Player Toxicity

This is something which has been on my mind a lot recently. Ever since I started playing League, I've heard about hot toxic the game's player base is, whether from the boards, from players themselves, or even articles on gaming news sites that will just straight up say the game has a "rampant toxicity problem afflicting players". And the more it gets talked about, the more I hear comments from both Rioters and players that the correct solution is to punish people who say offensive things harder and harder, to find ways to get them out of games, and to increase the number of things they can be reported for saying or even for having their Club Names/Tags being too offensive.

It seems like, in the Western world right now, there is a growing number of people who believe that we should have the right not to hear offensive things said by others. No one seems to appreciate the fact that free speech is basically the single greatest right and weapon people have against tyranny. And that's in any form. Tyranny of the government, tyranny of the majority, tyranny of a company who wants to protect people from "harmful" speech. I haven't seen a single real post on reigning in our expectations of forcing Riot to make the platform more "friendly". If our only goal is to shut down people who say things we don't like, we will eventually be left with a platform that feels oppressive to many who are afraid to say anything at all.

The solution for us as players should not be, "Riot, make the bad people go away!" There will always be bad people. There will always be people who will get around the system. And there will always be people in real life who you will have to deal with and who will say things you find offensive. The answer isn't to shut them up because you're hurt by what they said. The answer is to find ways to thicken your skin and to promote the change you want to see.

• There has to be effort on every one of our parts to brush off hateful speech. Hate speech is still free speech, and all you have to do is look at the news for 5 minutes to see it on display. Instead of taking it personally, make a real, concerted effort on your part to simply ignore it. Put yourself in their shoes. Has there ever been a time, even ONCE, where you have been so frustrated during a match that you just let someone have it over the chat? We are all capable of it.
• When you can't deal, mute. Riot has already given you a ton of tools to tune out speech you don't like. We have had the ability to mute chat for a long time, and now we can even mute pings. You already have the ability to stop the speech you hear if you don't like it.
• Make 'em laugh. Sometimes a raging person needs someone to put a stupid pun in the chat to knock them out of their funk. A laugh can quell a lot of anger. No, it doesn't always work, and some people just like to be inflammatory, but that's the internet for you. It'll always be there. And even if they don't stop, you're having a good time and cheering your teammates up, who are just as frustrated with your annoying teammate as you are.
• Be the cool one. The thing is, a raging, venom-spewing summoner will often bring out the ire of all his teammates. I've seen it time and again where the jungler blames the bot laner, or the top laner complains about lack of ganks, and all it takes is the one guy who is being blamed to take the bait, and suddenly it isn't just the two of you duking it out, EVERY TEAM MEMBER now suddenly is shouting their opinions of who the worst player on your team is. RESIST THE URGE. This is what I mean by be the change you wanna see. Mute the guy telling you you suck, or be the guy who doesn't join in on the hate train. Seriously, so much anger in game would be gone overnight if it was just that one angry guy blaming everyone else talking in chat and everyone else just muted him and ignored him.

I know this was lengthy and dry, but with the way things are going out there in the world today, the thought of losing League to a bunch of people who would rather offensive people be silenced than learn how to resist offensive language on their own worries me. The UK just convicted a man for a joke video he made on YouTube; China is currently banning books, words, and even the letter 'N'; and a bunch of online game companies, including Riot, just made a coalition to try and combat game toxicity. The power to fight toxicity already rests within each player. Don't feed the trolls, joke around, mute players...but don't try to silence them all, or we will end up with a game no one will want to play anymore.