In light of recent discussion: a post by Zach Jesse

I'm just going to reiterate what I've said in similar threads:

What Zach has done in the past is horrible (and even he himself can see that, as indicated by his post here) and is certainly something that he will and should never be able to live down. As a community, we are able to either push someone like Zach out or welcome him without question.

Neither of these options, however, seem to make sense to me. Approaching the situation from a position of rational thought, why should we make any assumptions about Zach's current behavior based on the past? The context of Magic: the Gathering tournaments is entirely exclusive from the rest of his life for the purpose of our discussion as a community and as much as you can argue one way or another outside of that context, we can only truly evaluate him on his actions as a Magic: the Gathering player.

That being said, knowing his past doesn't make me want to trust him and seeing his behavior as a responsible adult cognizant of his own actions moves me in the other direction. My gut feelings are irrelevant, however, since Zach (I assume) hasn't done anything heinous at a Magic event. To me he is just another player I may play against at a large tournament, and that should be all that matters until he or someone provides compelling evidence otherwise.

On the topic of Drew Levin, EFro, and LSV, I don't think they are intentionally trying to bully Zach as an act of hatred or spite - rape is a very emotional issue that many people have deep feelings about. To fault them for recoiling in an inappropriate manner when confronted with the fact that Googling a top 8 member's name leads to his rap sheet about how he raped somebody is absurd. They are logical human beings like the rest of us and simply have strong moral convictions of where right and wrong fall, removing a bit of that rationality in favor of the visceral. Their "witch hunt", albeit based on the assumption that Zach is actively dangerous (and who knows, he could be), is a reasonable human response.

At the end of the day, we should all take away that people are just pretty irrational in general. Zach did something he will never live down and that he had to have known would be dredged up eventually in a public manner due to the sensitivity of the issue, and those calling for his removal from the community aren't fully weighing the logic of the situation, instead reacting to their gut feeling that all of us get upon learning of a past as dark as Zach's.

/r/magicTCG Thread