Originally titled "Civil Discourse - Communication Breakdown"

Introduction

Before I get back into the swing of writing about strategy on any level, I really wanted to go over some things that have been on my mind recently about Magic recently. For much longer than the last few months, I've had some concerns regarding the level of discourse in Magic today—that is to say, the amount of actual discussion that happens and the manner of discussion.

By simple definition, a "civil discourse" means polite conversation. So, in context of our Magic discussions, I am referring to how politely we communicate with one another—not just barely avoiding being uncouth.

For a long time, IRC and some message boards were not only the premier sources for information regarding a format's decks and metagame, but also a great source for entering into potentially gainful discussions on a variety of topics. For Legacy, that place has primarily been The Source. However, over the last couple of years, the quality of the average post has undeniably and dramatically declined. The people who have historically contributed the most to conversations are now posting far less frequently, and the new members of this and other communities aren't even coming close to filling in the communication gaps left by those leaving. Of course, the quality of the information itself has suffered, and the ability to have meaningful discussions has practically evaporated.

It's hard to be critical of something that you identify so closely with, but the evidence is overwhelming and has been for some time. Observing this phenomenon has been an upsetting, frustrating, and at times disheartening experience that leaves me questioning the reasons for the breakdown in communication. Why has there been such a drastic reduction in meaningful contributions from people? I'm not at all convinced that this is a problem confined specifically to Legacy or even to the Magic community, but is the symptom of something much more toxic in our environment. Considering all of this, it is no trifle of a subject I wish to raise, and sadly, nor is it something to which I have many answers. Nevertheless, it is a problem that I think should be addressed and discussed with civility and rationality.

What are the causes for the breakdown in civil discourse, and how can we make attempts to regain meaningful discussion in Magic?

A Course in Discourse

One of the reasons I wanted to bring this topic to light is because it's something that has really intrigued me since I was in high school. My history teacher talked about the fall of the Roman Empire and how the United States today mimics it in so many ways. (I'll try to keep the scope of this from getting out of hand, but I would like to give a little more background.) The first time I had really heard of the breakdown of civil discourse was on a radio program a few years ago. Three people were discussing what had happened to the way that we have political discussion in this country. They had specific concerns as to how reasonably, if at all, people are able to interact with one another in the face of such a polarized political landscape. (For those of you in other countries, I have a feeling that at least a few points here will resonate with you.) The speakers went on to talk about how this sort of thing perhaps wasn't exclusive to politics, but could possibly be applicable to our interactions with people at work, how we interact with our friends, and even how we handle minor interactions with people, such as driving ("road rage").

I have read a few ideas as to when this breakdown of communication started to become a tangible problem in the grander scope. Some people identify the very close race in the 2000 presidential election as a deep and still unhealed wound in American culture. Some are apt to point fingers at other inciting events. For our purposes, it likely is less important to identify how it started than to reach a common ground and acknowledge that something has in fact taken place, at least in the Magic community. Regardless, the result is a widespread hindrance to significant communication in our forums (in this references, forums is used as an all-inclusive means of communication, but it works as an adianoeta [double entendre] in which it also references message boards).

Generally speaking, in a person's everyday life, there aren't too many forms of debate that really creep into the mundane happenings of routine. This means that all of the factors and tensions of debate are easy to overlook. However, in Magic—in both competitive and casual circles—we have a good deal of debate and discussion happening about all manner of choices to make and how to optimize them in a given situation. When trying to engage in those sorts of thought exercises, it can be difficult to avoid those situations where we may not have the ability to have meaningful, respectful discussions. The consequences of that become obvious.

Identifying the Problem

Being a subject that doesn't get much attention can make identifying some of the symptoms of the problem difficult. I'd like to try to analyze some of the recurring problems and address each of them.

Trolling – Trolling is the act of posting off-topic responses to content in order to goad a response out of people. The problem with this should be quite obvious; it's disruptive and has the tendency to cease any real conversation as the resulting replies just fuel the fire. Because of the amount of anonymity granted to a user of most any message board, let alone a Magic board, it is quite easy for a troll to simply post inflammatory remarks and, therefore, disrupt other meaningful conversations. Keep in mind that assumed pseudonyms seldom carry any weight in the real world unless you intentionally attach an identity to them.

Each user is attached to an IP address and a name on a Magic message board; therefore, it is entirely possible to moderate these sorts of attempts at incitement. This means that it would theoretically be possible for the operating client (moderators and administrators) to control this problem to a large extent. However, one of the complications to this solution is that these attempts to derail a conversation are frequently simply attached to the end of an otherwise competent and engrossing argument, which enters a gray area. It is a problem that is difficult to address on the server's side and points to the problem being with the users. Clearly, the problem does rest with the users; they are the ones who are forced to sift through all of the fighting and misdirection to find any real content that can be of use to a Magic player.

