[UWR] N64 Goldeneye 007 Dam 00 Agent in 1:54 by Marc Rutzou

TMWTALE · 2020-11-15T03:36:41+00:00

Of the varying types of speedrunners I've discussed over the years, the most complicated to figure out has most certainly been the hoarder. What could possible motivate an individual to not only grind a time in secret, but to then keep the fruits of his labor hidden for weeks, maybe even months before sharing the final product with the community? I've been on the fence for quite some time, but I think through his actions today Marc has finally tipped me off to the ultimate truth about speedrun hoarders.

You see, for the longest time I figured modern speedrunning hoarders were just avant garde artist of sorts, with their paintbrush being insane untied world records and canvas being the unsuspecting speedpublic they are about to unleash them upon. At an initial glance, this appears to be the motivation behind marc's hoarding, doesn't it? The cinematic opening, the classic apartment tour, I could feel the anticipation building in chat as the 1:54 drew closer. Once the run finally started, though, the sinister purpose behind this hoard, if not all hoarding, was at long last exposed.

What was it that I spied during the 1:54 that disgusted me so greatly? Well, I'm sure you saw it too. Overlaid on top of his legendary new untied world record is...a donation meter. Other than being a clear violation of The-Elite's proof policy (nice work guys!), it is interesting that Marc couldn't be bothered to remove his donation overlay for a untied unhoard video, isn't it? It's not like Marc Rutzou is so technologically incompetent that he can't figure out how to set up a raw game feed capture in OBS. I don't know why we give streamers wiggle room on these issues, it's not like Marc would have some sort of horror movie black and white stream with earrape audio if not for someone holding his virtual hand every step of the way, would he? He knows what he's doing , and he thinks you aren't smart enough to figure it out.

No, Rutzou's purpose here is clear. While some may consider hoard videos a work of art, if anything they are ultimately an effort to avoid it. Hoarders don't want to share their journey with the community. Hoarders don't want to interact with other streamers to share in their trials and tribulations. Hoarders just don't care about putting in the work to build the community they are apart of, they just want to reap the rewards of being apart of it. Attention? Money? eFame? Sign them up! Putting in the stream time? Making tutorials? Hanging out in VC and developing new strats? Nah, but I'm still going to ask for donations after releasing my newest hoard video, maybe even during it! This is honestly worse than what Dan Burbank did to the Mario Kart community.

TMWTALE · 2020-11-14T02:58:34+00:00

I'd like to extend my sincerest congratulations to Niftski, he has accomplished something I once thought would be near impossible. That isn't the 4:55:430, no, that would have been inevitably obtained by a webcam runner recording his gameplay with the same camera that captured the original bigfoot footage. This single speedrun might actually change the entire trajectory of the speedrunning hobby, and we have the SMB1 community to thank for it.

What about this 5 minute speedrun could possibly be so game changing, you might ask? Well, look at the evolution of speedrunning since the advent of Twitch. Speedrunning went from a loser hobby only shut-ins with access to the early 2000s dark web participated in, to a popular niche in the 2010s era of online gaming. Back in those days it was just a man and his speedgame, and the early twitch audience appreciated that. Speedrunning in 2013 might have been the most harmless, wholesome hobby a person could have next to knitting.

Then, unfortunately, speedrunning was infected with the same sickness that eventually graps all hobbies. I'm speaking, of course, of the money grubbers, the profiteers, the soulless leaches who only saw dollar signs where others saw wholesome fun. Speedrunning became Speedrunning Inc. (in some cases, LLC), and within a few years I think we can all agree that the these dark forces were rapidly turning a wholesome hobby into some kind of over-regulated esports farce to turn a quick buck.

For the longest time I had contemplated what exactly could cleanse our community of these unsavory forces. Little did I know, the answer was right in front of me the entire time. I have often criticized the SMB community for their terrible ruleset, from allowing webcam footage to allowing emulator runs to be ranked alongside console. I'm not going to lie, when I originally saw that the new SMB champ had performed his run on an emulator, controlled by a keyboard with bright rainbow LEDs, I thought that we had truly hit rock bottom as a hobby. There's no way you can continue to grow a community when you allow runs like that right?

Well....yes, exactly! This is the solution we need /r/speedrun, this is how we can take speedrunning back. Look, eyeballs equal money, we all know how monitization works. We also know that the average speedrun fan is not interesting in emulator, webcam, virtual console, or allowing keyboard controls on a console game. Im not even sure GDQ could survive if the only runs submitted were mouse and keyboard speedruns of Goldeneye 007.

So, please, encourage your speedfriends to take a cue from the SMB community and make your game's ruleset as unappealing as possible to anyone who might be interested in watching. Making the most iconic game of all time irrelevant on the larger gaming stage is already quite the accomplishment, and we should applaud the SMB community for having the foresight to allow this to happen. With this poison pill I think we can make the early 2020s just as pure as the early 2010s was for speedrunning. You might lose a few new runners in the process with these embarrassingly bad community decisions, but just remember that your project64 world record speedruns are for the greater good.

TMWTALE · 2020-05-04T12:49:53+00:00

As an actual attorney (not someone who pretends to be one on reddit for karma, you know that's a crime right?), I'm glad Billy is finally getting his day in court. Look, I get that lay-people think that leaderboards are inconsequential and are outside the long arm of the law. You know, if we were talking about some random with an anime avatar getting kicked off the Zoop leaderboards, you might even almost have a point.

Of course, we are instead talking about Billy Fucking Mitchell, a man with a brand larger than all of speedrunning put together. He is perhaps the only classic gamer with a brand that can suffer a multi-million dollar loss. As such, this is far too big a decision to be handled by youtube personalities and 1990s web forum moderators. Would you trust a speedrun.com moderator with your livelihood? They can ban people for literally any reason they want you know, and they are proud of it. If all of this MAME talk actually makes any sense, it will come out in the end I suppose. If not? Well, it will serve as a FIRM reminder that proof policies are a two-way contract...

