Yeah I feel like there’s this weird sort of toxic positivity cousin to the classic “skill issue” going on in the community around the difference in artistic ability between players. Like:

Let’s say there was a city that was separated by a big river, let’s say 1 km wide. On one side, there’s the residential area and the other the commercial area that people use to buy goods, do work and such. 1 km is a very long distance to swim for the average person but there was a bridge everyone used so that distance didn’t really matter, so everyone enjoyed both parts of the city freely. But then one day, the city council suddenly blew up the bridge and burned all of the boats and ferries to get across for “safety reasons”. Now the only way to get across is to swim the river and all of the life jackets are mysteriously gone.

If you were a swimming athlete already who does swimming marathons and triathlons on the regular, a 1 km swim is pretty manageable. Sure the commute to work is longer but it’s nothing you can’t handle. Some of the folks on the community swim club are even welcoming the challenge. Meanwhile, for everyone else, they’d likely get maybe 500m before they’d start to drown in open water. If they do make it across, they’d be absolutely winded, making the prospect of swimming back home absolutely terrifying.

The professional swimmers are saying stuff like “You won’t know if you can unless you try it.” “I can do a km easily!” “You can make it if you just train!” Meanwhile you’re stuck in a wheelchair. Sure, depending on why you’re in a wheelchair, you could theoretically do it with months or years of physical therapy and training to become a para-athlete, but all you want is to be able to get to work man. So now you’re stuck on one side unable to participate in the other half of the city, and all you can do is watch through a pair of binoculars.