The problem doesn't rest entirely with those who have anonymity in some level, because there is a trend in many subcultures that is embracing trolls. I won't try to speculate too much as to the reasoning behind this, but when we see it and have no vested interest in the outcome of the subject matter, we likely find it relatively amusing on the Internet. Identifying oneself as a troll therefore can lead others to believe that someone is perhaps witty, and the mischief they create is likely to be humorous. This humor comes from intentionally asphyxiating intelligent conversation or impassioned pleas for help. The act of trolling in the real world is going to have a much stronger effect than in the easily-brushed-off Internet world. That sort of action is going to have ramifications—not just in some grand, divine, karmic way, but in very tangible and identifiable ways. We're seeing that result now in the deterioration of not only the Internet venues for discussing all manner of things, including Magic discussion, but also in the way we communicate with each other in the flesh. I'm certain that most readers will be able to recognize it in their past conversations with other players with little difficulty, and henceforth will be troubled when they distinguish it in current conversations.

Fallacies – Much of trolling is the intentional use of fallacies to generate a response. However, there are a great deal of people who take themselves seriously and want to try to contribute to the dialogue that just have no grasp of what constitutes a logical statement. Therefore, these people are almost entirely unable to have a reasonable discussion. Fallacies are the tools that enable us to identify weakly supported positions that are being propped up with something that isn't proof or an argument that pertains to the subject matter.

Not everyone is going to take an English, philosophy, debate, or logic class, and even many of those who did haven't retained all of that information. Learning or refreshing ourselves on these tools will not only help us to identify poor arguments in the Magic world, but also to apply these to real-life situations. We can see this when listening in on news and picking out what is slander, what is propaganda, and what is actual news. Ideally, learning this valuable communication skillset will even enable us to have more meaningful and profound conversations with those around us—both virtual and face to face.

Ad hominem – tu quoque – This link deals with the assumption that because a person makes two conflicting claims over time, any claims they make must be false. In Magic, especially competitive Magic, trends change all the time, and we must all be aware of this. This comes up when we look at a long history of people saying that Stifle is bad in Legacy and then see many of them picking up Team America. I've stated before that Counter-Top Thopters is an awful deck, yet now I find myself playing it with great success. In Legacy and in Magic in general, we have to shift our perceptions with what is happening around us. That means that seemingly conflicting claims aren't always. The point I'm concerned with making here is that it's always important to look at things in context, and to paraphrase the link: While people will sometimes contradict themselves, it doesn't mean that the point they are making now is wrong.

Hasty generalization – This is very likely the single most common fallacy that we encounter in Magic. It isn't hard to recall a time when we've heard it. In Legacy, because high-attendance tournaments are uncommon and none are as accessible as the Star City Open series, we tend to draw a lot of information from that data pool provided by Star City. The problem is that a single tournament, especially in a format as diverse as Legacy, isn't indicative of the format's health. It's easy to hear the echoes of how High Tide must be the dominant deck considering it won Edison so handily. Yet so many people failed to recognize that this was but one event and chose to get swept up in the hype surrounding a relatively new, rogue deck. Versions of the deck have placed in the Top 16 a couple of times prior, and it has returned to about the same level since then, which is hardly a trait of a Tier 1 deck. It's important for all of us to be able to withdraw ourselves from hype and really consider as many factors as possible when determining the validity of a deck or another's claim.

Composition – The last one I'd like to cover is composition, which I suggest reading about. Specifically, this fallacy comes into play when we consider a situation such as the following: "My deck is great against everything but X, so it has to be the best deck in the format because it can beat all other decks." The inherent flaw with this is that it doesn't take into account how popular that deck is. Taking something like Goblins to Grand Prix: Columbus circa Flash would really earn you a lot of wins against the Fish decks and most everything else, but leave you quite cold to Flash. The problem, however, is that Flash was the best and among the most common decks. An analogy can be made in Standard, where it's like being able to beat everything but Caw-Blade and just hoping you don't run into it. Additionally, simply because you can beat another deck doesn't mean that you're guaranteed the win; there are plenty of times where Zoo or Merfolk is able to race a combo deck. This sort of logic also assumes that everyone is playing with the lists you've tested against, which obviously excludes not only deviant decks but sideboard plans for which you weren't prepared (e.g., Thorn of Amethyst or Pyrostatic Pillar plans, or having a Sower of Temptation meet your Emrakul).

I suggest taking a look at a couple of other fallacies—specifically, the gambler's fallacy holds a certain weight since Magic is a game that operates on a level of luck. Misleading vividness is laughably common in Magic articles and discussions, as is appeal to novelty. I'm sure that you'll find others that connect with personal Magic experiences very well.