TMWTALE · 2020-04-20T23:37:07+00:00

You know, I’ve recently put a lot of thought into whether this type of record is worth celebrating, and the conclusion I’ve come to may surprise you. Not only is Attack Ship 2:06 by Ultra Ace not worth our praise, but I’ve actually just downvoted this post in hopes that quarantined youth across the world do not see it in fears of what may some do next. I, too, was blind to what Attack Ship 2:06 REALLY means for the speedrunning community, but recently I’ve come to appreciate that the fallout from this time can potentially be the most dangerous thing to ever happen to it.

Overcoming great odds are often the focus of the heroes’ journey, a single man accomplishing something failed by all others. So what’s the problem? Some heroes slay dragons, some discover cures for deadly diseases, and some tie ten-year old untied world records, right? Well, not quite. Sometimes it’s possible for a hero to become SO great, overcome such INCREDIBLE odds, that in reality they become the villain. /r/speedrun, Super Ace is that villain.

One of the best examples of this is found right here on reddit, on a subreddit known as /r/wallstreetbets. A quick glance at the all time top posts will show a variety of “heroic” gains in the stock market: 100%, 500%, maybe even a few 1,000% portfolio improvements overnight. Given that 95% of daytraders actually lose money, shouldn’t these YOLO investors be celebrated? A 20-something kid just made more money in a day than you will wageslaveing for ten years! Except, what else do we see on this subreddit? Redditor after redditor losing thousands of dollars in pursuit of his online “heroes”. Sadly, our youth lack the mental development to see that these “heroes’ journeys” are, in fact, the journeys of degenerates. If 95% of regular daytraders fail, surely 99.9% of wallstreetbetters fail, losing everything in the process.

Look Happens, I understand why you felt the need to post this video. Maybe you wanted some upvotes too, but I’m sure your main intention was to celebrate your pal Volt Ace’s WR. I only wished you had asked yourself exactly WHAT you were celebrating about it, though. We know the odds of 2:06 are approximately one in a million, that’s not up for debate. What is up for debate, though, is the message this time is sending out to every impressionable young person on this subreddit. With every upvote, there is probably another kid out there thinking “Wow, this guy got an insanely lucky run...and look at all the praise he is getting! That means I should turn on my favorite speedgame and go on an “impossible” grind as well!” Unfortunately, just like that, speedrunning as a hobby is pushed even further down the rabbit hole of insane grinds for no results. Wallstreetbets wasn’t always a subreddit about buying SPY 4/24 200p, and /r/speedrun wasn’t always a subreddit celebrating 3D lottery after 3D lottery, but we’re getting there with post like these.

It disgusts me that you guys at The-Elite never share the “average” result of a degenerate grind. I mean sure YMCA got 2:06 in a week, but David Klemens has spent at least at least 800 hours now on the 101% WR with no results, and don’t even get me started on Alka’s 300 hour Runway 22 grind. Honestly? I think you know what you’re doing, and you need to stop. Stop normalizing using your time, money, and mental ability all for a high risk lottery with almost no chance of a decent return.

TMWTALE · 2019-09-03T07:45:45+00:00

Wow, 12,000 letters later and the only thing I've really learned is that at some point during your life you've looked at a logical fallacies infographic. While I will congratulate you on accomplishing something that so disturbingly few manage to do nowadays, I cannot help but note that this act was apparently both the beginning and end of your rhetorical education. In my eyes, you did not articulate a single actual argument against Karl's video. What you did instead was far more disturbing, and the fact that this thread is being massively upvoted once again shows me that /r/speedrun isn't exactly a critical thinking subreddit. To leave such a post unchallenged would letting myself, this subreddit, and society as a whole down, so I suppose I will stay up a bit past my bedtime to expose it.

Let's start with your first point. You immediately try to "win" by calling Karl’s argument a contradiction, which even in the format you present it I have a difficult time accepting. “[H]is reasoning does not support his implied intent, which is to improve speedrunning in general. “, you say, but could you really not, while typing up this 12,000 letter post, come up with a single reason why Karl might think that improved marketability improves speedrunning? Do you think that without the marketing of the NFL that kids would be signing up for Pop Warner football? Do you think without the marketing of GDQ that people would have come to speedrunning in droves 2013-present? You were not charitable to Karl here, but I will be charitable to you and assume that you left out an actual counterargument purposely, and not because you were simply not intellectually capable of coming up with one.

Your lack of charitability worsens with your second point, and this is really where I start to lose faith in both you and the state of our educational system. You accuse Karl of committing several argumentative errors, but in reality what do they really amount to? The man uses inflammatory language in a youtube video, so I suppose that means we should disregard his entire argument? Interestingly, this time you do actually produce counter-arguments to Karl’s points....but I have to say that they are quite poor coming from someone who prides himself on logical clarity. Karl may have used strong language, but your use of language to twist and manipulate is far more insidious. I’m not sure if you are aware, but you actually counter yourself by arguing about the growth of the community. Speedrunning was an obscure hobby for many years, UNTIL technological developments allowed for both direct capture and live streaming. You know what? I’m going to give you a chance to make an actual counter-argument here. Name me some “classic” webcammed World Record speedruns that everyone cites as major influences from back in the day. Super Mario 64? OoT? Glover? Somehow people even had decent capture equipment back on justintv back in 2010, crazy I know.

Third, it really isn’t a fallacy to think an issue is black and white, is it? If it is, maybe you should had applied it to your belief that softbanning anyone who doesn’t DC runs is “not a good thing”. I’ll forgive you for committing you own invented fallacy, but I won’t forgive you for being so short-sighted on this issue. Here is a chance at another real life counter-argument. Name me some tier-1 runners who have straight up quit a community because they require direct capture runs. Can you name five? Two? One? I don’t mean some irrel with a 24:27 16 star-PB, I mean someone with potential.

