Going Infinite - I Bet You're All Surprised This Took So Long

Going Infinite - Magic Oddities


If you follow me on twitter (@dieplstks) you've probably come to realize a few things:
1.  I'm not very friendly
2.  I probably dislike you
3.  I probably dislike your writing
4.  As much as I dislike your writing, the amount I dislike the "writing" of Jonathan Medina is much, much greater.
5.  I'm depressed and pathetic and single, :P


Every week I look forward to the sociology/psychology project that is Jon Medina's article; the man is the Dunning-Kruger effect with a pair of lungs (I'd say with a heartbeat, but I'm not sure if Medina has a heart or if he traded it away for an extra foil at some point to maximize "value").  His most recent series about pimping out your collection/deck (also known as "The Magical Frat House:  How to be a Douche") serves to showcase almost all the flaws of the series so I'll just use his most recent one to illustrate my points.


1.  Medina does not care about the quality of his writing


This is obvious to anyone who has ever read something ever so I don't really feel the need to expand.  However this sentence is a good indication of the whole thing (and from the free preview):


"I had two trades going when David Sharfman walked up with the Counterspell that's pictured above. He waited patiently for me to finish with the other two trades"


2.  Medina has basically the worst tone possible

You know how every family has that Uncle that has that side business that's really shady?  You know, the one that comes up to you with the big new thing:  "Hey, Chris, I started selling these black boxes out of the back of my car, want to help?"  Well, if the Magic community was one big (un)happy family, Medina would be that uncle.  His knowledge of any subject is only thorough enough to (supposedly) earn a profit, but he acts like the wisest guru that mtg finance has (spoiler:  he's not).  Look at this fucking shining gem from the most recent article:

"This revelation might put you in panic mode, “If Medina can't tell us how to price this stuff, then who can?!”"

No, I am not kidding.  He actually wrote that.  Word for fucking word.  Without irony.  Without even the hint of it being a joke.  "If Flores can't tell us how to win states six years ago, then who can?!"

3.  Medina is a tool

Do I need to say anything else?

Flores Friday #1

Flores Friday – Ten Underrated Black Cards In Standard


(Note: this was originally posted as a comment on the article, but because the SCG commenting system is weird and I can't figure out how to make the post visible to everyone, it's copied here.)


This article is so bad. I would just quote some of the worst sentences from the article, but then people would assume I'm just trolling instead of legitimately pointing out how terrible this article is.

The main problem is that it's basically a set review of a bunch of cards that've been around forever, in that it's a list with some gut reactions and possibly a second-hand overheard testing result from someone that knows what they're talking about. Flores, you do not know what you are talking about.

Cards do not exist in a vacuum. Cards go in decks. Decks exist in formats. For a card to be good, it has to be good in a good deck at the right time, and what we have here is just a list of things that feel right. Here and there you might suggest what deck it's good in: okay, so what do you take out from that deck? How else does this change the deck construction? How does it change the matchup you want to change? What other matchups does it help? What's it bad against?

Magic is a game where sample sizes in testing matters a lot. Okay, so a certain card one you a specific game against a specific deck in a specific situation. So? That didn't teach us anything about the card as a whole. What card would you have otherwise had in that situation, and could that card have done something equally powerful? How'd it do in the other hundred games you played with that card?

The scientific method goes hypothesis -> testing -> reevaluate hypothesis -> retest -> conclusions. These are just untested hypotheses, and absolutely no attention should be paid to them under any circumstances.

Fortunately for the strategic content, it's nearly impossible to read due to the horrendous quality of the writing. This is a near-structureless assembly of anecdotes, observations, namedrops, and pure bullshit under an incredibly weak premise. Postulating about inclusions in the top 10/top 50 in a format is not interesting. Talking about how you "innovated" a card in "one of the most important decks of all time" is oh my GOD not interesting.

As a tangent of my own: "overrated" and "underrated" mean very little in Magic, because it doesn't tell us how good they actually are. It's not like stocks, where an underrated one is inherently valuable. If the common perception of a card is a 1/10 but it's actually a 4/10, that still means it sucks.

Flores seems to be under the opinion that people will read him just because of who he is and he has some kneejerk opinions, which is the surefire sign of the hack writer. I don't know if Flores is just doing this for the money, because he genuinely feels he's enlightening the general Magic-playing public, or to feed his ego, but it's beyond the point of a bad article into the territory of things that would be immediately rejected if his name was someone else's and the twice-per-article Chapin namedrop was "my friend Bobby."

Stop.