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My last game took toxicity to a whole new level

JG209·10/11/2014, 11:43:58 AM·1 votes·317 views

Playing in ranked I realize you will inevitably meet a lot of different kinds of people with tons of different opinions but when I came across two summoners in my last game who took toxicity to a whole new level i was honestly shocked.

Let me recap a bit to the champ select. First thing I do (as a friendly joke) is tell everyone my preference followed by "btw i love you all". Now usually I'm met with the same type of response or just no response at all which is no big deal as it is just a joke. However in this last game Summoner 1 replied "wow you're a %%%%%% jg" followed by " I hate GAYS". I actually gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was just joking. Until his duo partner (Summoner 2) came out and said "I actually HATE GAYS as well". Now it got a little awkward not because I am gay but because I have friends who are and all I could imagine was what if one of these other guys in here are gay and are having to read this. So I simply replied with "hope you guys are joking because that was kinda rude".

As we were about to load into game Summoner 1 says he is joking and calm down. We load in and Summoner 2 states he wasn't joking and that he actually really hates gay people. This is when Summoner 3 joined into the conversation to say "Gays have aids". I knew they were probably just trolling but in the heat of the moment I questioned their hate stating that "gays are humans just like you what makes them so different" and that's when things got really bad. Summoner 2 proceeded to express his hate for gay people receiving support from Summoner 3. Only after awhile when the game was all but lost did Summoner 1 step in to try to calm them down but that was to no avail. Summoner 2 kept at his homophobic speech asking the team if everyone agreed that gay people should be exterminated. That along with more crude jokes from Summoner 3 summed up the rest of the game. Towards the end of the game as we were about to lose our team starts yelling out in all that "Gays ruined LoL:'(" and "Gays are the reason we lost". At that point even summoner 4 joined in to make crude jokes about gay people which literally left me speechless. Game ended and my team left as soon as the match report came up so I got a chance to speak with the enemy team and tried to explain to them the situation. At that point they actually agreed to report them after reading their comments flaming gay people.

even with that though I was left with a somewhat disgusted feeling from league. After initially wanting to play through the night now im left with that last game stuck in my head and although it shouldn't it really bothered me that anyone could ask for extermination of our own human beings just because of sexual orientation.

Now I don't care or mind if you disagree or if you don't like gay people. My point is simply how they went about expressing their opinions. Imagine if someone on the team was gay and had to read that or if a person on the enemy team was gay and read it. some people are easily affected my the remarks of others and to go as far as to wish an extermination is the single most toxic thing i have ever seen while playing league. My only hope here is that a rioter reads this (I can provide the names of all summoners) and takes action because these player should really be investigated.

I do realize that in retrospect i shouldn't have replied and just muted them but I replied based on my own morals and for the fact that I would never want to outcast anyone as they might have had there been someone who was gay.

I tried making a post on reddit as well but they removed it so here I am.

2 Comments

Sadistic Cheese10/11/2014, 1:02:34 PM2 votes

Some people....

I understand where you're coming from, OP. I'm in the same boat. I'm not gay, but I have gay friends and they've been some of the nicest, most supportive people I've met. I'm usually never really bothered when stuff like that is said, but I typically point out that what they're saying isn't funny and some people could find that stuff offensive.

Sadly, people like that tend to represent what happened to humor on the internet and in certain places in the real world: it's very difficult to craft real, honest humor without insulting someone or a group. It's too hard, so they go for the low-hanging, often crass, fruit to make themselves and others laugh. Most people would consider fart jokes the lowest form of humor; I'd consider bashing on a minority by someone who isn't of it the lowest. (yes, there is a difference. Being of your cultural or ethnic background, you can offer unique thoughts and insights into it. Someone not of that background can only repeat the same, boring cliches. This is bad in ADDITION to the fact that it's really just not morally right. If you must make fun, making fun of your own people means you're making fun of yourself too, so while you probably shouldn't do it, it's at least a little more acceptable due to less hubris.)

Personally I work on a theory of 'give and take'. Meaning I may have a laugh at Brian from Family Guy quipping at Stewie in a musical number about how "I'd bet money/you'll marry a honey/who's cute and who's funny/and her name will be Ted." "Oh a gay joke." "aaah, I just work with what you give me." but I'm also more than willing to let you have a laugh when someone takes the occasional potshot at overweight people, or white people, or nerds. It's only fair and frankly we as a species called humans have evolved to a point where we poke fun at each other on occasion and it's good for us, every so often and not in a genuinely mean way, to be able to take that humor and possibly even learn to laugh at ourselves.

Contrary to what people around here may think, having thick skin means not taking yourself too seriously. Being able to take the occasional honest joke that's not done out of malice. It's NOT about enduring endless streams of abuse because someone else finds it funny. When people say comedy is in the timing, it's not just how long you wait until you smack someone with the punch-line, it's about how often you use the material. I've heard gay/racist jokes a million times. None of them were funny. 99% of them are insulting to the people they're talking about. As I said above; the best you usually get is someone OF that group talking ABOUT that group because he or she has insights that are unique and different from the standard half-insulting or full on insulting fare.

In short they're just sad little trolls/foolish people who think it's funny to get you worked up, or possibly to insult gay people. Unfortunately you're just gonna have to let it go. Find some solace in the fact that even if they're not reported/banned, there's other people out there who understand what they are, and who won't laugh at their efforts to be funny. We don't get angry, we just roll our eyes and tell them to stop. Your best bet is to just report them and move on. The system typically takes care of people like that with worthy punishments. Genuinely hurtful comments aren't funny, or allowed.