The terror of "it's not meta" HAS to stop

I understand that there is a meta for a reason. It's nice to have some clarity that certain things will work, and when you expect certain roles to be in certain places, you have a better chance of putting together a decent, balanced team. However, there's a problem when a few limited combinations of champion, role, and position get so cemented that people freak out whenever something different appears; i.e. when someone tries to break the meta and the immediate reaction of their peers is to ASSUME that it won't work just because it's DIFFERENT. That is when we have a problem.

Now the context for this came when I decided to try Ashe mid (I like mid lane because it feels less stressful to me than bot lane), and almost every time I found a match, I would be either immediately kicked or everyone else would panic-leave (if it was team builder), or someone would dodge as soon as I called Ashe mid (in other queues). This makes it pretty clear to me that people are reacting to seeing something new without thinking about it ("Oh I haven't seen that before it's not meta it must not work bye-" dodge).

The few times I did find a team that would take me, I tended to do okay, especially in my more recent matches (9/1/5, 5/1/8, 12/5/3), but that's not the point. The point is that there are unfair standards being placed on things which are not accepted as "meta" compared to those that are accepted. No Ezreal bot lane has to call his scores in chat to avoid being kicked. No one questions a player who picks Darius top. But try bringing an ADC mid and by my count, ~95% of players will refuse to even TRY playing with you.

The problem isn't that there is a set of things which is believed to work. The problem is that everything outside of that set is assumed to not work, including the things people haven't even tried yet.

TL;DR Give people a chance to try new things. Don't be driven by fear.