I've been running this game and following the forums for years and I just have to ask... what is with all the "new category idea" threads?

I'm not even trying to be a jerk here. I am just genuinely amazed that this has been a consistent thing for years, despite the mods making it abundantly clear they will not consider category ideas submitted through forum threads.

For those who post these threads...why? Have you gotten bored with Any% and the dozens of other categories that exist? Do you really think there should be more categories?

I notice a lot of the ideas that get posted are basically just Any% + some arbitrary thing... so like, is it for memes?

Is it for clout? Do you want to be able to say, "I came up with an official speedrun category"?

Is it newbies who just haven't read like a single other thread and really want to create a category for one of the above reasons?

I dunno man, I'm just genuinely trying to wrap my head around this. I've been speedrunning for years and have never had a "new category idea". I feel like we have so, so many great categories to run. And if you get bored with SMO, there's like infinite other games you could run too...

I'm not trying to discourage peoples' ideas. I'll just say this: If you have a new category idea, just go through the following steps.

1.) Ask yourself, "Is this idea distinct enough from all the other existing categories? Or is it just a slight variation of some other existing category?"

2.) Ask yourself, "Is this a category that I can genuinely see a lot of people wanting to run? Like more than once as a meme?"

3.) If you answered yes to both those questions, try routing and running it yourself. See how it feels. See if you stick to your original answers or if your answers change.

4.) If you still think your idea is solid, go ahead and submit it through the proper channels--not through a forum post. It drives the mods crazy--and they're the ones who you really need to convince, so...