Whenever I consider going back to play a major competitive MTG event, I keep remembering this tweet. Isaac is a great and interesting Twitter follow. He is very smart and reasonable. I imagine he is an excellent MTG judge.
Yet, even he cannot grasp that he is admitting his fellow judges are so intrinsically biased that they would want to give a MAGA hat wearing player GRV's for Unsporting Conduct. Nor can he understand the follow on effects of that.
Even if that exact argument didn't prevail at a specific tournament, who in their right mind would think - for even one solitary second - that they would receive fair, neutral, unbiased judging from such a person if they had a MAGA hat on? The self admitted, self professed, loudly publicly obsessed over bias by countless judges over the course of the Eternal Weekend debate spoke as plain as it could possibly be. Also, to be fair to those politically biased judges, I at least appreciate their honesty! They WANT me to know they don't want me there, and I hear them.
Why, exactly, do people like Issac not hear them? I don't know. Trust me, I wish they would wake up! I wish they would exert some leadership and correct the behavior of the people I am intended subsidize with my entry fee. This is where my aforementioned follow on effect comes in.
I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, but competitive MTG is in a bad spot right now. Less and less people giving a damn, even as a light hobby. I enjoyed grinding RCQ's, making an RC, playing in bigger stuff when it happened. The product would be hard enough to keep up on all by itself, but when you combine that with a competitive scene that is going OUT OF ITS WAY to yell directly into my face and say 'we don't want you here', it makes you give up entirely. It worked like a charm on me! I went from playing competitive MTG for the past eight years (even during COVID!), former SCG Tour regular player in IQ's and Opens, an PTTQ/RCQ weekender 2/3 time a month, annual big MTG trip to a GP/MagicFest, and a an FNM regular to ... flat zero in less than a year. Between the product and the hostility, why bother?
Unless the powers that be make it clear that behavior has been corrected and everyone is going to be an adult, even if someone has to make a rules call for a Privileged White Devil such as myself, I'll spend my middle aged, upper middle class money buying nicer furniture and the competitive scene can keep heading right for the tubes.
Yes, many judges are arguing that it should qualify as Unsporting Conduct. That is a far cry from falsifying evidence, as you claim is rampant.