Hacking claims the lives of over 2,000 registered laddering alts every day.
The problem has so far remained unrecognized by the supreme governing body of Pokemon Showdown! and its constituents, the Sixth Republic of Smogon. The dismissals have ranged from offhand comments such as "you can play around crits" to outright locking or server banning of anyone who disagrees with official policies, as enforced by the administrators of Showdown!
When the First Republic of Smogon was born amid the chaos of Charizard fanboy madness and legendary abuse in link battles, did the Founding Fathers not pledge to give a fair voice to every viewpoint, and equality for all Pokemon, that any Pokemon one so chose would always be guaranteed a niche, no matter the evolution of its metagame?
Hypocrisy and impunity has crept into what we, the fair and good citizens of the Union of Competitive States, once knew as a democratic era -- now marred by the wretchedness of "viability", "outclassing", and "quick-banning". Slowly, but surely, the oligarchy that rules has instituted a caste system - Pokemon and users alike are sorted merely by their so-called "ability" and "notability". Those who do not meet their stringent standards are struck down from us without due process nor just judgment.
Those who are yet accepted are ruined by the terror that is hacking. Now, hacking can take many different forms, each as cruel as the next - continuous freezing, critical hits so frequent that it would seem they had built-in Scope Lens, unending chains of flinches, attacks that continue to hit in spite of +6 Evasion, among others; but cruelest of all, perhaps, are speedties given to opponents, whose momentum stays unbroken in its stride, and whose gloating in victory brings inhumane jeering, from insulting the defeated's social tendencies and the promiscuity of their progenitors.
Hacking is a social standard we have come to live by, yet it is one that is inherently impure and unjust.
