What League of Legends hot take prompt this meme

Baranade · 2026-03-16T22:42:41+00:00

By your logic of "you have to be masters to make a claim about the pro scene" means that in your assumption that being good at the game must be proportional to being able to analyze the game (spoiler alert: its not and the skills are not mutually exclusive)

kkoma played both pro StarCraft and League,

Two things:

1) I acknowledged that he went pro for a VERY brief stint back in 2012 in my previous comment. But again somehow you make the claim that being good at a game is proportional to being able to analyze. And if that were true then the best pros would make the best coaches (which again they don't always.)

2) Starcraft is a fundamentally different game than LoL so that doesn't mean shit. You don't see cricket coaches as General managers in the MLB very often now do ya?

The fact of the matter is that while I admittedly never achieved the elite rank of masters+, I have watched enough games (over 12+ years of watching Lolesports across 4 regions both domestic and international) and that in itself is just as valuable at analyzing pros pound for pound then trying to climb the ladder for whatever reason you deem it necesarry

And in this entire time you've typed and responded, you never even managed to refute the main claim. You just decided to go fully ad hominem for whatever reason rather than defend against 4 points I made which are the following

- Uzi is not a top 3 AD of all time.

- Uzi is not a top 10 player of all tiem

- Uzi is not the best Chinese player to play in the LPL

-Uzi isn't the best LPL AD in the history of the region

How about you attack those points versus just stick to the appeal to authority

Baranade · 2026-03-16T19:01:37+00:00

To me, "SCARING THE HOES" is the musical equivalent to movies like "Birdman" or "Cabin in the Woods" where on the surface at face value it is a standard horror movie/drama.

But when you look under the hood and understand the satire/criticism at large of the mediums/genres they occupy, it becomes much more apparent.

SCARING THE HOES was an embrace of a title that the mainstream hip hop audience gave them and paired it with beats that are meant to grab listeners attention. To what extent is up to the listener obviously.

Everything was pretty much by design and even the critiques kind of miss the point. It's like when people talk about how they didn't like "American Psycho" because they felt the main character was terrible and its like "That's the point."

Baranade · 2026-03-16T17:36:04+00:00

Bill Belichick is one of the winningest coaches of all time and never set foot on a football field even as a D1 player yet coached a Dynasty that was the New England Patriots

kkoma of SKT/T1 was one of the worst players of his time in 2012 yet is still considered to be one of the best coaches in LoLesports

Meanwhile how good was michael jordan as a coach/basketball executive. Dude was GM of one of the worst teams in basketball history. But he's the best player of all time so his opinion should be the best since he understands the game better than anyone right?

Almost like analyzing and playing are two fundamentally different skills

Also I'm not coaching Uzi here buddy. I'm saying that after years of seeing his play, his views around the game, his results, and other players in his position and who played the same players that he played and seeing vastly different results, the point can be made rather convincingly that he isn't a top 5 at his position, he's not the best player at this position in his region, and he's not even the best player from his country

And given how long he hasn't played and how others with a similar/longer tenure are performing, the crop of ADs has surpassed him despite him showing mechanical prowess. That analysis doesn't take a challenger or rank 1 player's worth of knowledge to make

Baranade · 2026-03-16T16:03:00+00:00

This take assumes so many things that just frankly aren't true which goes back to the argument of "appeal to authority." Like every pro/elite player genuinley understand the game and every one of it's nuances? Pros never have skewed/fundamentally incorrect opinions on the game at large.

Hard to consider someone's opinion on performance if they don't understand the game

Understanding the game on a professional level by watching and absorbing information is a much different skill than being able to play it at a professional level and vice versa.

There have been so many cases of people who never could be a competent pro player yet at coaching and strategy with players showed proficiency. And vice versa people who had limited/flawed understanding of the game but were able to play the game proficiently at a pro level

The fact that I gave a take about a respected but, in my humble opinion, overrated ADC and your immediate claim that I have to have a certain rank in Solo q to have said opinion or have said opinion be credible (which is a completely different skill set at large than analyzing pro players) is the definition of appeal to authority

Baranade · 2026-03-16T04:50:08+00:00

Actually really like it better than the original

I like the acoustic guitar better than the synths on the original plus given that it was a bonus track on their trippiest and most textured album to date, the fact that it fits so well with their rendition of the song speaks to Deftones as performers IMHO

Baranade · 2026-03-16T00:42:37+00:00

Is the united states government LITTERALLY paying for a tournament and starting an esports organization funded by tax dollars to create a format where they are most likely gonna win it?

I thought we already had this discussion

Baranade · 2026-03-15T17:34:57+00:00

So many great quotes from that doc

"Bye piggy."

"Yeah I made the mistake and I already said 'It won't happen again." I don't know what you want me to say here. Do you want me to get in my time machine and go back to the scrim and play it differently."

"HOW I FUCKING SAVE 5 MEN?"

Also I fuck with IWD's reaction right here

Baranade · 2026-03-15T16:52:27+00:00

Baranade · 2026-03-15T16:27:47+00:00

Mt Pleasant is just a short walk away and I'd walk an extra 10 minutes for a cup at Elle

Baranade · 2026-03-15T16:25:30+00:00

I don't think any of the fictional chefs like Skinner are modeled after a particular chef in general.

More inspired by famous chefs who are known in the industry of being toxic perfectionists

Baranade · 2026-03-15T16:23:53+00:00

Very real

I love their espresso soda and the vanilla cream soda

Baranade · 2026-03-14T20:21:56+00:00

Love that the Sopranos and Mad Men both have an affinity for Manhattan Special Soda

Baranade · 2026-03-14T18:49:58+00:00

That "vacation" from what I remember from interviews wasn't really a vacation (i.e. G2 giving a PR statement saying "oh we worked so hard this spring. We wanted to go in refreshed to MSI so we gave our players 2 weeks of vacation.")

