First off, when spamming tab and enter to get through shock's mountain of spoilers, doing it one time too many will hover and select the report function, which is likely the cause of the reports that Sub saw. I know this at least happened to me and dawn.
Now, a lot of people have memed in this thread, but a lot of people have taken it seriously, so I am also going to take it seriously and address the concern of toxicity. When determining whether something is toxic or not, you have to consider the intent. Let's examine the thread.
The title is "RootRanger the NoobRanger". This is humorous just on the face of it. Everybody knows that Root is one of the best players to ever spin the Oracle, so calling him NoobRanger is funny because of how ridiculous and childish it is.
The thread is aimed at RootRanger. Root has always joked around a lot, and he himself has more swagger than most, so you know he'll just roll with it. If it was aimed at someone like majofa, this thread would be a bad idea, but since it's Root, we get a beautiful navy seal copypasta.
The thread was posted by shockcannon. You don't even have to look at the author to know this. Just by reading the title you know it's a shockcannon thread, because he's the only person on the forum who would post something like this. This is because he has established a character for himself. Shock does not legitimately believe that he is a stronger PvPer than Root, even though he will likely respond to this post saying that he does. Shock would get creamed by Root in any trials, everybody knows this. That's what makes it funny.
The intent here is not to start conflict between community members, it's not to brag, nor to belittle anyone, it's not to cause hard feelings or bring negativity into the community. The intent is to create a spark, to excite and entertain. I personally have gotten a lot of entertainment from this thread. There have been some great posts. It's interactions like this between our diverse playerbase that make this forum what it is. We have here such a wide range of people in every characteristic you can think of, and all of these unique personalities come together to form the Elements Community Forums that we know and love. Everybody has something to offer. I think that we as a community should come to appreciate more what people like shockcannon, Manuel, and even CrockettRocket bring to the table. Yes, shock does go overboard sometimes. I myself have gone overboard a couple times with my mafia persona. Yes, Manuel has a very disrespectful tone, but he usually has a valid point he's trying to get across, albeit in an extreme way. We're not all going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
This thread is a great example of what I love most about this forum, but also of how divisive we can be. Over the years I've noticed that we have a tendency to take things more seriously than we really should. I think this is because we've all invested so much of ourselves into this community, and we don't want to see it tarnished in any way. Sometimes, we just need to take a step back and remember what we're all here for.
This is not real. This is a character on a forum. This is a newer player engaging with an older one in the only way they know how. This is the quality content that only shockcannon can provide, and I appreciate that.