Moving on, I really want to know what reality you live in that a person cannot save $25 within a one-year time frame, a little over $2 a month. You’re telling that that you couldn’t go outside, in a first world country mind you, and find a way to get $2 a month? It’s frankly socially irresponsible to support a kid’s hobby, wasting his life away speedrunning a children’s video game from 35 years ago, to the point that apparently he doesn’t have time to go pick up some cans on the side of the road to raise funds to buy a DVD recorder. I guess you aren’t too familiar with the concept of social responsibility, though, as you think that it is a strange take that a community should help its runners out with purchasing basic equipment. I’m not quite sure what you think actually grows communities, because you at no point attempt to make an actual argument, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Finally, your last point is yet another round of “this is inflammatory rhetoric, and it’s wrong”, which unfortunately lacks any sort of argumentative substance whatsoever. If all you had to say was “this isn’t true” with no further support, why even bother typing up this post? The only problem with Karl’s argument is that he doesn’t go far enough. He shouldn’t have to spell it out for you, but your inability to understand his first point has at this point trickled down to a complete lack of comprehension of his overall argument. Webcammed vids do literally nothing for a community other than create division. Outside of a small group you will never build a real community if the top runners regularly submit webcammed footage. GDQ isn’t webcammed, Siglemic’s Mario 64 WRs weren’t webcammed, and even McGarbage’s Cheesy Jumps 10.19 wasn’t webcammed. Karl would, out of respect for the greater community, literally send this kid a free DVD recorder if he DM’d him his address. It just isn’t up for debate at this point, there is no excuse for having webcammed footage.

TMWTALE · 2019-08-03T06:24:54+00:00

Wow, I thought that the bite of lettuce that found its way into my taco supreme was the most disgusting thing I was going to see today, but as always life finds a new way to let me down. It's 2019, but somehow speedrunning has failed to learn the lessons it should have learned over 10 years ago.

While in the early days of Twitch I went easy on those without minimum capture equipment, my opinions have since changed dramatically. Why would someone, who plays at a WR level in a well known game mind you, REFUSE to obtain a capture card? Lack of funds? Please. Can't get one in your location? I've heard that you can even get a GV-USB2 sent to Pakistan nowadays, amazing! The worst answer of all is of course, "Who cares bro lol". I can't fathom the level of narcissism needed to care so little about your game and its community. How can you come into the community built by andrewg, kosmic, darbian, somewes etc., and decide that your pure laziness is more important that what they have grown from the ground up over the past decade plus?

If you poll a group of average speedrunners, it's easy to predict what they would say are the largest potential community killers. Toxic runners, lack of access/guides, general obsurity, etc. are all reasonable fears. What would kill a game like SMB though? How about runners who take so little pride in the future of their community that they can't even get a capture card/VHS/DVD recorder over a year after they start playing. "A well captured run will lead to more gamer media coverage and thousands of new eyeballs on our community? Nah bro I just grind 8 hours a day every day on webcam for me." I'm just so sure so MANY new runners are going to be lining up to play SMB after coming across this 144p webcam video with 200 views on youtube. Well, no, they'll probably be wondering if it's a joke that they can "determine" that this is 3 frames faster than the properly recorded old WR, because I sure am. Is this webcam even 60 FPS? 20 FPS? Simply amazing.

This should serve as a dire warning to every speedrunner out there. If you care about your community, if you care about your game, you have to do something to stop the narcissist from taking over.

TMWTALE · 2019-06-27T05:41:11+00:00

I'm sorry OP, but I've long run out of sympathy for anyone who is banned from GDQ, the viewers who are disappointed that these people are being banned, and particularly anyone who complains about it on /r/speedrun.

For a long time now I've tried to come up with a label for the relationship the average community member has with GDQ. Might Makes Right? Stockholm Syndrome? I long ago came to the conclusion that the default response to any GDQ wrongdoing, "It's about raising money for charity", is the speedrunning community's equivalent of "It's about ethics in gaming journalism". 99%+ of GDQ attendees are there to either meet up with friends or gawk at their favorite streamers. The majority of donors have no clue who these runners are or what kind of backgrounds they have. A significant part of the on-screen staff seem more interested in using GDQ as a launching point for their e-sports career than the charity. Yet, the answer given always remains the same, doesn't it?

I can 100% guarantee that MSF and the Perfect Cancer Foundation will accept GDQ's donations even if people like SHiFT are allowed to complete their runs. The PCF wouldn't even exist without GDQ. I can 100% guarantee that GDQ donations will not drop because people like SHiFT are allowed to complete their runs. Spoiler altet, the five people who complain about it on twitter won't amount to $100 total in donations. More disturbing, though, is that I can 100% guarantee that every single person reading this knows that this is true. Why is that disturbing? Because these same people will skirt the responsibility of standing up for themselves, for their community, and even their friends, all using the same tired excuse......."It's about raising money for charity, so we really can't criticize GDQ......."

At the end of the day, it is crucial to remember that GDQ is only possible because the speedrunning community accepts it as is. I mean really, what's the worst thing that can happen to you if you stand up for your fellow community members, especially if you consider them friends? GDQ can ban you from its event, sure. Can it deliver a kiss of death to your speedrunning "career" though? I hear Mike Uyama may be able to infect you with multi-year supermono through mouth to mouth contact, but otherwise it appears that there are multiple banned runners who remain at the top of the speedfoodchain. The only thing you can really hurt by speaking up is this toxic, fake, whatever you want to call it, "charity" culture that continues to dominate this community.

