Thanks for actually reading my long post haha
This is actually a very thoughtful response from you. I agree completely that the LCS owners made a poor presentation of it. If you look at their history, they have never been good at gift wrapping their message for the public. Somewhere between private discussion and public announcement, you're supposed to adapt what you have to say, and at least from Regi I have never seen that happen. Watch any of his Vlogs: He stutters, he's repetitive, he's just not articulate. Making an impression is a product of PR, which they are terrible at.
One thing I've learned from reading your message that kind of surprised me is the different take on tampering. Morals are always subjective, and they're about what kind of world you wish to live in. If that's the world you find acceptable, then I can't really judge that.
Badawi paid $5000. From your view of him, it's obviously a PR stunt to try to show he's on the side of the players, building up community support to make him more attractive to sponsors as a public figure.
I don't actually know what to make of that. I have no idea on the context. I tried to look it up, but there's nothing on it except what was in the DailyDot. Certainly, even in the worst-case scenario that he's doing it for PR, helping people is still a good thing. QTPie donated $1000 to a charity on the front page and some people are crying it was for the publicity. But in my mind, you can't really be mad at someone for suspicious motives if the result is still purely good (although I think QT had honest intentions).
I think the statements were also handled utterly terribly by the owners too, which led to a lot of confusion.
I've followed TSM since the end of S1. I've watched Curse/TL rise as well. I've never seen these guys communicate well to the community. Regi knows the game, and he has a head for aggressively pushing his business. But all you have to do is listen to him talk in any of his Vlogs: He is not articulate, he's repetitive, he doesn't know how to communicate his thoughts to the public well. He's lost every PR confrontation he's ever had.
So I am not surprised they bungled their message. I think, and historical precedent might agree, that they aren't really capable of doing much better. That doesn't make them bad people, but it does lead to disasters in cases where finesse is required.
I can see why it pisses you (and others off). There's nothing really to say on it from me other than I don't think these guys know how to gift wrap a message for the public, and the transition from private conversations to public announcements can be huge if you don't adjust your message.
They thought it would back up their statement but it all seemed so forced that people started to doubt even the real accusations...
This was the real crux of the issue, in my opinion. They tried to push when they had no hard evidence to present. When you are trying to pull people opposed to you over to your side, you need some hard evidence, at least some kind of straw man, or they aren't going to buy it. It's trivially easy to rally people to a defense when someone says "But wait...where's the evidence?"
I think one of the main issues for me is seeing tampering as wrong; I feel like it's unfair to the players to have these rules in place and therefore it can make it too easy for me to side with Badawi.
This is possibly the difference between you and me. Above I mentioned lack of evidence. We actually have too little evidence on either side. However, I'm more critical about tampering. It's not the behavior pattern I want in the scene. I don't really care about most of the alleged offenses since they can't be substantiated. The real punishments came with Keith and Quas, which presumably are better substantiated, but we don't have access to the evidence involved. I suppose I find a narrative where, given the rest seems somewhat probable, these more egregious offenses are more likely.
That said, honestly, it doesn't matter. If you don't mind it, then you don't have to care. There will always be non-transparent practices in any business. At the end of the day, I'm not here to destroy your image of Badawi. I want people to see both sides, to understand the ambiguity. Just listening to your own point of view has given me a lot to consider on different moral interpretations of the matter. It didn't occur to me that someone would simply not see tampering as wrong.