Fl33k | Lawrence · @fl33k_ssbu
3rd Jul 2020 from TwitLonger
Regarding some friends’ experience in the DFW Smash Community involving Frost
Hello,
Over the past few days, many dark and depressing stories have come to light within the smash community. I feel sick to my stomach reading about many of these high level players and their encounters with minors and females within the community. Before talking about my experience in the community, no, I was not a victim of sexual assault. I am one of the lucky few who didn’t have to fear harassment due largely in part to the friends I had been given when I first joined the community. I’ve since come to realize that finding a safe space within this community is harder than expected. Me and Tam will be speaking on behalf our friends who wanted to become involved but couldn’t due to the behavior of a certain individual in the DFW scene. She and another individual asked that they remain anonymous. I will be speaking about my experience first, and Tam will talk about his experience.
When I joined the community, I was lucky to be welcomed into a group of individuals who were respectful and treated me with kindness. As with any healthy community, they pushed me to become better and motivated me to muster up the strength to attend countless weeklies around the DFW area. They became some of my closest friends.
At a point last year, I decided to start inviting some of my friends to join the scene. Many of my friends outside of the community were casual players and I wanted to invite them to see how great the atmosphere and energy was at tournaments. Being casual players, I invited a few of them to the weekly Bishop Cidercade tournament. Many of my friends attended this weekly due to its casual and easy-going nature. That is where I introduced my friend to a player known in the community as Frost.
Frost was one of the many players I met in the scene who was very friendly with me. He also very frequently attended the tournaments I attended. Frost, being a consistently great player at the game, was someone I learned a great deal about the game from and was someone I would often catch friendlies with before and after tournaments. During my bracket matches, he would go as far as give tips and help. My impression of Frost joining the scene was great, until I introduced him to my close friend.
After her first Cidercade, my friend and Frost had exchanged social media. She thought the scene was great and wanted to start coming to more tournaments. Unfortunately, after meeting Frost, he began texting my friend frequently and started making uncomfortable comments at her over social media. At this point, I had known Frost was a bit of a flirt, but I never knew it was to the point of sending messages like these: https://imgur.com/a/Gw2q6fI
My friend, noting that these advances were primarily over text and were harmless, had to frequently shoot down his messages and constantly tell him to stop. Even at this point, I didn’t think much of it as to me it really did seem harmless. They’re just text messages. Later on, however, the messages got even more explicit: https://imgur.com/a/FuVTFdC
At this point, I began to feel uncomfortable being around Frost. I started to realize that having my friends come to tournaments meant that they would go through a possibly similar treatment that my friend went through. I knew he meant no harm to me, but because of his explicit advances on my friend, it made me feel uneasy about being acquainted with him. I started to distance myself from him because of this. I brought these feelings to my close friends in the scene who also had mentioned their experiences with Frost in the past. Being semi-new to the scene, I always saw him as a great player who helped new players out with the game, but he had a darker side to him, primarily his issues with harassing females in the scene.
Currently, my friend, although hasn’t been physically harmed by him, mentioned that coming to tournaments with him in attendance would be very uncomfortable, and it’s the sad unfortunate truth I have just recently discovered about the scene over the last day.
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Hey guys, it’s Tam speaking now and I just want to share my experience with Frost.
I’ve been playing against Frost ever since smash 4 so I’ve been around him for a while. We always got along with each other and no problems ever arose. I played him pretty much weekly in bracket for a few months straight because the tournament we both regularly attended was pretty small. We got along well, but we never really had any connections outside of smash.
With the release of ultimate, that meant new members were going to be showing up in the community because of the game’s popularity. A girl that was new to the smash scene met Frost at her very first tournament and they started talking via Instagram. The topic of them being friends with benefits came up and the girl clearly stated that she doesn’t want to cheat on her significant other. He continues pushing for the friends with benefits relationship to happen saying that her current relationship wouldn’t be ruined. She keeps reassuring him that she’s committed to her relationship and that she doesn’t want to engage with him in this type of relationship, but he keeps pushing for it and not respecting her boundaries. She was very uncomfortable that he kept pushing so hard for it even though she said no. Luckily, nothing physically ever resulted from this, but the feeling of discomfort just shouldn’t even be happening in the first place.
Screenshots of their conversation: https://imgur.com/a/BXzKvyR
These screenshots come from Instagram after she requested them because she deleted the messages. Her username is blurred to protect her identity and to read the conversation in order, read from bottom to top in each picture.
She was always so fascinated by the scene and would continue attending tournaments even if Frost was there. She always tried to stay away from him and minimize any interactions if he ever tried to talk to her. This girl means a lot to me so seeing her go through all this discomfort took a toll on me as well. I can’t remember when I found out about what he did to her, but when I did, I never brought it up to him personally; I just pretended that nothing ever happened. I minimized my interactions with him as well staying as polite as possible. I’d only say hi if he said hi to me, I’d just go for a fist bump before a set instead of a fist bump and a cheery good luck and have fun.
I’m just worried that he could continue this pushy behavior onto any girls in the scene that he meets if he doesn’t get his way. I really worry about this because I really want this community to be very inclusive and welcoming, which it has been for the most part, but with him around I get scared for any girl that talks to him. It should not be like this.
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With all of these stories coming to light, I was asked to share my friend’s experience but also felt it necessary for Tam and I to bring this to the attention of others in the scene. I’ve known of his behavior and feel guilty that I hadn’t mentioned it before or been more vocal and confrontational about it. I am also posting this hoping that other individuals don’t feel alone in their struggle if they’ve had similar experiences. Right now I want to make sure that the scene stays clean and hope that others can see behavior like this within the community and make sure it stops. I joined this wonderful and talented scene meeting some of the best people in my life, but I know others haven’t had that blessing. I want things to be better, as do you.