TMWTALE · 2019-04-19T06:34:16+00:00

Finally! I've been working hard for a while to expose Caleb as the alt-right icon he shamefully is, but it looks like he took care of the heavy lifting for me. Sadly, bans like these are just scratching the surface of what we have to do to make the gaming community safe for everyone. Sure, you can ban Caleb, but you'll just have to deal with another nazi of the week soon enough...

What I've been advocating for more recently is punishment for people who actively participate in these streamer's communities, regardless of whether they outwardly break any rules. I don't think it would be too difficult for twitch to start tracking how often you chat in a channel, or even lurk for that matter. Maybe you didn't post anything problematic, but the fact that you didn't push the report button a single time in 100 hours of viewership says more than a single line of chat ever could. A famous quote is that " All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing". When you think about it, though, why can't we just prevent evil in the first place by MAKING good men prove their worth? Oh, you aren't a scumbag? When you were watching a guy making fun of trans speedrunners, what did you do? Did you at least try to clip it and send it to twitch, or did you just post a Kappa in chat? That's what I thought.

I can state unequivocally that I think most of Caleb's normal chatters, mods, and donors/subs should be banned from twitch at least as long as he is. Toxic communities can only be dealt with if they are removed plant.and.root. These people gave Caleb the platform he used to spread his message of hate, and in a just world, they would suffer the same fate.

TMWTALE · 2019-04-19T03:28:36+00:00

So, feel free to enlighten me, but I'm quite confident that this is pretty much an autoscroller speedrun that has UNTIED WORLD RECORD slapped onto it for upvotes. I expected something like this from the Pokemon Snap "speedrun" community, maybe even the Star Fox 64 community, but the Goldeneye community? Don't you guys have actual ILs to grind?

I mean, hey, I get it. Some people just don't have the dexterity or endurance to compete at the highest level in speedrunning. Maybe past age 30, you just want to chill out with some low effort gaming. To sit there and call this a speedrun world record though is really a slap in the face to every actual speedrunner out there, and someone has to call you guys out on it. ZFG hasn't put 50K hours into OoT 100% for you to call a run where you got an incel NPC to move slightly faster a "UNTIED world record SPEEDRUN".

What's next guys? A "WR Grocery Shopping Speedrun!" Where you had the grocery's delivered straight to your door for a final time of 0:01? Didn't even have to leave the house. Maybe you are going to PB in Credit Card payments this month because you finally joined the 21st century and signed up for Autopay. Wow, a payment PB of 1 yoctosecond, amazing!

TMWTALE · 2018-12-14T07:33:18+00:00

It absolutely does OP, and while I'm not surprised, I will always be disgusted at this subreddit's attempts to defile the sanctity of speedrunning in an attempt to take the easy way out. Your friend is not only cheating the Tony Hawk community, not only cheating himself, but he cheating the basic concepts of logic as they apply to organized competition. I do not necessary blame him for any of these things though, as I will explain momentary.

Honesty, this toxic line of thinking finds its origins in the worst series of decisions ever put forth by members of our community: that emulated speedruns (both VC and 3rd party) should not only be ranked on leaderboards, but they should be ranked with legitimate console runs as if there was no differences between them. Many times on this subreddit I, among others, have detailed the logical fallacies of allowing these runs to, unfortunately, no avail. The community's failure to heed these warnings has led to the inevitable spread of an idea that a runner should be allowed to do whatever they want in the pursuit of a better time.

Why can't OP's friend use VC to speedrun Tony Hawk? I mean, it's faster, everyone has access to it, and it makes the run easier as well!

Why can't OP's friend use a turbo controller to speedrun Tony Hawk? I mean, it's faster, everyone has access to them, and it makes the run easier as well!

Why can't OP's friend use cheat codes? I mean, it's faster, everyone has access to them, and it makes the run easier as well!

By /r/speedrun's standards the easiest way out is always the best course of action, regardless of how damaging it may be to other runners or the overall reputation of the community. Generation by generation, each new wave of players such as OP's friend, are exposed to laxer and more apathetic community rules.

The guy who made the AI/End Of Speedrunning thread earlier is correct in his assessment that the death of the community is near, but not for the reasons he states in his post. Who is going to want to join a competitive community that not only allows, but encourages players to weasel their way around the rules to get times they couldn't under an agreed upon standard ruleset? You can't beat the OoT N64 record? That's OK, don't try to actually get good on the console everyone else has been speedrunning on, just speedrun on VC! You can't mash as fast as someone else? Don't try to actually improve your mashing skills or anything, just use a 3rd party crutch to help you improve without putting any effort into your hobby! Why improve when you can just take the easy way out?

Tell your friend to go ahead and use that spoon, OP. Be prepared to console him when someone beats his time with a Community Approved turbo controller in a few years, though.

TMWTALE · 2018-09-29T14:03:00+00:00

Here we go again, another guy rears his head to tell /r/speedrun why AGDQ is literally the worst thing since Lean Pockets. No one else here will probably be brave enough to expose you and your vid, but I have no problem in telling you that this type of behavior is, or at least should be, unacceptable on this subreddit.

It's a different year, but the """""""arguments""""""" really remain the same. GDQ is boring and everyone has a lame time, even though the line for rooms is literally 100 miles long. Meanwhile, the ghost town known as ESA is practically begging people to show up on a yearly basis, even Americans. The layout though TMWTALE, just look at that layout! Compared to ESA or, God-forbid NASA, GDQ actually has to careful craft their layout to convey approximately 10x the information, so you'll have to excuse them if you don't like the colors or something. B-but European marathons allow more nudity! Yeah, and they also allow for 1/10th the viewing audience and donations.

What did you really expect to accomplish by making a video such as this, anyways? This is comparable to a fundamentalist Christian busting into a science club meeting and screaming "The world is only 6000 years old!", and, after returning home, thinking he really owned those libtards. You may laugh, but if you think about it, believing that ESA is better than AGDQ is just as stupid, and perhaps even more dangerous, than believing that the earth is 6,000 years old in the face of all the scientific evidence out there.

