Mukherjee-Passner Effect

The Mukherjee-Passner Effect occurs when a player is accused of having bad personal qualities out of frustration by those who lose to that player, despite not actually demonstrating said qualities. The canonical example is the affable and self-effacing Eric Mukherjee being labeled "arrogant" by the Yale team, for the crime of beating Yale at quizbowl.

(The word "arrogant" appears to be a new catch-all term for "person I do not like," even if they are not in fact "arrogant" or it makes no sense to call them "arrogant" in context.)

This effect demonstrates Flaxman's Paradox, in which those who profess to not care about quizbowl are the ones who have their intellectual self-worth wrapped up in quizbowl performance and must slander those who beat them, but serious players who spend more time on quizbowl do not fall victim to overvaluing the metaphysical importance of game results.