Are scandals like Niemann V Carlsen good for chess?

Well, I have to admit that the media scandal got me back into the game after a long period of time, and I have been taking it more seriously and having more fun with it than ever. Since I am not really "inside" chess I can't pretend to know what is good for chess or what isn't, but generally I dislike the current journalism/influencer culture overall. It seems to promote drama, gossip, borderline slander, armchair investigators etc. So it's a double edged sword like most things.

I will say that chess has always had stakes and a degree of drama correct? I think the part about this that I don't like is the whole "streamer" angle. There is something so disgusting to me about streaming for 10 hours a day babbling total nonsense to a chat full of lonely people who have a parasocial relationship with you. And then you just profit off of this strange one sided relationship, and also feel compelled to create drama and gossip and problems because more eyes are glued to your otherwise boring and ridiculous stream.

Make friends in real life!

"Any publicity is good publicity," as they say in Hollywood.

THIS ^

People are conflating the crowd that gathers to watch something- anything burn to the ground with "more interest in chess" and "good publicity". Make no mistake, this burns chess to the ground, and once the trash that loves watching things die is gone chess will be less than it was. Hans is like trump, he ruins everything he interacts with.

That's what I was going to say...

"There's no such thing as bad publicity".

I think it's pretty bad for the sport. It's now very easy for casuals to look at strong players and assume they're cheating. Over-the-board (or in-tournament cheating as a whole) wasn't well known to casual players but now any time anyone plays a good game they will automatically think Stockfish could be the one making the moves. 

I disagree. It might bring a small contingent of players in, just because the news generates exposure. However, it discourages many serious players and it discourages many people devoting time to chess.

What's the point of grinding chess when you know cheating is so readily available and hard to detect? I'm not a casual player and I wasn't even aware of how available over-the-board cheating is. 

The only solution I see fit is that Chess.com's sophisticated anti-cheating model is considered "hard evidence" in investigations. Unless someone is caught directly with an earpiece or a mobile phone in the Jacks, this problem will never be solved.

I don’t have an opinion on this. But if I hear one more person ask me in school if I have any beads at home, I’m going to lose it.

I consider it a sign of the times in which we all live.  Honorable and morally upright conduct is on the wane, unethical and miscreant behavior are growing exponentially, and as a result all social order is crumbling away, everywhere you look. 

I expect all of it to get much, much worse in the years ahead.

It's made the game shameful. Everyone feels great shame playing this game; even moreso than they did before the scandalous truth revealed itself.

Cheating is as quintessential to Chess as gin is to a g&t. They are inseperable. Quit moaning about it and relax.

Amen, I came back to chess.com after six years because of this controversy. It reminds me of those wrestling shows where they insult each other. I loved how Caruana fast moved Nieman and then just sat there looking bored like he wasn't trying. So funny. So insulting. And Nieman with his, "Well it must be embarrasing for him to lose to me." when he knows Carlsen can't handle that.

But in chess it's real. They're not faking it like they do in wrestling. It's so interesting to see this contest of egos.

Yes.

Hey,  got any beads at home?

You may be overestimating the fair play and sportsmanship in cricket, the sport I follow most closely. Match-fixing hasn't gone away since the Cronje revelations or even since the Pakistan disaster in 2010, it's just got cleverer. There's the occasional drugs scandal, and it's not so long ago that three players (including the Australian captain) were banned for ball-tampering. General gamesmanship, stuff like slow over-rates, complaints about mankading, sledging (trash-talking), the debate over walking, are endemic despite the occasional attempt to clean it up.

That's without going into the administration side of things, where the level of corruption and general disregard for the well-being of the game among both the international body and many of the domestic bodies is liable to cause serious blood-pressure issues for many fans.

With that said, in terms of his public persona, Hans comes across as more obnoxious than almost anyone currently active on a cricket field that I'm aware of, and Hikaru isn't a lot better.

Anyway, that aside, I've heard it said (by non-chess fans) that the scandal has been good for the game because it's "been in the doldrums for years otherwise". This is basically nonsense. From 2020 onwards, chess was already at its highest point in terms of interest and participation for about fifty years, and in a generally positive way. All the cheating scandal does, in my opinion, is discredit the sport, and invite a lot of rubberneckers to express opinions about a game and community they have no interest in.

Perhaps all publicity is good publicity? But I don't buy it.

I think one of those TSA scanners they got at the airport could detect suppositories.

Tell them "why would I leave them at home? I'm ready to play chess any time of the day" then just stare at them 0_0

It's good in the short term. Whether it's good in the long term will just depend.

For example in the very unlikely scenario that Niemann bankrupts both chess.com and Carlsen, not only will there be fewer tournaments and places to play, but it will embolden cheaters.

But as a more practical example, the aftermath may be embarassing for chess.com (even if they did everything correctly) and/or the legal liability may cause chess.com to invest less in online money tournaments... in the long term that's bad.

But maybe chess.com looks good in the end, and invests into harsher anti-cheating measures, which, over the years, makes their tournaments more attractive to players and sponsors alike. It just depends.