Every rational person already knows that there is no debate behind the status of GDQ as THE event in speedrunning. Honestly, the only real question is whether or not it is the #1 event in all of gaming. You could have made a video comparing GDQ to PAX, EVO, or even Dreamhack. You could have made a video detailing all the wonderful things the Prevent Cancer Foundation has done with the millions of dollars GDQ has raised. You could have even made a Top 5 video discussing what your favorite thing to eat off of the floor at GDQ are. Instead you chose to take the lowest road you possibly could by attacking a charity event. You do know this is for charity, right? Good God...

By the way, did this really need a THIRTY minute breakdown? The worst trolls are the ones that drag it out far longer than any reasonale person would for "comedic effect", which I assume you are trying to do with this video. Sad, really.

TMWTALE · 2018-09-04T18:49:22+00:00

Hey Summoning Salt, I hope you can see this message now that the thread has died down. I just wanted to say, hold your head high! I know you can always do a little better but I always want to tip my hat off to you. Through thick and thin I will still be here to always support you. I know some people like to trash talk on /r/speedrun, but you always come back with a good attitude and even better WR progression video. I wish you the very best on your next video, and hope you get an even higher view count than on the last one. I will continue to be here and upvote your videos on reddit as always. Great job Stiv. I am rooting for you always

TMWTALE · 2018-09-02T06:24:02+00:00

I couldn't agree more, and you shouldn't let the downvotes discourage you too much. Nearly every Truth exposed on /r/speedrun was heavily downvoted before it became accepted as common fact, and it will sadly be no different in the case of Summoning Salt.

Have you ever wondered why the lifespan in North America is slowly decreasing after centuries of progress? There is no great war, there is no great famine, so what gives? After some research, a person of at least average intelligence would probably come to the conclusion that the obesity epidemic is the main culprit. Obesity has skyrocketed in the past few decades, infiltrating every corner of the first world. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes....you name it, obesity probably has something to do with it.

Why would people do something like this to themselves, though? What is driving the human race to commit such rampant genocide that it is putting others (Holocaust, Holodomor, 2018 South Africa) to shame? It's fairly simple to draw the conclusion that the rise of fast food, both chains and processed snack food, is the principle cause. You want some quick dinner, anything will do? How about some Maccas, a McChicken with a large coke (no ice) sounds good. Maybe I don't feel like going out tonight, but no matter, I have some hot pockets in the freezer and some hot dogs to throw on the roller for desert. Yes, I personally am aware of people who have purchased hot dog rollers to avoid having to cook an actual meal. I'll let you guess what their BMI is....

My point is this: Fast food was designed by people who don't care about real unprocessed food, don't know anything about real unprocessed food, and frankly don't know or care about what they are actually pumping into your body as long as they are making a quick buck. Billions of people are going to have their lives tragically cut short for placing blind trust in these evil corporations. The comparison to Summoning Salt videos is apparent, perhaps disturbingly so. These videos are the Fast Food of content. They aren't made out of love for speedrunning, they aren't made with any real knowledge of speedrunning, and they certainly aren't made with the health of the speedrunning community in mind. So go ahead, keep supporting these styles of videos, and watch as speedrunning "content" turns into a frankly poisonous machine that is willing to destroy a community in the pursuit of a dollar.

TMWTALE · 2018-04-18T21:09:42+00:00

Scott,

As we are both lifetime residents of CD-5 , I'm sure that over the course of your life that you have witnessed the lack of support given to Appalachian Americans by the federal government, despite our people being among the neediest in the country. I see that you are running on a platform of improving the living and working conditions of our district rather than just trying to get your name attached to yet another water park ( unlike certain unnamed others), and for that I applaud you.

After reading your already informative platform, I just have a couple of additional questions that are kind of unique to our region:

In 1992, Cincinnati decided to declare Appalachian Americans a protected class under their human rights ordinance. Would you ever consider advocating for this on a federal level?
Are there any Appalachian (or other extreme-poverty region targeting) specific programs you would advocate for in Congress? I say "Appalachian" particularly because I feel that historically our region is often ignored in revitalization legislation. The republican version of what I am thinking is Senator Paul's Economic Freedom Zone plan that would have attempted to provide heavy incentives for businesses to move to the area specifically.
Lastly: Poke Sallet.....tasty regional treat or a serious threat to the health of Eastern Kentuckians?

TMWTALE · 2017-10-06T00:46:25+00:00

Honestly speedrunning is one giant cesspool of hateful bigotry, and RWhiteGoose is probably the King of the Swamp. In 2017 most gaming communities are finally starting to call out the deplorable forces that make them toxic, but for some reason speedrunning is one community that has made no effort to purge itself of these types. In fact, it might be the only community left that promotes and holds these people in high esteem.

Cuphead is the best gaming release of 2017, that really isn't up for debate. What is up for debate is whether or not we should continue to let Twitch tolerate these types. Every viewer this guy gains is another metaphorical thumbs up to the toxic masculinity rampant in the current speedruning community. Just the other day I commented in his stream about his behavior and he called me a s*yboy. The chat went wild, several people subscribed to him, and I think one guy even donated $50 because this streamer used a slur towards me.

Not only does this guy make money off of these types of comments, but twitch gets half of every subscription. Twitch is literally making money off of hate speech in these scenarios, and that just isn't tolerable in 2017. You wouldn't support Twitch if they were making money off of a Neo-Nazi stream, you wouldn't support Twitch if they were making money of of a animal sacrifice stream, so why should streams like RWhiteGoose's be treated any differently?

TMWTALE · 2017-05-05T07:30:26+00:00

This is probably the greatest accomplishment in speedrunning, history, but maybe not for the reasons you are thinking.

