Enrique “Maister” Hernández Solís has been playing competitive Super Smash Bros. for almost three years now. But as a top player in the Ultimate scene, he has faced plenty of hate and criticism from the game’s community for anything from using Mr. Game and Watch to posting memes on social media.
But as he continues to grow as a personality within the Smash community, his patience for the negative interactions has been worn down to the point where he has decided to limit his social media presence.
Maister is currently ranked as the sixth best player in the world on the PGRU rankings and is the best Mr. Game and Watch player in Ultimate. He was the first player to push the character to top results, even challenging MKLeo several times in top cuts at the biggest tournaments in the world.
And as someone who jumped from being unranked to a top 10 player in the newest Smash game, Maister feels like a lot of this hate is only being directed at him because he started performing well at tournaments.
“Ever since I started placing well at tournaments, I have been having to deal with hate, insults, people mocking me for different reasons, receiving jokes or mean comments in person or even people coming to my streams only to insult me,” Maister said. “The reality is, ignoring sometimes isn’t enough. I’ve started blocking people a while ago to try to have this less on my twitter feed. Regardless, this is still a [frequent] occurrence.”
Maister continues to be a dominant force in Ultimate and has started creating more content on the side, which has led to more opportunities for the various hateful comments to come through outside of just Twitter.
None of this is new, since Maister has constantly been mocked for using Mr. Game and Watch, a character that many in the community feel is “boring,” which is something he has made light of in the past.
“I don’t know if this is the reason as to why I receive so much hate,” Maister said. “And if you wanna tell me it is because of the character I play and because of the way I play, I legitimately couldn’t care less about it. I play to win, I play to try and be the best at every tournament I compete. If I have to play aggressively, if I have to be defensive, if I have to timeout or whatever, I WILL do it and I don’t care if I receive hate for it. I care when the hate gets to me as a person and people start associating my play to my person.”
He does go on to thank his supporters, which he calls Flat Gang in reference to his character, for being supportive through the tough times and keeping his spirits high while affirming that he will not be changing anything about his style of play or how he carries himself.
Outside of promoting his streams, videos, and other endeavors, Maister will be taking a step back from social media in order to help his own mental health and focus on improving his content and play.
