An interesting turn of events occurred today during the ESL One Cologne 2020 Online that no one was prepared for; the staff was ready to produce the show, ESL changed the title on their Twitch stream to highlight that the long-awaited semifinal between Liquid and Chaos was about to be underway, and Liquid was ready to show up.
Then Chaos EC posted an interesting message on their Twitter account that stunned everybody; especially since the ramifications were surprisingly large for everyone involved.
Shortly after Chaos’ announcement, Liquid published a tweet to show solidarity in postponing the match until a future date with an interesting clause: ‘We believe competition is our players’ platform and it’s their personal decision whether to use it as a means for protest.’ A frankly strong statement that other companies might look at adopting.
It was out of the blue for everyone except the two teams, apparently, and ESL One has not stated when the match will be made up: there is very limited time to do so.
The make-up for the match has not currently been scheduled, but ESL took this in stride externally; a feat considering the number of staff they have on hand for matches were suddenly sent home early.
Ultimately for the fans, there’s two ways of looking at this: with heaping doses of cynicism and at face value.
At face value, the idea is that everyone who tuned in to watch the showdown against the T2 team that has been punishing everyone are now going to eventually come face to face with a message about the systemic racism and police brutality that multiple parts of the world are currently struggling with.
This should result in those that are unaware of the situation being forced to reckon internally with the statement from both Chaos and Liquid regarding the underlying racial tones and heavy-handed tactics of policing.
To add some cynicism to the discussion, however, and it’s a bit iffy what either team is attempting to actually say, or how they expect to impact.
The vast majority of fans that watch esports are plugged in with every possible orifice on their body; news by the gigabyte on a 24/7 schedule that seems to alternate between painting police officers as heroes or villains depending on which way their own demographic swings which results in ad revenue. Depending on your personal flavor of newscasting, the United States is either suffering from peaceful protests or violent riots, Hong Kong is either taking a brave stand or attempting rebellion, and the pendulum spends very little time straddling any lines as nuance is a hard sell.
The Twitch chat is filled with horrendous garbage, morons take microphones and defecate through their mouths to appeal to whomever will support them, and time continues its exhausting march onwards until we’re finally released from this mortal coil.
Yet halting a match until a later date, some argue, isn’t going to suddenly result in new allies for the fight against idiots that believe race amounts to anything beyond cultural heritage and social pressures. No cop is going to pause between shooting rounds into a black man’s back to reflect on whether Liquid and Chaos faced off today or not. And the morons that somehow believe their race is superior (whichever race that may be) are going to look the other way, as they have every time their core values were confronted.
For some, it’s a fantastic stand against stupidity and naivete that continues to run rampant. For others, it’s preaching to the choir while adding unneccesssary delays. While we’re waiting for the match, however, let’s all collectively think about how dumb the average human is, and realize that half of the population is somehow dumber than that.