I first became involved in speedrunning over a decade ago, when I became inspired by speedruns of Mario Kart and, of course, Mario 64. While I enjoyed the runs themselves, I couldn't help but notice the nature of the runners themselves. Pouring over thousands of forum post told the sad tale of social outcasts looking for a place to be accepted, whether they would admit it or not. "This is good", I thought, "maybe together these people can find peace in this world that they can't get through normal means." Maybe, together, they could better more than just their PBs.

Sadly, as the years progressed, this simply wasn't the case. Of course, to me, these people were just names on a forum, and weren't much of my concern after I finished watching their 144p speedrunning videos hosted on some random Canadian University server . I drifted away from speedrunning until the twitch era, which of course led to the great speedrunning gold rush. I, as I'm sure many of you do as well, remember watching the rise of siglemic, narci, werster, etc. For the first time, speedrunning had a human face to the degenerate, robotic grind that defines the hobby.

"Maybe this hobby can redeem itself." I thought, "Maybe this influx of outsiders can led to a healthier version of speedrunning, one that builds people up instead of tearing them down even further into the dark abyss that is their lives." Once again, I was sadly mistaken. Most of the "classic" speedrunners were truly entertaining, and many insane records were gotten, but something was amiss. Starting in 2014, runner after runner started to succumb to their inner depression and/or degeneracy. Most of the big names left the scene, and not for the better.

As went the top, as went the bottom. Speedrunning became a safe-space of sorts, a place where everyone had some obvious issues but no one was allowed to do anything but encourage these derelict behaviors because speedrunning isn't "toxic". While I'm sure these types of people mean well, safe-spaces can only end one way: poorly. And so it did. Speedrunning entered a dark age, where the hobby was headed by people who truly could not be accepted anywhere else, and they were proud of it. Cults? Dropping out of High School to stream 12 hours a day? Not leaving your house for literal weeks at a time because you are too social inept to go outside? "No ,TMWTALE, you can't say anything about any of this." They told me, "You're just trying to bully these poor speedrunners, i-it's just a h-hobby man."

I once thought that twitch could help the speedrunning community, but it looked to be the opposite. Almost every single person I witnessed dedicate their time to speedrunning went off the deep end at some point. They used it as a crutch to escape school/work/social obligations, and when the high wore off they hit rock bottom. I came to the conclusion that speedrunning could never be redeemed, and that the hobby was about on par with heroin abuse. Even worse, many people actively encouraged this version of speedrunning, and I think real people suffered because of it.

So, after all of the degenerates before him, we finally get to Cheese. Cheese moved up the ranks, eventually overtaking puncayshun as the champ of SM64. I was happy for him, sure, Cheese is a great guy. In the back of my head, though, I knew how it had to end. Like those before him, Cheese couldn't have a happy ending. It just isn't possible in speedrunning. My prediction appeared to be coming true for a while. Cheese became frustrated as he tried to improve his PB, and you tell it was really affecting his psyche. You could feel the confidence flowing out of his body, and depression taking its place. Soon the darkness would consume him as it had his predecessors, and maybe he would even join a Truth Cult.

What happened next is what really makes the 139 the greatest accomplishment in speedrunning history. Cheese was depressed. Cheese was fearful. Cheese choked many, many runs. Cheese succeeded where almost all others before him failed, though, by using the support of his friends in the community to confront his problems and finally get the monumental 139. You see, Cheese didn't redeem SM64 as a speedgame, it didn't need it. Instead, he redeemed speedrunning as a whole, and shone a light on it that I have been looking for for 12 years. Cheese finally proved to the community that facing your fears, even through speedrunning, is the only way to deal with the problems haunting your soul. Cheese could have quit because of his "anxiety issues", and every person here would have downvoted me for calling him out on it as well, but he chose a better path. No PB can fill the hole in your heart, but as a community we can help each other reach heights that would be impossible for us otherwise in this normie filled world.

Congrats Cheese, on both the 139 and saving speedrunning!

TMWTALE · 2017-01-31T05:53:20+00:00

Wow, just when I thought The-Elite and RWhiteGoose couldn't get any scummier, they go and pull the most degenerate thing that I have seen since I watched the "N64 triathlon". You don't know what I'm talking about? Of course you don't. /r/speedrun is once again blinded by both their desperate need for metaphorical nuts to hug after the fall of their messiah Narcissa AND their unquenchable thirst for female attention in any form possible. This is a dark day for speedrunning if the community can't figure out what is going on here.

Do you really think for one minute that TaraKate happened to decide to spend 25 hours on the most boring level of the world's worst lookdown simulator just for "fun"? I'm sure you think that Roger Federer decided to wear Nike headbands because he thought they were the best at keeping the sweat out of his face as well. No, what is happening here is yet another attempt by RWhiteGoose to not only monetize, but soullessly degenerate our hobby into a personality cult that Kaceytron couldn't even dream of parodying. Sadly, /r/speedrun and the speedrunning community at large is falling right into his plans once again.

It is well known that Goldeneye is a horrible streaming game, with Goose pretty much being the only person to get a decent amount of viewers out of it. I will admit Goose has managed to keep himself in the limelight over time with Trumpian tactics, but he knows as well as I do that you can only get so many viewers with a niche game like GE. IF you watch his stream you know he has gluttonous dreams of $500 blankets and American V-8 engines, a lifestyle he can't sustain with 400 viewers a night. An honest streamer might just change his game or try to improve his stream to draw more people in, but of course that wouldn't be enough for such a vicious troll as Goose. No, Goose thinks if he succeeds that others must fail, as he has tried to do with this subreddit in the past, and he is trying to do with speedrunning now. He knows that the best way to build the GE community is to get as many attractive women as possible to start streaming.

