Well put!

Well put!

Originally shared by Jeana “MsDiabla” Steinborn

So occasionally I get really excited/passionate about certain subjects. I'm a nerd. It happens. Sometimes though I comment on posts, and those comments end up so TL;DR for a comment, that they just need their own post. For those of you who want to cheat, the TL;DR is at the bottom. I made it easy for you. All bold text.

Sportsmanship, mad props, and skills.

My opinion on not just some of the #Unight16 posts I've been seeing, but some of the #Unot16 posts about who "won", and who is "the best".

Also a little bit of my personal #Unity reflections.

As a whole, we tend to take things far too personally with Ingress. I think this is because it isn't just sitting on your computer clicking a mouse, or crushing some candy on your phone. Ingress is dedication, networking, social media, building relationships, and hours upon hours of real life time and money spent traveling to move keys, capture portals, create links, and close in fields. Not to mention, a whole lot of cat hearding and the headaches to go with.

By both teams!

Before, during, and after Unight16 many of us, on both teams, were awake for well over 24 hrs looking at lanes and movement. Putting calls out to communities. Alerts. Arguing with a team, then learning something new from them. Gathering intel. Making new friends and contacts. Begging people for patience. Driving for hours. Mentally checking off who we knew had keys for what/where, and watching blockers and links while clicking refresh, refresh, refresh, hoping they didn't go down or in other cases that they would.

However, we choose to do this, and most of us have fun doing it.

For Unity our field got killed before it could go up in Washington State. Yeah. I could have cried. Between us we had spent hours on the road. My friends and I invested hundred of dollars into moving keys. There was a flat tire and someone got a speeding ticket. Not to mention our only non-intel banned operators losing electricity. Yet we managed to get completely open lanes minus one link, to shoot. Then, after we finally had an agent on the way to pull that one last blocking link, our anchor died. Field over. Did we fail? No.

Maybe our field didn't go up, but we fought hard. We had agents dedicated enough to make trips across the state and back in a single day. That is a 20+ hr road trip. We had people trying to find ways to get around Intel banns. Our iitc virgins suddenly became our best friends and most valuable assets, when before we used to laugh at them. Hell, at one point we were holding a traced paper map of our field links, over a screen with stock Intel pulled up checking for blockers. One of our newest agents even chose to drive several hrs just to revisit the place he had just been on for vacation, to pull our final blocking link. Knowing full well an hr into the trip our anchor had fallen, but still willing to do it for the team and people he had just me that day. Just in case we had the opportunity to get our anchor back online.

Yeah. I could have cried. Fuck it. To be honest, I did cry. Hard.

Just not publically.

First thing I did do publicly? Before even writing my intro to Unity sitrep? I messaged the active resistance operators/agents, who I knew would have been involved in blocking us via Intel, as well as those I specifically saw on the field, and told them, "Good job. Well played!". Several of them will gladly vouch for the fact that I did that.

Sure. I could have been mad. I was definitely sad. Even though the majority of our Unity fields succeeded, and the idea and purpose of the op went off amazingly, my home field did not. The field that not just I but my several of my friends, had invested their time and money on, did not happen. Our field did not get it's shining moment of glory. I was not covered in green. Did we fail? No.

In my opinion, and the thing that eventually cheered me up, was the fact that it meant the Resistance were watching us. That they had felt we posed enough of a threat and that we could possibly have the skills to pull it off. So they chose to spend the entire day and night countering us. All while dealing with the same operator intel bans, server lag, and lack of electricity most of us were. Also they had enough motivation among their team, to find a crazy ass motherfucker of an agent to a drive to a portal, during a storm front that was causing insane rainfall, wind gusts ranging from 90-125 mph, and earlier in the week had caused an actual waterspout and put out several tornado alerts. In WASHINGTON STATE! Game well played.

To me that says they had balls, but to me it also meant I wasn't in any way disappointed in the the effort put out by my team or our field not going up. To me, my team didn't fail. The Resistance simply succeeded in stopping our field. The point of Unity was building bridges between our communities, creating new contacts, and getting new people involved. Field or no field. The experience itself was a complete success. Even more so than what I planned, thanks to a leaky agent and intel banns which forced us to get creative. Many of the contacts/connections made in fact, I still see active today. The point of Unight16 appears to be the quite similar. Does it mean if a few of their fields didn't go up that they failed? No.

All that being said, I do have two things that disappointed me after Unity. Not specifically at my team, but at the Ingress community as a whole.

