Toxicity mute-able, report-able, and honestly tolerable but uncooperative individuals is far worse
I made this post yesterday but it was at 3AM so no one was up to read it so I'm making it again.
By no means am I justifying toxicity but I am saying that it is controllable. You can mute someone, mute all chat, mute pings, block them and report them but you cannot block someone that is not playing their best in the game. You cannot block a jungler that refuses to gank, you cannot mute people who are several levels down on the enemy, you cannot report someone for not listening to pings, you cannot ignore a 4v6 game where one player on your team is essentially assisting the enemy team. But alas Riot cannot prove incompetence but can prove harsh language which is why toxicity still prevails. If things like terrible players were taken care of (especially in ranked) then toxicity would go down. The source of toxicity is incompetence in the environment. People assume it comes out of no where but having played in a competitive atmosphere toxicity doesn't come from nothing. I played competitive soccer when I was younger where we would enter in tournaments to play for sponsors and other rewards. Obviously this isn't the same as playing League ranked games but the competitiveness is still the same. Since it's a team game we all had to have some sort of coordination and reliance on each other. Similarly there was toxicity on the field even with people I've known for quite sometime. Now, I wasn't the best on my team but still played decently well but when playing with the best players on my team I faced lots of toxicity. If I messed up I was belittled but it wasn't because they felt like shitting on me. I knew my error and tried to fix it. The difference between competitive soccer where my team mates are the same year to year is that I have random individuals on my team. Riots MMR system is so fucked up that I really don't know the type of person I get on my team, whether they'll listen to me, or if they're even playing at the same enthusiasm as I am. People often use "it's just a game, calm down" but with that mentality what is the point of doing anything at 100%? It's just a test, calm down, it's okay if you get an 85. But it isn't, everyone should strive to get a 100. Setting the bar lower for yourself is not only detrimental to yourself but everyone around you.