Am I the Strawman?

So there's this article series on "Commander's Herald" called "Am I the Bolas?". The author is Mark Carbonza or Mike Carroza (I have no idea why he is using a different name for the article versus his account name). He takes submissions from readers who are basically asking the question "Am I the Asshole?" within the realm of playing Commander/EDH. Then he gives a verdict and follows up with a list of premises for why he came to that verdict.

I'm not saying that no one should read these articles. I think they're good and that his premises and conclusions are usually on-point. I submitted two stories to him, in fact. While I didn't have any problem being labeled "The Bolas" in the first one, where I tell the story of why I brewed a salt-inducing Sen Triplets deck to get back at my playgroup, I take issue with how he responded to the second one, where I lay out that I'm dropping all proxy use and want my playgroup to as well.

That article is here: https://commandersherald.com/am-i-the-bolas-slippery-slope/

My issue here is that I was disgustingly misrepresented. How? I made it very clear that my core concern was a precedent being set. He made it very clear that he understood this, by titling the article as "Slippery Slope". Despite clearly understanding that, the premises he lined out demonstrated an attempt to malign me as if he did not. The comment section was then littered with a slew of others committing the same disingenuous charges.

In my submission, I expressed very clearly that my issue was with a precedent that was being set and not the particular situation itself. Despite that, it didn't stop Marik Costanzo and many others in the comments from misrepresenting me as someone who was being petty about the situation itself. This is a nasty strawman fallacy.

There were particularly nasty comments of users suggesting that I'm in dissonance because I play fast K'rrik and have an issue with Slime Against Humanity. This charge is ironic, since I used Shadowborn Apostle as an example to express exactly otherwise. I stated that a Shadowborn Apostle deck doesn't exactly move us into cEDH, but that the precedent is there nonetheless. So how Mork Moronzo or any of his brain-dead readers came to the opposite conclusion, I have no idea. Strawmen abound, I guess.

Then my narrative about tacky proxies got twisted into me somehow being a money-snob instead of the immersion break I expressed that it was to me. As far as that goes, I wouldn't care if he spent 5 cents on his proxies or even printed them on paper. Anything but backwards cards and scribbled-on paper. I had expressed that our budget limits are what keep our meta grounded. Setting the precedent that we can just sling backwards cards & scribbled-on paper as proxies threatens that, because if we can break through that barrier, we will push to others and break them too. I mean, that's what a slippery-slope is and I made it abundantly clear that that was where my issue was. It's an immersion break and a bad precedent, I stated as much, and yet I'm slandered by yet another strawman here.

My throw-away comment about the groans of me playing fast-combo K'rrik were meant to show that I DID NOT like doing that to them, that it was a reason for me dropping the proxies, and yet it was represented in a few comments as though that was my play pattern. It isn't. I currently run 18 decks and 2 of them are (Or were) fast-combo decks (Thrasios and K'rrik). In fact, in my first submission, I opened up with the fact that I am an oldschool aggro guy who loves playing stompy green. That I am historically a Sligh-guy and one of my favorite commander decks is Goreclaw. Nevertheless, now I'm known on Commander's Herald as the guy whose play-pattern is the opposite because Mirko Alfonzo has a strawman to slay.

Lastly, (And I have covered this in other pieces) when I said "No rule 0", I didn't mean that pre-game discussions don't happen. I meant that we don't bastardize the game in any way whatsoever by rule-zero'ing things. For example, if I ask them to rule zero that I can use Big Furry Monster as a commander, the answer will be a unanimous no. When we discovered that Ghostly Prison & Propaganda didn't work the same in Two-Headed Giant (They can just attack your partner instead), as much as we hated that, we didn't Rule 0 it to our liking, because as a group, our only Rule 0 is that we don't do that shit. 

It's possible to not use "Rule 0" and have pre-game discussions about expected experience and what's fun for everyone. They aren't mutually inclusive. Yet again, it seems Mick Garbonzo needed a strawman to swing at.

I appreciate the valid points that WERE made and I will grow from them, but overall I very much disagree with the picture of me that was painted. Those who know me and know better are going to get a chuckle from these charges as well.