Bocchi

About

Bocchi is a teenaged Super Smash Brothers Ultimate player who became widely known in the game's community after upsetting professional player Ally in a tournament using Isabelle, traditionally thought of as a lower-tier character, while Ally played Snake. The upset came just before Ally retired from the Smash community after admitting he had had a relationship with a 17-year old player named CaptainZack. A month later, Bocchi was discovered to have used the N-word in Discord servers, for which she apologized.

History

Ally Upset

On June 15th, 2019, Bocchi, 15 at the time of the game, upset Ally at Long Island gaming tournament AON. Video of the match gained over 447,000 views on YouTube (shown below).

The upset proved shocking and gained coverage from Kotaku.^[1] However, the sudden influx of attention led to Bocchi reporting she had experienced bullying from other players in the community. Over the following weeks, Bocchi reported receiving hate online, to the point that on July 2nd, she announced she was retiring as "Bocchi" (shown below). However, she continued tweeting afterwards, saying she had received a lot of support from the community.

On July 4th, Ally announced that his previous denials about his relationship with CaptainZack were a lie, and he had in fact had a relationship with Zack. He also announced his retirement from Smash.

The proximity of these two events led people compare them and show how people supporting Ally and bullying bocchi was emblematic of the Smash community's toxicity. User @OnuaMWD posted a comparison of reactions to the controversies, gaining over 270 retweets and 1,500 likes (shown below, left). User @Toph_bbq stated players being more upset at Ally retiring than Bocchi being bullied "disgusted" him, gaining over 1,200 retweets and 8,000 likes (shown below, right). The controversies were covered in two threads on /r/OutOfTheLoop.

N-word Controversy

On July 20th, 2019, screenshots of Bocchi using the N-word in a Discord channel began spreading through social media. Twitter user @trueRyuga^[2] tweeted the screenshots, which were dated 2018, gaining over 1,000 retweets and 6,600 likes (shown below).

Bocchi apologized on Twitter,^[3] saying she was attempting to be an edgy teen and was not a racist (shown below).

Twitter users commented upon the story by pointing out the absurdity of common Smash community drama. User @toph_bbq^[4] tweeted a summary of the events and "I'm done with this community," gaining over 1,800 retweets and 10,000 likes (shown below, left). User @2RPSoCal^[5] joked that Bocchi had completed "the 100% speedrun of being a pro smash player" gaining over 1,000 retweets and 6,000 likes (shown below, right).

The controversy was covered by Omni on YouTube (shown below) and Daily Dot.^[6]

Search Interest

External References