A bit of a rant (sorry!)

I just played a game of ARAM which just about made me want to claw my eyes out and throw my custom desktop computer so hard it would orbit the Earth twice before crashing down like a meteor of karma on a particular couple of jerks.

Our team was getting crushed due to poor coordination and a somewhat disfavorable teamcomp. It happens. No worries, it's ARAM. And I do not exempt myself from poor playing: I suck at Tristana, particularly AP Tristana which my teammates demanded I play (I was out of re-rolls and no one would trade with me). This game exemplified just how awful I am at AP Tristana. I expected such an outcome. Unfortunately, I was also able to expect 2 of my teammates getting toxic about it and spewing sarcasm about my every mistake, particularly when I mis-clicked my Flash and they thought I was trying to Flash the enemy to death (with Tristana, oh my!). I wish they could be smacked in the face with the irony of demanding that I play my worst role on my worst champ, and then complaining when I do.

This kind of behavior is why I never play Solo Queue anymore (I've never played Ranked, I'm just talking about Normal Game Solo Queue). When ARAM became an official gametype, the first month or two seemed filled with chill folks who played ARAM as a way to play something new, sometimes suck miserably, and laugh about it. But now people take it as seriously as the World Championships, never missing a chance to rail against any teammate who would **dare ** have an off day. So far, my experiences in Team Builder have been more laid back, like the early days of ARAM, but I know better than to believe that will last long without some reinforcement.

This is why I am quite enthused by RIOT's recent announcement of employing harsher penalties for bad behavior. Everyone gets angry at this game, it's natural with such high competition. If you get angry, do what I do: yell at the computer screen, hit your desk, whatever. You can't get punished for that and it affects no one else. But once you start releasing that anger into chat, you're making the game worse. You deserve to be punished and removed from the game until you can realize that playing is more important than telling that sucky player what-for.

I know some players have gotten upset by this move by RIOT, ultimately because they don't like getting punished for slipping up. But this game has been around for a while, and unfortunately its community has a terrible reputation. I was playing LOTRO the other day after some extended server downtime and when I logged in, a player in Global Chat basically said "Good thing the [LOTRO] servers finally came back up, I almost logged into League of Legends!" That is the League Community's reputation. That's a darn shame, because I know some really great people here, but those who act like jerks justify the reputation. It's time this Community as a whole grows up and acts like adults and not whiny, petty babies. If you get banned over and over because you continue trash-talking and railing on people, GOOD. I'm glad you're not playing. Your choices are 1) don't do it anymore, or 2) leave League of Legends forever. Either choice will make this game better.

TL;DR: "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all." If you can't comprehend this simple *Bambi * quote, you have no business here. RIOT, let the bans begin!