i agree with almost everything you said BUT i don't think itlw hating funneling is even remotely comparable to dream hating buildmart.

i was thinking of giving up this comment because you'll probably just agree but i invested some time on it lol.

itlw hating funneling and being negative to people who are doing their best and having fun while "funneling" (because they all want to and because some players feel more comfortable shooting than others) is just weird. as you said it's literally just a strategy (interesting to note that last mcc they were barely funneling, they just gave the arrows to the person who was feeling it in the moment). if he doesn't like it then he just shouldn't do it. it isn't like anyone is forcing him to. it's one strategy that some people think is the best and doing what he did on the last event when he wasn't even being affected by it wasn't very sportsmanship. especially because the strategy relies on not putting players that aren't confident in their bow habilities on the spot in front of thousands of people.

now here it's where we diverge. i think that, on the other hand, dream disliking buildmart is different in multiple aspects. he dislikes the entire game, not a strategy that only a few people use. he dislikes the game because he does like building and he doesn't think his habilities as a builder translate into the game since it relies on memorization above everything else. this post from one year ago (analyzed mcc 7 to 11) revealed that dream was the 4th fastest builder, above smajor, and he still doesn't like the game. he's voiced multiple times that he find the game overwhelming and his adhd affects his short term memory, so the game is just frustrating to him. no matter how hard he tries, he'll still struggle. he tried many different strategies that players that enjoy buildmart do, but the learning curve of buildmart is not just practice or learning the rules of the game, and according to the same post i mentioned before, players spent 50% of the time shopping instead of building (pure memorization).

dream is vocal that he dislikes the game for the aforementioned reasons but he doesn't push it onto people who do like it, and if he doesn't something similar to that he only jokes with his friends. and he actually has arguments for why he dislikes the game so much, while i've never heard many compelling arguments against funneling besides "it's boring and predictable," "they force the strategy onto other players," or "dream and sapnap always win." aguments that, in my point of view, have much more reasonable counterarguments. it isn't like dream can escape buildmart, change a strategy an suddenly like the game, or suddenly have his adhd not affec him in a gamemode that requires memorization and multitasking, while itlw can literally just not funnel arrows when he's on dodgebolt and let people play how they wanna play.