I've accepted (perhaps self defeatingly) that I'm not competent enough to play Ryu optimally, and this makes me shy away from the character. The level of complexity at play with him means I'm not really able to use him.

The key difference here is that when I say "Ryu's level of additional complexity makes me unable to use him," the mindset is "this is strictly a result of my own skills or lack thereof and perhaps one day with focus and effort I'll be able to," not "my inability means the game is unfairly stacked against me and people who take advantage of the higher skill ceiling to beat me are cheaters."

Git gud mentality gets used a lot to shame people in discussions of what game difficulty actually means, but don't be a self-victimizing bitch about it. Take my approach – either dedicate the time and get better at the game or shut up about it and just main Joker.

This image reminds me of a post from I wanna say Reddit where a guy would always own the shit out of his friends and they'd get super salty, culminating in their flustered insistence that "shielding is cheating."

I fucking lovehate the Smash community.