On Mergy

So before anyone even reads this, let me make some things clear. I'm not mad. I'm not "salty." Please do not try to discount this entire Pastebin and all of the arguments in it just by claiming I'm salty. That isn't a good refutation to any of the points I'm about to make and has nothing to do with them. Please, read this entirely and consider the content. Ad-hominem will not help you here.

Mergy was my friend. Let me make that very clear. Before this whole 000 and cheating thing, me and Mergy were, what I like to consider, good friends. But then he cheated.

Do I have a problem with the fact that Mergy cheated? Of course I do. I don't think anyone reading this disagrees with the fact that cheating in anything is generally a bad thing and should be frowned upon and discouraged.

The main issue I have with Mergy is NOT that he cheated in a children's card game. My main issue is how he handled things after that.

After Mergy was called out, he denied it. Mergy, on many occasions, publicly and privately, denied the fact that he had cheated. Some people believed him, some people didn't, and were agnostic to the idea. I was publicly agnostic but privately I was rooting for Mergy. I didn't want it to be true.

Finally, after lying to all of us for a while, solid proof came out that Mergy indeed cheated (he even admitted to this...in his Discord server). He had modified his ISO of the game to make it so certain cards dropped more often than they should, and so certain enemies played generally weaker cards. The world record he achieved was admitted and proven to be fake.

After all of this happened, Mergy's times were removed from the Forbidden Memories leaderboard on Speedrun.com. No one really disagrees with that happening, either. After Mergy admitted and was proven to have cheated, he was banned from the Forbidden Memories leaderboards. Again, a reasonable thing to happen.

What I have an issue with is how Mergy then handled the situation. Not once did Mergy apologize for what he did to the community he did it to. I don't know if he ever apologized to his own viewers for doing it, but that's really besides the point. Not a single time did Mergy admit that what he did was wrong and apologize to the FM community, or publicly at all really. What Mergy DID do was proceed to shit on the FM community.

The FM community has had (and even, in the opinion of some people, still has) some bad people in it. Shitters exist in the FM community as they do in almost ALL communities. After Mergy was caught cheating, not only did he not apologize to the FM community, but he actually began publicly insulting the FM community.

So basically, he cheated, and then blamed the community for it. He, at one time, said something along the lines of, "I had no choice but to cheat being in that community." What Mergy is saying is that the FM community is just so incredibly toxic and bad that he felt he had to cheat. Does that make logical sense? Of course it doesn't. But that's what he did.

Mergy decided that it was everyone's fault but his own that he modded his ISO, burnt the disc, and then did speedruns on it. No one forced Mergy to cheat. If Mergy didn't like the community THIS much, he was very welcome to just leave. He could've said "fuck you" to all of us, left the server, and continued to speedrun the game legitimately on his own. He could've continued to submit his runs to the leaderboard, and they would've continued to be neutrally verified. But he didn't do that. He decided, instead, that because he felt the community was toxic, he would cheat.

It's unclear when/if Mergy would've stopped cheating in FM if he were never caught. But that's not my issue. That isn't MOST people's issue with Mergy.

Mergy doesn't deserve his Twitch partnership. That sounds harsh but let me explain. Right when Mergy was cheating his runs is around the time he got partnered with Twitch. What do you need to get partnered on Twitch? Viewers. Mergy, by cheating, got a lot of very good runs. Good runs create hype, and hype attracts viewers. Mergy got partnered because he got a lot of viewers, and he got a lot of viewers because he got a lot of good runs, and he got a lot of good runs because he was cheating. He doesn't deserve partnership.

The issue with Mergy is that he doesn't care he cheated. It's no big deal. He doesn't have to apologize for it because WE were the ones that forced his hand into doing it. He did almost nothing wrong, while the FM community was the real bad guy in all of this.

So now, a lot of people might ask me, "So you're telling me if Mergy had just apologized for cheating after he was caught that NO ONE would be acting like this?? I don't believe you!" and I'd respond by saying: well, not exactly. Had he apologized after being caught, there'd definitely be some people who still don't like him today for it. That's human nature. But I can promise you that, had he apologized and not vilified and demonized the FM community for his OWN deeds, most people would've accepted that and forgiven him. Sure, he likely wouldn't be allowed on the leaderboards still. Hell, maybe he would've! Maybe if he had sincerely come to us and apologized there could've been some discussion for the future. But Mergy decided none of that was important.

All he had to do was say, "Hey everyone, I'm sorry. What I did was wrong. I should not have cheated, and I really do apologize for all of this." and that would've been that. He'd still, if he wanted to, be in the FM Discord. He'd still be friends with, at the very least, me. But Mergy decided none of that was important.

So this begs another question: What if he apologized now?

If Mergy apologized now, it'd have to be for a lot more than just cheating in a children's card game. If Mergy comes out and apologizes to the community for cheating and then for treating the community like absolute trash for no reason other than to make him look better, then yes. I'd absolutely fuckin' positively forgive him. I'm sure other people would too.

Another thing: When Mergy was first accused, some people were harsh on him. There were about 4 or 5 people who were, to put it bluntly, assholes towards Mergy. But those 4 or 5 people were NOT the entire community, and for Mergy to attempt to act like it was is simply dishonest. Mergy, I know some people were dicks to you after you were accused. There was no real proof you had cheated in the beginning, and people like TheUrnator and SpectreXS (who is a KNOWN dipshit and really isn't in the community to begin with) attacked you day in and day out on something they couldn't prove. That was wrong, Mergy. We all know that was wrong. But they were not and are not the community. You know this.

All I want is to clear the air out of this entire situation once and for all. When this had just happened, and Mergy had JUST been proven to be a cheater, I still considered him a friend. For MONTHS, I said publicly on my stream and elsewhere that while Mergy cheated and I thought it was a bad thing to do, that I never had a problem with him as a person. I said, many times and for weeks and months after he was caught, that I didn't have a problem with him. The reason that changed is because of how he acted afterwards.

So, to summarize: I don't think it's right that Mergy should continue to insult and blame the entire Forbidden Memories community for the fact that he cheated. Mergy cheated. It was wrong that he cheated. It was entirely his choice and it was entirely his fault. Mergy never apologized to the community he wronged, but chose simply to attack them. Not only is this generally dishonest, but it is morally reprehensible.

Another quick myth I want to debunk: RNG manipulation was NOT found because of Mergy cheating. This is a common myth thrown around that I actually believed myself, but it's not true. GCAH informed me that even before Mergy cheated, himself and Froggy were discussing saving and resetting to reset the frame count (which is the breakthrough that caused manip). So, had Mergy not cheated, RNG manip would 100% exist today. He'd probably even be running it alongside us.

And please. Don't just tell me I'm salty. I'm not angry. I'm a little sad that I lost someone I considered a good friend, and I hope that he acknowledges this and apologizes, to /US/.