Boards›Player Behavior

Speaking In a Negative Manner About Someone's Rank or Win Rate IS Harassment

Best Ekko NA·8/6/2019, 8:56:45 AM·17 votes·6,092 views

Rank shaming is no different than making fun of someone. It's basically like making fun of a handicapped person because they can't do something that you are capable of. Telling someone "you are X rank so your opinion doesn't matter" is no different than telling someone that they aren't allowed in the same room as you because they are a different ethnicity. EVERYONE is allowed to play League of Legends and EVERYONE is allowed to have an opinion. Just because someone doesn't have a high win rate or rank doesn't make their opinion invalid, nor does it make it any less important.

Riot factors in all different types of data, including player ranks and champion skill floors. Being of a higher rank doesn't give you a right to look down on someone else or publicly call them out on their rank or win rate. It's a HUGE problem on these boards that I see day in and day out. Personally I don't think the moderators here take it seriously enough, or even monitor for it, and to me that needs to change.

Calling someone out on their win rate, or telling them their opinion doesn't matter because they're X rank, IS SHAMING. Naming and shaming is explicitly against the boards rules and mentioned in their post here: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/player-behavior-moderation/4LgZ2EwM-universal-rules

Hopefully the Mods will pay more attention to this, because it seems they are frequently overlooking it currently, despite how it is one of the most popular things everyone loves doing on these boards. If you are one of the people doing this, I hope you re-consider and change your ways. Calling someone out publicly on their rank / win rate without their permission is offensive and serves literally no purpose outside of trying to put them down and make them feel badly about not being the "perfect player" everyone wants.

From Iron to Challenger, everyone matters. We are all playing the same game and trying to enjoy ourselves. This is a public board where players from every part of the world visit, with all different upbringing, knowledge, and beliefs, and everyone is entitled to that. There are people here who could be rocket scientists playing League for the first time (far-fetched but not impossible), maybe they don't have the hand eye co-ordination, but know mathematically something is strong. Does them not winning mean their opinion is wrong? No, it does not. There are many reasons why someone might have a low win rate, and that doesn't always make them a "bad player" or mean that they have no idea what they're saying.

So please, stop calling out people on their ranks and win rate. We're all here to enjoy League of Legends, not have our feelings hurt because other players think they're better than us.

52 Comments

Pyrosan8/6/2019, 9:18:47 AM8 votes

[deleted]

Dukues8/6/2019, 4:41:42 PM3 votes

When someone in silver gets mouthy with you at the end of the season just ask them if they excited for the Victorious skin this season. lmfao they tilt off the planet.

Meh..... rank shame is not the same as racism... or sexism so fuck off with that shit. Is it mean? Possibly? But rank is something you can actually control, unlike say sex or ethnicity. Plus..... MUTE WORKS. If you can't handle chat then mute omg instantly you feel better. I feel literally 0 sympathy for anyone who gets tilted by chat when they can just mute the person and get over it very quickly.

Kanzler8/6/2019, 5:40:21 PM3 votes

My favorite part of the OP was the allusion that iron and bronzies are handicapped.

mikemcparty8/6/2019, 2:41:05 PM3 votes

Woah.... You just compared a low rank in a video game to being handicapped. That is a WILD JUMP

AYAYA Support8/6/2019, 5:37:08 PM2 votes

Personally I don't think this is a problem on the side of the "hater". IMO you are allowed to be a prick all the way you want. It's the basic right of free speech. You can be mean, you can be kind, you can be neutral. If people are forced to be nice, then being nice stops being worth anything and the world is full of fake people (even more so than it is right now)

Pika Fox8/6/2019, 2:52:19 PM2 votes

Depends on context.

If someone is saying "zomg, yasuo/yi is so op uncounterable", the fact that theyre iron IV -7098 LP is proooobably relevant.

Telephone Booth8/7/2019, 12:01:47 AM2 votes

I was wondering why this thread didnt have more upvotes from the title. But now i see its about more than just rank shaming. Yes that is harassment if you do it to make fun of someone. But taking a master's opinion on balance, over a silver's is just logical. When it comes to opinions on balance, the more masterful the player, the more credit their opinion is given. They have knowledge on counters, macro, micro, everything. You dont get high rank by knowing nothing about the game and just having good mechanics. I would not hold it against anyone if they disregarded my opinions on balance because im an average silver player.

LPelican 8/6/2019, 2:50:02 PM1 votes

handicap people aren't physically able to walk for example, but low rank players are just bad.. also come on OP, you are the best ekko NA who would ever flame you!?

DrDubb1/23/2020, 9:31:44 AM1 votes

I laugh at this because you said "reminding someone of their rank is no different from being racist". What? You do know racism is a REAL issue right, and that getting your feelings hurt because you're not good at a game isn't even comparable to a real world issue such as racism? What an ignorant statement, obviously you've never experienced racism.

Magnesium148/7/2019, 1:42:22 AM1 votes

Don't take this offensively but after reading your post I had the urge to reveal your op.gg but then remembered by negative 100% winrate.

DrDubb8/11/2019, 12:27:29 AM1 votes

If I'm Diamond and some bronze players tries to tell me how to play my champ, or the game in general, I'm going to remind him of his rank. He can get over it, or mute me. No need to be over-sensitive about it.

Metal Janna8/6/2019, 5:28:56 PM1 votes

Maybe i'm just toxic, but when someone on my team says "ori supp gg", my response is usually: "I win X% more often than you do, playing almost exclusively this". With the unwritten implication that if my pick really is suboptimal, then that means i'm that much better a player than they are to achieve more success than they do picking meta.