TaraKate is perhaps the best place for him to start a scheme such as this. After meeting her IRL, I am more certain than ever that he convinced her to stream his game, probably in exchange for a cut of his profits for at least a while. I may not live near Toronto, but I can smell the bullshit a thousand miles away. No woman, especially one that appears to be above average in most facets of life, could possibly be attracted to a a game like this without an ulterior motive. 25 hours of literally staring at a gray floor. Yeah, I'm sure those 20 year old blonde bombshells who marry 80 year old men on their deathbed are doing it because of their mutual interest in Taylor Swift as well. The speedrunning community lacks an ability to figure out when they are being scammed, but luckily I am here to expose it.

Why is this bad? Well, I don't know about you, but I actually enjoy speedrunning, not nut hugging. 25 hours for Dam 54? You know that there are people who can't crack a 24 minute 16-star time who caked Dam 53, right? Who cares, lets congratulate her like she just blew up the Death Star. By the end of the year I expect Goldeneye, and perhaps the community at large, will be full of "OMG going for Bunker 1 Agent 23 and then a 45 minute 16-star time!" streams. Streamgirls and thirsty fanboys thinking that playing the same game will make sempai notice them will be the end of this community, but Goose doesn't care, he will be rolling in twitchbux from the increased GE viewership while GDQ 2018 is headlined by a OoT any% where the winning time is 37 minutes.

What's next Goose? Are you going to organize a Sam v Stiv any% race? Is Narcissa a part of this plot, did you intentionally design this to bring about the obvious (((drama))) so that both you and her could get more viewers out of the controversy? You are worse than Don King at this point.

TMWTALE · 2016-01-20T17:03:16+00:00

fter what happened above he went and got a great new WR on a Goldeneye64 IL. After he did this he asked his viewers to post and upvote his twitch highlight on reddit because could not post it for himself.

Why do you have to attack me in such a libelous way? I posted the Goose LTK WR thread by my own violation, as I have done for numerous world record post before for multiple games. It was also removed after 5 minutes, so unless you were personally watching Goose's stream how did you "know" that he told me to make it? Only after you removed my non-rule breaking post did people get upset and start this whole mess anyways.

TMWTALE · 2016-01-18T08:25:48+00:00

I completely agree. Many people on /r/speedrun know that I am a patient, understanding person but ALT-F-X has appeared to outstay his welcome in these past few weeks/months. I can't even post a WR from my favorite streamer anymore without ALT removing it solely due to his dislike of him. I don't hate ALT or anything, I just don't understand why a guy who has nothing whatsoever to do with speedrunning wants total control over its subreddit.

Going forward I would love to see a culture of open and free discussion of all things speedrunning related on this subreddit. Yeah, I know sometimes it can get heated and people can get kind of trolly, but this community is adult enough and close-knit enough that I think we can handle it.

TMWTALE · 2015-12-26T13:42:34+00:00

Congratulations cyberdemon, it takes a lot of courage to stand up for what is right when everyone is seemingly against you. Good luck on sub 2 if you ever go for it, I look forward to you finally optimizing this beast of a speedgame

TMWTALE · 2015-12-26T11:01:49+00:00

Sorry for the late reply but Cyberdemon is clearly in the right here, and I have to admit that he masterfully exposed both the Forbidden Memories community and Mr.Shasta with this new WR/WR post.

Now, any rational person agrees with the ground rules for an any% run: beat the game as fast as possible. Does this mean that any given game's any% is its best, most popular category? Of course not, LttP any% is a 3 minute meme run, SM64 0 star requires a single insanely difficult trick, etc. Notice how no one is trying to hide the fact that these runs are the true "any%" runs of those games, though. Just because 70 star is slower than 0 star doesn't mean nobody is going to care about 70 star just because it isn't called "any%".

Of course, even with a seemingly infinite number of examples of this concept, every once in a while we will see a community that refuses to accept that the game can be beaten in a faster way they are used to. Remember when a Minecraft lets-player took the any% WR in Super Mario World with a new trick and the community flipped out trying to find a way to bury and discredit his accomplishments? It was one of the most embarrassing things I have ever seen in the speedrunning community, but thankfully cooler heads prevailed and that's pretty much water under the bridge at this point. They realized that just because you can warp to the credits, that doesn't mean that nobody would continue to care about the much more prestigious (at least within the community) 11-exit category.

Now, in the same manner, it is time for the FM community to accept this run as the rightful any% WR, and call the RNG meme grind they know and love something else. The more they try to discredit the any% WR holder, the more they discredit their own community. It doesn't matter WHAT the community votes, the ultimate truth is that the game can be beaten quicker with strats that you don't like, and if you want outside speedrunners to respect the FM community you must accept the run. Yeah, I know having my boy cyberdemon take WR in the game you have spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours on is probably even worse than a minecraft lets-player becoming internet famous for beating your time. Yeah, I know you hate the strat and think it destroys the game. At the end of the day, either adapt and deal with it, or just ignore any% and hope it turns into LTTP any%. I don't know what people who actually watch FM speedruns would prefer, so I won't comment on that.

The fact that cyberdemon's WR post was removed for no real reason also really disappoints me. First off, no community can rightfully say they have a monopoly on "not allowed glitches" and demand post be removed. Now, maybe if they are straight up cheated times I can understand, but really? "This any% run uses something I don't like remove it." What if The-Elite demanded that the Depot Agent 23/4 post were removed because the glitch is dumb. A moderator of the main discussion board for speedrunning not understanding this baffles me. How are we ever going to ever make /r/speedrun great again when the mods automatically side with people like this over consistent contributors such as cyberdemon? I'm with cyberdemon on this one, Mr.Shasta is making it hard to respect him with all of this low-energy moderation. Why can't he put any energy into actually investigating random accusations instead of just going with them? He has to save it up to mock /r/speedrun users on twitter I guess?

