it's merited. the majority of featured ghosts were as far as i know made with spacebarring (or likely an FPS slower or TAS in some cases), which makes things so much easier for ghosters for reasons already stated in this thread. being able to get a high level ghost out there while also handicapping yourself by not spacebarring is crazy to me since it takes so much more time, effort, and patience for a "good" non-spacebarrer to make a good ghost than it does a "good" spacebarrer to make a ghost. people like dblu and wrzod that were able to do this and maintain competitiveness as ghosters for as long as they have is an impressive feat that's worthy of them having an uppity persona in my opinion
spacebarring is just a different style. yes those ghosts tend to be on trials rather than smooth or long tracks. yes those ghosts tend to be flashier. but I promise you that most spacebarrers wouldn't be able to compete with nonspacebarrers on smooth tracks and nonspacebarrers couldn't compete on trials. a real good player is good at both and arguing that one is better over the other is silly imo. play how you want
He doesn't mean like we intentionally allow that. But sometimes we just don't have a way to be 100% sure, so it's possible. Like, if a great ghoster TAS'ed or used a FPS slower in like half of his ghost on a track, but we know he has the skill to pull the tricks off, it probably would go unnoticed. But we reject most stuff that we have more solid proof that aren't legit or ask for proof, like we did with some people like isekeb once.