Years of Research

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Part of a series on Super Smash Brothers. [View Related Entries]

About

Years of Research refers to a series of tweets composed by professional Super Smash Bros competitor Saleem "Salem" Young in which he offers his outspoken opinion on the Super Smash Bros. Melee community of not being a part of the Smash community as a whole.

Origin

On December 23rd, 2018, top FGC competitor Dominic "SonicFox" McClean made a tweet about considering using the character Daisy as their primary fighter, or "main," in the game Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. ^[1] After a suggestion by Jestise "MVD" Negron telling McClean to pick up the character Snake instead, top professional Melee competitor William "Leffen" Hjelte commented that Snake "sucked" as a character in the game. Saleem "Salem" Young entered the discussion, calling out Hjelte for doing zero research on the game itself and calling out Melee players for only playing Ultimate to clout chase. Melee competitor Mike "Mike Haze" Pulido disagreed with Young for his comments about clout chasing. Young responded with a tweet commenting that "Melee wasn't even a part of the Smash community as a result of years of research."

The following day, Young made a Twitlonger expressing his thoughts in more detail regarding his claim.^[3] Despite his more detailed disdain for the Melee community, he overall apologized for his behavior and did not mean to cause another rift within the Smash community. Despite the reception to his Twitlonger being met with negative reception due to misinformation stated within the statement, some were understanding of where Young was coming from in his statement.

Spread

Young's comments were met with ridicule by the Smash community, with comments and macros often made in mocking fashion towards the line "years of research." For example, streamer @Stryder7x made a joke that gained over 1,400 retweets and 6,900 likes (shown below, left). User @hrcTypo also made a joke that gained over 250 likes on Twitter (shown below, right).

The tweet itself would also become a copypasta within the Smash community as well and would be posted to r/copypasta the same day.^[2]