aleph offers lame 'excuse' for cheating: "it recently felt inevitable that at some point I would satisfy my own curiosity"

Yesterday the NA community celebrated the news that Kiryl "SlooKy" Misiukevich, Enmanuel "SJR" Villar, and Christopher "aleph" Froden had all been banned on the FACEIT platform for cheating, marking the first time in many months that prominent and long-suspected cheaters had been punished on the FACEIT platform. While the following discussions mainly focused on the individuals' bans, aleph elected to shake things up by making a post on Pastebin attempting to explain why he decided to cheat on FACEIT.

aleph's mewling Pastebin post focused on his frustration over the state of cheating on the FACEIT platform, stating that he was "radicalized" by "how cheating often goes largely unpunished" leading to him satisfying his curiosity and allegedly deciding to install cheats last week. Ignore the fact that this simply added another cheater to FACEIT.

Additionally, while aleph said he did not feel the need to fully apologize for cheating during ESEA Advanced and other competitions he said he felt "truly sorry" for dragging his teammates into a scandal and ruining their season. Notably, aleph seemingly did not catch on to how ludicrous this statement was after he previously had his chances at qualifying to a Major and having a career ruined by former teammate Damian "EMIYA" Boulware.

aleph's full post reads:

Not an excuse, but through this experience, I’ve realized that overexposure can normalize almost any behavior. The lack of recent bans, along with the visibility of other highlighted players in the domestic scene, really radicalized my mindset. After thousands of hours witnessing firsthand how cheating often goes largely unpunished, it recently felt inevitable that at some point I would satisfy my own curiosity.

That being said, I maintain that I only used anything during officials this past week, which has already been amended to the best of my knowledge. I’m not going to offer much of an apology, as I didn’t have the time or scope to negatively impact anyone beyond my teammates and friends, past and present. I am truly sorry, however, for dragging them into something I caused, and I can only hope this moment prompts a closer look at the more blatant offenders still active.

I'm not trying to paint myself as a martyr or avoid taking personal responsibility. I'm also generally an excitable person in competitive settings, which can sometimes lead to toxicity, and I probably deserve some of the backlash and hate comments I’ll receive. In that sense, I feel fairly ambivalent about the situation, though admittedly a bit dejected, but I still wanted to offer my perspective. To me, it felt like hard work and skill were being quickly eroded in favor of a more common and increasingly accepted way to get ahead, which I assume to be obvious, so I gave it a try for a short time and subsequently got banned.

cya

aleph's "nothingburger" of a statement has been received about as well as you can expect, with responses chiding him for feeling the need to justify his cheating with an essay while also mocking him for cheating in the first place.