Reportable Offense?

Hello! Mister B Nice here. Unlike the name suggests, I'm not always nice. League of Legends has shown me just how impatient I can be at times. I've never been banned, but I can be sure I've been reported. I mean, I've been threatened with reports enough to assume at least one person went through with it. Mostly, I don't use chat while I'm playing because it distracts me. But chat is a great tool that I check often. It's always great to see good communication, use of pings, friendly advice, and the occasional friendly griefing of enemies. But sometimes the chat is plagued with toxic attitudes, demoralizing remarks, passive-aggressive reaction baiting, verbal abuse, and abuse of pings. Sometimes even the best of us get sucked into it somehow, and we find ourselves typing right away with the rest of them.

Recently, I observed one player's behavior was extremely antagonistic- however it was done passive-aggressively. I ignored the player the entire game because I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of what was on my mind about the little scumbag. *Ahem excuse me.. I never said anything about it in game and kept my thoughts to myself. Another player, however, took it very personally and 'barked' at the antagonizer. Words were exchanged- where the former player kept baiting this guy into nastier and nastier remarks. Then the first player started cross-chatting to the other team asking them to report this guy. The guy cross-chats back defending himself and immediately comes under attack from the other team. Then the "antagonizing" summoner and the enemy team begin mocking the situation saying things such as, "so salty lol", "wow", "dude, get a life", etc... basically, the kind of passive aggressive remarks you would expect in this situation. After the game, the griefing continued on all ends- I was completely ignoring it but saw that it was continuing nonetheless. Everybody was going nuts in the post-game lobby. Fricken mayhem. So I went to report the player who started antagonizing our team- and noticed there's no real option to report him.

So I research- do some digging on the boards- and I come across this same problem being stated by players all over. Whenever somebody voices their concern about passive-aggressive harassment- the general reply is "just mute them". Hmm.. good point. So if muting is the answer- then why is harassment a reportable offense at all? It seems biased to distinguish between the two types of harassment in a way that literally justifies one by punishing the other. Especially in cases when the "other" is in response to the first. This might explain why the community is so toxic to begin with. Honestly.

Glad you troll-hounds got sucked into reading this because you thought I was banned and wanted to blare your tiny troll trumpets. Have a nice day. Sincerely, Mister B Nice

p.s.- I really do try to be nice. It is an effort. Maybe one we all can make.