Play random as possible and hope to open your opponent up rather than making educated decisions in neutral.
I mean honestly online this is pretty damn successful. So many people "just do it". It's sort of interesting for someone like me at a level above mashers and people who will just Yolo teleport or do unsafe specials right in your face, but much worse than players that are true students of the game and lab every match up and grind execution and weird conversions for hours on end.
Often, it's like I'm speaking a different language than the people that just commit to shit with no hit confirming and mercilessly just attempt to play their game and sometimes I get mopped up because I'll be too in my own head and trying to play some "sophisticated" version of the game and they're like fuck it, F4 soul ball, wakeup every time, here's am xray, I will crossover jump you constantly etc. Whereas, I'll then play someone more patient attempting to play footsies, and I'll do much better because they actually know what they have to respect with frames and understand my options in a situation.
Ultimately it's on me to adapt and punish the dumb shit, but sometimes it takes a couple of games to sort of adjust my approach and get it through my thick skull that they won't respect frames, or start stand blocking even though I've hit them with an oh on oki like 4x in a row so for some dumb reason I go for a low starter because most people will respond to conditioning but a lot of fuck it just do it players won't. Often though these guys won't let you play them more than once or twice, especially if late in a game you make a big adjustment and start punishing some foolishness consistently and they're like, nope on to the next.
Basically, online I think a high risk high reward, aggressive, lots of buttons and meter usage, lots of running and jumping approach can be really damn successful, especially in short sets or single games. I play lots of people with that style that have a few thousand wins that I easily beat and would call straight garbage, but it clearly works a lot.
If you want to play more competitively and maybe offline at tournaments, get consistent sets against high level players and just generally care about improving overall, a safer play style is definitely better. I'm not good enough to always make bad players pay for the silliness, but good players definitely will.
