Swampasaur vs TheDivineDeity Debate

The **Swampasaur vs TheDivineDeity debate** was an event that occurred early in the Social Thread's lifetime. Due to the large amount of attention it garnered, it is often referenced by other people of the forums, even outside the current social thread communities.

## Background

In the latter half of 2013, the user TheDivineDeity was causing quite a stir in the Smash 4 Social and Speculation communities. Often heavy-handed and arrogant in his debating procedures, he tended to attract negative attention, leaving the once-peaceful debate a war zone of flaming infractions.

In the late summer of 2013, he was parading the idea that the *Fire Emblem* and *Earthbound/Mother* series were unimportant to Nintendo's history and did not deserve to get more "reps" than they had, and that *Earthbound/Mother* could stand to lose one or both. Due to the extreme nature of this claim, a stir was caused among the Social Thread.

Divine offered a challenge, however. If a user could defeat him in a debate dealing with this topic, he would leave Smashboards on his own accord until Mewtwo's confirmation, which he thought for certain would be during October of 2013. Swampasaur, at the time a regular user, stepped up to the challenge.

## The Debate's Outline

TheDivineDeity set the rules for the debate. He claimed that the winner would be decided by the amount of "Likes" the debate post received. Swampasaur agreed to the rules of engagement, and TheDivineDeity prepared his opening arguments.

## The "Debate of the Century" Hype

Due to the high traffic in the Social Thread during the summer of 2013, the debate drew quite the crowd. Two users, Moon Monkey and Disfunkshunal, changed their avatars to those of referees and got into character by announcing play-by-play commentary about the debate. In addition, the user Smooth Criminal added to the hype by changing his avatar to John Madden, also aiding the referees in their commentary. He altered his signature "Smooth Criminal" ending line in his posts to "John Madden" for the debate. Popcorn GIFs and "Dis Gon B Gud" GIFS were popular among the spectators.

## The Debate

Divine began with *Fire Emblem*, discussing how he believed it to be an unimportant series, citing that Japan's sales mattered much less than other countries due to their small size and bias toward RPGs. Swampasaur refuted this claim with sources for its sales, knowledge of its staying power, and discussing how over all RPGs that weren't Final Fantasy or Pokemon in general had lower sales during that time frame, leading to *Fire Emblem* being better off than other RPGs at the time. When Divine then brought up that it wasn't localized, and therefore can't be considered important, Swamp refuted that at the time, the taste of American gamers were different, so localizing the series at that point would have been a huge risk.

An intermission was held afterward while the score was tallied. Swamp reached a much higher amount of likes than Divine, with most of the very few Divine received being "sympathy likes", as admitted by those who liked his post.

The next round dealt with *Earthbound.* Divine used much of the same argument as the first time around (even at one point using an actual section from his *Fire Emblem* position, signifying copy and pasting was present. Swamp, like before, refuted his claims with sources to back them up, refuting the "reps per series" argument, among others.

The final score was tallied and Swamp had an overwhelming victory. The few points Divine had consisted of sympathy likes and a joke five point penalty against Swamp for getting Taco Bell unannounced. Divine thought the debate reeked of bias and knew that in his heart, he had won. The thread regulars were having none of this, however, and called Divine out on it.

## Legacy

Among those present, and even some that weren't, this debate was a landmark event in Smashboards Social history. TheDivineDeity ended up not fulfilling his end of the deal and stayed around, but ended up getting perma-banned for constant trouble-making some months later. Swampasaur went on to become a well-loved Smashboards moderator, serving the Super Smash Bros. Wii U and 3DS sections, Nintenzone, and Social Groups.