Relatively unpopular opinions: (Though many of these may not be unpopular at all. Maybe I'm out of touch. Or maybe it's the kids that are out of touch.)

1) I think more often than not, retro/NES games produce some rather dull speedruns. They have the benefit of usually being quite easy to learn and master, and that is what makes them popular.

2) People should stop complaining about speedrun cliques. There are far too many people in this community for you to be friends with them all, so subgroups/cliques are the only way to build meaningful relationships. Cliques are only bad when they are used to intentionally exclude people, which is rarely the case.

3) "Community" is a really poor term for the set containing all speedrunners, but unfortunately it's the best we have. There is relatively little community, though there are some notable exceptions (like maybe the SMW community or the gameboy community or whatever).

4) Stop claiming that your speedgame is good or other speedgames are bad. All speedgames are bad, as is speedrunning itself. This is a degenerate hobby, and you have no reason to put down other people just for doing what they enjoy.

5) I welcome people to quit the hobby (of speedrunning). Nothing is more depressing than watching a washed-up/has-been speedrunner dragging their ass through a session because it's not what they want to do. We all are going to quit speedrunning one day. This hobby isn't forever. If you're done, leave. We can all still be friends even if you don't play your dumb speedgame.

6) Nothing has done more harm to speedrunners than the grind for twitch partnership. I've seen too many streamers make partnership a goal for themselves, and then once they get it, they don't know what to do next. You fucking stream, that's what you do. It's not that complicated.

7) Speedrunning would probably be in a much better place than it is today if the GDQs had never happened. The rapid influx of people who only see speedrunning as a form of content, rather than something to be "taken seriously", has turned speedrunning into the bizarre thing it is today. (Though, without the GDQs, I'm not sure if speedrunning would have ever become mainstream enough for me to take notice, so...)

8) SRG isn't really all that bad. 90% of it is made up of people who think they're funny, and they're not, but some of the general attitudes are accurate: speedrunning should be less about these big personalities and more about getting a good time in the game. Also, there is some merit to an unfiltered collection of views, even if you have to learn to separate the signal from the noise. And there's a lot of noise.

9) Super Mario World is not a fun game to watch. Great to play. Not fun to watch. Seriously. Deal with it.

10) There is nothing wrong with receiving donations in your stream. If people are willing to be parted with their money, I'm happy to be the recipient of it. Think of it as a form of busking. Or don't.

11) People who look at streaming as a "career" are objectively stupid. There is nothing sustainable in any of this, and many of the "skills" learned from streaming are mostly non-transferable to any attainable job in the real world. If you aren't making plans for your future, you're just plain wrong.

12) Layouts on streams really help the presentation, but so many people compare the option of a bad layout and no layout and somehow pick the bad layout. Like, really, just having your game feed (and a timer?) on screen is 100x better than the shit that some BIG NAME STREAMERS are putting out these days. It's terrible.

13) Anime is truly awful, with only the very rare exception.

14) 2D platformers are perhaps the worst type of speedruns, albeit the most accessible and fun to run. RPGs easily outclass the challenge in routing, and 3D games typically provide a much larger potential skill window. In general, if you can perfect your speedgame by simply holding right and hitting jump at the right times, the game might not be as "deep" of a speedgame as you claim it is. As with anything, there are exceptions to this on either side.

15) If SDA died tomorrow, I'd be terribly surprised if anyone even noticed. (Oh wait, this was supposed to be unpopular opinions...)

16) I don't actually think there is anything wrong with emulator. I can't play it myself, due to input lag and stuff, but anything that makes speedrunning accessible is probably for the best. I'd rather have 100 people play on emulator than to have even one person import some obscure North Korean version of a game just for the 0.003 second time save, even if it's on console.

17) The exception to #16: If emulator gives an advantage over console in any way, don't just make them separate, EMULATOR IS INVALID. Does your dumb Playstation game have faster load times on emulator? Play on console. Is there an extra glitch only possible in emulator? Play on console, you idiot. This pretty much just means that emulator is limited to 8-/16-bit consoles.

18) Pepsi tastes like shit. If you like Pepsi, you're wrong. It's like drinking battery acid + sugar.

19) The "don't tweet out a run" things is one of the stupidest memes that this community has (and one that I've perpetrated myself over time). No one fails a run because attention was brought to it and it really hurts people's ability/willingness to share the excitement of a runner that maybe deserves some attention with their friends. Stop with this shitty meme.

20) I don't think that just because you're good at a game means you deserve viewers. Streaming is a medium that is meant to provide entertainment. Many people are entertained enough by just high-quality speedruns, but with how many options there are, sometimes people want to hang out with an engaging personality and a friendly, active chat, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you want more viewers, be more entertaining and stop crying about how great your PB is.

21) When a PB/WR comes down to a grind for frames, I think it takes away what makes speedrunning really special. No one really thinks that if two people are only a handful of frames apart, that one person is better than the other. It turns speedrunning into an ugly grind sometimes.

22) Going off #21, I think that this shows the value and strength of using things like IGT (like Goldeneye). If you are within one second of your opponent, how are you going to unironically feel superior to them? Call it a tie, and sort it out by getting better!

23) I don't think Virtual Console is that big of a deal. I can sleep at night calling it an "official release" rather than "bad emulation". I think people get too worked up about VC.

24) I think streaming has done more to hurt speedrunning than help it. It's undeniable that streaming has made speedrunning more accessible to people, but it changes the motivation from being fast to being entertaining, only one of which is relevant to speedrunning.

25) I think races (a la SRL) are not really all that relevant to speedrunning, as they test a very different skill set. (But I still find it a ton of fun and this isn't meant to put down racing. Just a thought.)

26) 75% of games make for bad speedruns. I still think every game deserves a speedrun, but I think a lot of them end up being ultimately pretty terrible. The worst offenders tend to be retro video games.

27) Romhacks of games you love make for great speedruns, and if you can't recognize that, then I don't know what's wrong with you. Granted, there are some bad romhacks out there, but so many well-made ones get no love from this community because they aren't "official" games or whatever. So what?