Blatant Dismissal of Statements – Generally, refusing to acknowledge another's point is the result of a fallacy; however, the outcome is generally unintentional. In Legacy, and likely in the larger scene as well, it's easy to identify specific examples in which we see this unmistakably and intentionally happening. Generally, this is a reaction of the community in response to a person not being willing to do the reading or any real testing and posting speculation. But . . .

When a newcomer walks into a thread for an established deck on The Source or most other places, they are likely to be greeted with at least a dozen pages of discussion and often over a hundred pages in the case of the more popular archetypes. It's a grave undertaking for a person to read all of that, let alone assimilate the valuable information and dismiss the flaming and spam (I see this is a failure on the part of the Legacy community on several levels). However, if this person asks a question that has been debated and resolved not too long ago, they are either ignored or flamed and, unfortunately, they end up learning the trend of "helping others as little as possible."

There is another aspect of this that I feel I've been a party to on several occasions. I've dismissed many opinions and snuck my way out of several debates using what I feel is a very clever argument—though it doesn't resolve anything for either party. The argument is generally in reply to a suggestion or question regarding an alternative to a deck that's close to what I'm playing, and it goes something like this: "Well, if it works for you, then that's great, but we're different people." I've used this in times past when I didn't want to take the effort to explain to someone why I feel his idea is bad and mine is a bit better, so I let him go on with what I sometimes knew was an inferior strategy. When someone does this, it creates an understanding that yes, two people are different, but one of them is dismissing the other for thinking differently. Nothing is resolved, and it denies both parties the opportunity to learn from the other. There are many ways in which Magic players stifle otherwise engaging conversations with each other, and I encourage you to examine how you may be doing this in your current interactions with fellow players and work to overcome this communication roadblock.

Fallacies and trolling on many levels will simply destroy a conversation or, perhaps even worse, drive away reasonable people from the discussion as you stop debating points and begin doing something else entirely. When you pair this with people who willingly choose not to contribute in any meaningful way and those who simply cannot for lack of knowledge and experience, the result of all this is not just a weakening community with little incentive to share ideas, but also one where the environment to foster them is nearly incapacitated. This in some ways brings us to:

Despotism

While there isn't truly a single entity doling out all information on Magic strategy or Legacy in general, the weakening of the public forums is bringing us a lot closer to it. There are a few standout names in Legacy now that are essentially dictating what the metagame should look like and are sometimes even able to back it up with results in the most publicized Legacy tournaments. This is the sort of thing I'm accustomed to seeing in Block and Standard, and to some degree Extended, but not something we've seen happen in Legacy.

It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but this was something that I nearly allowed myself to get swept up in. Well, more that I actually found myself swept up in it. I had convinced myself of the following: (1) that the format was going to be shifting to an unreal consistency of combo decks and that it would fundamentally be impossible for a control deck to compete in this kind of environment; (2) and that everyone would acknowledge that there was no reason to play any deck that wasn't bending the rules in half or play a deck that had heavy consistency, a fast clock, and the ability to disrupt the opponent. The result was that I played in a large, non-SCG event and I came to the realization that not everyone paid attention to this coverage; as a result, the metagame didn't mirror a SCG event at all. In fact, not a single combo or quasi-combo deck made the Top 8 of the event. There are specific reasons, but the big question that I was faced with was: Why didn't the metagame look as I expected?

In order for despotism to work on a level that deals with information, the despot must be the only available resource for information—or in this case, good information. Furthermore, even if that is the case, that person must have the attention of everyone concerned. Once everyone is paying attention to that, everyone must build either that plan to prey on anyone who didn't listen, or a foil to that plan. Maintaining that attention, of course, hinges upon having the best information, which is something that everyone wants and is working toward. When concerning a format as wide-open as Legacy is, no one can make claims to that without extensive testing, and even then, there is likely an effective counterplan, as there was even when Survival existed in the format.

While I was watching all the Team America decks fight losing battles against Goblins, Zoo, and Merfolk, it hit home for me that just like last year, the metagame presented at the SCG Opens wasn't a sign of the overall metagame to be expected. That data is only to be taken as a great indicator of what the SCG Open series metagame was looking like, and those who wanted to apply it to unrelated situations were really punished, much like when that happened last year. Putting a deck through ten rounds cannot truly verify if a deck is a true contender in the scope of the format's decks. There are plenty of great decks that don't Top 16, and at least a couple of bad ones that do.

Conclusion

There are some real concerns that I think I've touched upon here, but this is a subject that needs to be talked about more to get any real, actionable attention paid to it. I'm curious to know how many of you out there can identify many of the same trends that I have. I don't feel that the situation is as bleak as it may appear; there are some trends that may be very good signs and show promise in how we communicate with one another. However, for the time being, I feel that there are real issues that should be resolved and I hope will be, even if this isn't an inciting incident.

Christopher Walton

im00pi at gmail dot com

Master Shake on The Source