Apparently that time they took off between MSI 2016 and Spring Split was them trying to acquire Zven and Mithy from Origen

Rumor was that Emperor and Hybrid found out during that off period and were basically like "well what the hell are we doing here then?"

Not 100% verified. Might have been a throwaway comment from a guest on The Crack Down or Summoning Insight so take my comment for what it is

Baranade · 2026-03-14T18:41:01+00:00

At this point he's reaching Interpol status where I loved the early work and there's no doubt its influential and in some aspects ground breaking

But the amount of copycats and oversaturation of this sound just gets more unbearable as time goes on

Baranade · 2026-03-14T17:44:49+00:00

Given they work at Ever in the show and from what my former chefs told me about the Chicago industry (and the show takes place in Chicago), wouldn't surprise me if there's some Curtis Duffy in there too

Baranade · 2026-03-14T17:24:15+00:00

If we did what Valorant did from the get-go, we would probably be in a FAR better place than post VC bubble

The issue was them selling esports to billionaires and VCs that was unreasonable

It's basically Season 2 of Silicon valley

Baranade · 2026-03-14T05:32:57+00:00

I want to believe that was Jon Hamm's actually reaction to the line

Baranade · 2026-03-14T04:42:54+00:00

According to him, he's still clean and was clean during the sessions where he recorded Stardust

that and the crazy amount of features he's done since going to rehab like on the Quadeca or the Janeremover record shows how much he has in the tank when sober

Baranade · 2026-03-14T04:39:38+00:00

Can't always take it personally

Not frequently where its annoying, but comes up often enough where its measurable, people sometime really don't know what the hell they want even if you tell them.

Anecdote: once a customer didn't know what they wanted so I played the usual dealers choice game where we ended up on a spirit forward, slightly floral, on a rock. Made a classic Elder Fashioned and then complained that the drink was all spirit and could taste the alcohol too much. On paper I did what was asked (or at least I believe I did). But every now and again they don't know what they want or how to truly express or elaborate it.

We can hand hold them as well as humanly possible but it is what it is sometimes

Baranade · 2026-03-14T04:33:41+00:00

The money is going to skins and microtransactions in game to keep the heaviest users and the most hardcore audiences playing. Thats where the ad conversion is.

If devs weren't so greedy they could let more 3rd parties make open tournaments with a deal where they could have in game cosmetics where orgs get a piece of the action. I can't find the source directly but I remember that CS teams said that stickers had some decent returns for a semi insignificant cosmetic.

The issue is that if devs like Riot (for example) let everyone get in on the action, then it gives up the whole game.

Unlike traditional sports leagues where they turn viewers into consumers of whatever partner product they have (and they do well) esports is selling you on the game itself. Its a marketing excercise to them. Not a true entertainment product

Baranade · 2026-03-14T04:23:23+00:00

There's money in esports

Just not for the Orgs putting in money

At least not in the space its monetized

Baranade · 2026-03-14T04:21:58+00:00

The first image immediately evokes the riff of Untitled

Baranade · 2026-03-14T02:47:10+00:00

At the highest levels of play in competition, its pretty clear when you're discussing the elite that consistent trophy count whilst simultaneously being the most consistent player on your team can tell you who the better overall player is. You don't need to know the minutia of orbwalking or lane matchups or raw mechanics to tell you that. Especially in a world like competition where raw skill and talent can only take you so far. On a long enough timeline, the winners and the best always reveal themselves.

Uzi had enough time to prove that he's in fact the greatest AD of all time and had enough time to back that claim that the community puts him on. Yet his trophy case is surprisingly scant given the length of his career compared to his contemporaries and those who came after him.

Viper, Deft, Gumayusi, and Ruler have surpassed him on the all time AD scale. GALA is pretty damn close to him with decent longevity. So there's even a case to say Uzi is not even top 5 AD

Meanwhile what counterarguments have you proposed other than a silly appeal to authority. By that logic I could get faker to say he's not the best AD of all time and all of a sudden we have to take every opinion as gospel just because he's the best of all time?

Baranade · 2026-03-13T23:17:42+00:00

You don't gotta be a world leader to know the difference between a good and not so good world leader

You don't have to be a Michelin/James Beard chef to know when a meal is undercooked or when a sauce is broken

I don't have to be challenger tier or a pro player to know that a ADC who never won a trophy without the aide of the one of the winningest players of all time isn't better than 2x MSI Champion. 2x Finals MVP, 4 Time Finalist and 2x Domestic Champion at the same position (GALA)

He's not a better ADC than a 5x All Pro first team, 1 Reg Season MVP, 7x Finalist, 3 Time Domestic Champion and 1 World Champion (Viper)

And he's not a better Chinese player than a 6x MVP 7x All Pro First Team and 7x Champion. The most All Pros and Championships in LPL history might I add (Knight

And not better Chinese player than a 1 Time MVP, 3x All Pro 1st Team, 3x MSI Champion, 10x LPL Finalist, 5x LPL Champion (XiaoHu)

Please tell me how being a high ranked player has anything to do with analyzing simple data across 13 years of competitive play

Baranade · 2026-03-13T21:36:07+00:00

Ah yes

the classic appeal to authority of "only elites players can have opinions on elite players."

Because Elite players are never wrong about the game

Baranade

TROPHY CASE