The first being that we didn't feel OK about making a post for our field attempt. Publically giving acknowledgement for all the hours and hard work put into it. We felt it would just be be trolled and ridiculed. Not just by trolls, but by agents on both teams. Many of whom we have to play with daily. Not that all of us care about that kind of thing, but those of who dont, didn't want it to depreciate the value of the hard work put into it by the people we consider friends and family. We may have been fine having to deal with the negativity trolls but not everyone is. We didn't want to risk disheartening and losing players.

I even made a plea in the Unity community for all our sites who were unable to get their fields up, to post a sitrep. Focusing on the experience they had overall in the planning. I didn't see any though, and I am disappointed in myself that I didn't have the courage to lead by example. If anyone failed. It was me, at the moment I made that choice. But it also speaks magnitudes about the environment that the G+ community's lack of sportsmanship has created lately.

My second disappointment? That I didn't see the Resistance here in Washington post something genuine about their counter op because they felt exactly the same way we did. I would have truly enjoyed them shining the light on their agents, who honestly, worked their asses off. Especially the insane player that pulled our anchor. That would have been quite the story, and I honestly would have liked to congratulate all the individuals involved.

While keeping counter op, and "failed" field sitreps in mind during global events, people should also remember that counter op posts don't have to include all the vast details. They also don't need to be a gloat filled post of "haha you failed". Just simply an acknowledgement of the indivuals your teams involved and a "Hey, job well done guys. Congrats also to the Enlightened/Resistance for giving us a reason to be out and pull together as a team. It was a good fight. Thanks for the fun."

Not that there weren't any counter op posts though. I was actually really excited following Unity, when I did see that several Resistance teams chosen to post counter op sitreps. Ranging from the hysterical redactions, to the honest "Thanks for the fun and congratz to both teams!", to some that were simply the "We won, you failed, haha!" variety.

To reply, and also something many Res agents can vouch to, I tried to not just personally hit every single one of the counter op posts but to reply to any negative comments from either team, with a comment saying job well done. Even the gloat filled "you suck" ones. It was importsnt to me to congratulate everyone, and thank them for coming out to make the night as fun and interesting, as it was frustrating. I even made sure to strongly encourage all of our Unity teams to thank any Resistance agents who came out to play with us as well. Pointing out that the major reason behind Unity, was just to have some fun. That included both teams. If even the Resitance had fun, then operation was beyond successful.

The response to me doing so? I got several PM's and reply comments from agents all over the world. Not just telling me thank you for being nice but saying that they had gained a respect for me. Although the Resistance made damn sure to remind me that they would still be smashing my portals any chance they got. Right Pony Riders? I even got a few apologies, not just from agents on both teams, but from some well known Ingress trolls. Yes. Trolls apologized to me... or blocked me, because you know. #TealUnicorns.

In the end both teams are out there doing... oh my gosh... wait for it... Exactly the same thing.
-Trying to make the next huge mass op to impress and save the world.
-Trying to keep it opsec.
-Trying to crush the opsec dreams of the other team.
-Trying to crush the other team's chances at succeeding to make the next huge mass op to impress and destroy the world.
Every single one of us can recognize the skills and hard work that goes into this game and the ops we choose to create. Every single one.

So basically it comes down to this.

Here is my TL;DR and what I feel, besides a lesson on how not to have the sportsmanship of a 1st grader, should be taken from this post.

*The best skill when trying to build or lead an army to save the world, is being able to acknowledge the skills of, appreciate the hard work of and most importantly, learn from... the enemy. If you just blame it on things like the sever lag that they also happened to be fighting with, leaks, or even just close your eyes and pretend the enemy put in no effort whatsoever. What are you learning? How are you going to step up your game and improve next time? Your plans failed? How do plan to succeed next time? Your plans succeeded? Good job. Now your enemy has their eyes open for the next time. Go ahead and choose to ignore their efforts and hard work, but next time don't count on succeeding. 

Afterall, the most anyone can do, is do their best right? Is there always gonna be someone better? Probably. But if all you're doing is sitting there looking down and comfortably being in your mind, "the best." Then you've stopped learning, and you have stopped growing as both a person and a team. Meanwhile the other team and the people around you are watching you and doing just that. Eventually they are going to learn all your tricks, as well as come up with new ones.

The goal that all of us as players, by the way we have chosen to play this constantly evolving "game" have settled into, or for that matter even the goal of life in general, isn't being "the best". There is no "the best." Our goal is simply this. Look at every situation, win or lose. Look at every op, success or failure. Then ask yourself...

How do we/I get better?*