player with a shitty impression of our community.
I would love to see more incidents handled this way. If you have a problem with someone’s behavior, just talk to them. I realize it is hard, and depending on the personalities involved I know that in many cases its not as easy as it was in this one. However we are also all (mostly) adults, and much of the day to day stuff we’re talking about in this thread could be handled pretty well in this way. Not all of them, if someone is being harassed or targeted personally then the situation is way different, but most of the stuff we’re talking about here is not that type of problem.