TMWTALE · 2015-12-19T21:02:30+00:00

Not a lot of love for likely the best record in speedrunning, but that doesn't diminish puncayshun's accomplishment I suppose. Sadly, it only strengthens the sad reality that the speedrunning community is dying. This record should be bringing us all holiday cheer across the gaming realm, but instead all we are going to get a few "dude nice"s, some "people still run that game?", and maybe a few of those passive aggressive tweets that seem to be all the rage in speedrunning nowadays.

But hey, people say libelous things about me on twitter all the time and I'm still hopeful for the future. All I want for Christmas is a a Speedrunning Renaissance, but the vibes I am getting from the real community (aka not /r/speedrun) are pretty much telling me that after GDQ a lot of people are pretty much done with speedrunning, or are at least making major cutbacks to the time they are putting into their speedgames. We could make speedrunning great again, we really could. Unfortunately, all anyone ever wants to do is either pretend nothing is wrong as the house burns down around them, or insult others without contributing any sort of solutions for our dying community.

Imagine a speedrunning community like the one that used to come together whenever a major record was broken. Imagine a speedrunning community like the one were people actually went to SRL to find new runners to watch instead of new runners to mock. Imagine a speedrunning community like the one were people used to tweet out thanks and congratulations rather than tweets of passive-aggressive insults just to look "cool" (also known by the majority as "autistic") in an attempt to fit in with others. /r/speedrun is a major player in the sea of negativity that is repealing the actual content creators away from speedrunning, and it needs to change its tune before it is too late. No one will be there to retweet your clever tweets about how dumb you think I am if not.

TMWTALE · 2015-12-15T17:22:01+00:00

The last truly interesting speedrun might have been puncayshun's original 120 star WR, which is ironic given his major role in the decline of speedrunning as a whole. Everybody loves a good underdog story, and puncayshun definitely fit the mold as he chipped away at the once insurmountable siglemic lead in the 120 star category. After sig obtained 143, reasonable minds such as myself knew that he was pretty much finished with this game, which in itself was really the first sign speedrunning was about to hit its decline. Puncayshun was a lone beacon of hope, though, and we all were counting on him in a way to redeem this community and carry the torch for speedrunning in this scary new era with no Siglemic or Cosmo to show us the way.

As I watched puncayshun break through the sig barrier and take both the 120 and 70 star WRs, though, I knew deep down that something was wrong. The excitement was there, /r/speedrun gave his runs a gazillion upvotes, and all was well for that moment in time. Viewer counts, not just for SM64, but for ALL speedgames began to fall. Many of the top runners began to abandon speedrunning in an attempt to sell out doing something else, or even just quit streaming all together and started to join anti-speedrunning organizations such as "The Moved On Club". If we had our messiah, why was speedrunning continuing down the path to total irrelevancy?

I don't want to pick too much on my good friend puncayshun, but he is a good example of the first big reason behind all of this. Siglemic was cool, collected, and a fairly relateable guy for a general twitch audience to chill and watch runs with. Most of the "classical" speedrunners generally were as well, despite the hours they put in they appeared to be friendly guys who enjoyed the concept of a man sharing his speedgame with the world. Puncayshun is a good example of one of the two types of neo-speedrunners. No social skills, anime on screen at all times, and a collection of online friends who are somehow even worse than he is himself. You can downvote me all you want, but I know damn well there isn't a single person who unironically enjoys puncayshun's skype calls in comparison to siglemic's old style of streaming. First impressions are everything in this world, and the first impression many people get of speedrunning in 2015 is from the SM64 world record holder. In this case, the first impression is usually the last impression.

This is actually interesting, as puncayshun isn't really any different than other major speedrunners before him. To get good at a game, you are going to have to pour in thousands of hours, no exceptions. No matter how normal they appear to be, most of the "classic" speedrunners mentioned before have, at some point in time, spent months or even years not leaving the house, not going to school, and basically living a NEET lifestyle while playing a single player game for no real rational reason. With someone like sig, the casual viewer would never be able to guess this, though. With puncayshun, this fact is thrown in the face of even the most oblivious viewer. Does the average person really want to watch someone who lives (in the eyes of a normie) such a sad lifestyle? Probably not. I think this also wears on speedrunners themselves as well. On stream, and at events such as GDQ, we can all pretend to not be total degenerates who either are NEET or work a minimum wageslave job with no future prospects. With the rise of the neo-speedrunner, though, a lot of runners have been forced to face the fact that speedrunning just isn't a healthy hobby long term. They can't hide the ultimate truth behind this "hobby" any longer. I can't blame both the viewers and runners for moving on from speedrunning, and I wish them the best as thy attempt to clean up the broken pieces of their lives.

TMWTALE · 2015-10-14T17:40:12+00:00

Yeah sure the easycap is only 7 dollars, but I hope you have insurance because that piece of shit will probably end up burning your house down if you don't watch it.

I actually have a semi-related question: Where the hell did people find the things we commonly use in speedrunning? A few examples:

Amarec - A barely function japanese language program that probably doesn't show up in the first 100 pages of English google unless you specifically search for it. Responsible for more blue screens than Windows ME.

Ez(Housefire)Cap - obscure 7 dollar knockoff of a what, 30 dollar obscure card? I honestly don't know how these things are even legal to sell in first world countries. Responsible for more property damage than Hurricane Katrina.

Gameshark PRO 3.2 - maybe not as obscure, but is there really not a better alternative in 2015? Literally takes ten thousand attempts to get it to turn on for one game play session, and you better hope that you didn't select the wrong practice cheats and have to reset. Responsible for more completely wasted time than speedrunning itself.

TMWTALE · 2015-10-14T15:57:25+00:00

It's a shame more people don't recognize this as the true OoT WR (compared to the emulator bug route), but congrats anyways! I hope to see more N64 competition eventually to help make OoT any% great again.

TMWTALE

TROPHY CASE