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A clearer definition of toxicity

A Cynical Asian·5/15/2018, 7:54:45 AM·4 votes·3,008 views

Hello everyone,

I wanted to start a discussion regarding the working definition of toxicity the advisors and members of the community have regarding toxicity.

I don't agree with all of Riot's policies and think they need to be relaxed, but I am thankful for forcing... I mean, helping.... me become a much mellower player in chat who usually avoids being rude at all or keeps it to, like, one vaguely negative statement if the person is playing awfully or simply some analytical criticism of their gameplay (i.e. "Your positioning is bad" rather than "Ur bad"). Makes LoL a lot more casual, which is nice and seemed to make me nicer even in other games.

But I'm not here about me. I recently saw a permaban thread where the advisor did seem to be in the wrong, but his stance did confuse me a bit regarding toxicity and bad language. I know, and I think multiple people including advisors have confirmed, that hate speech in ANY context is grounds for a ban.

What I'm confused about is profanity. If the aforementioned OP of the permaban thread I just read is being anywhere near truthful, he really wasn't being toxic in my opinion. A person genuinely acting like a moron can be called such. Both IRL and in game, calling someone an idiot for making a genuine mistake isn't cool for the most part. That's clear. But I'd say it's acceptable for most people if you call, say, a delusional customer at some fast food restaurant, well, delusional. Given that profanity is usually allowed in a sportsmanlike context (i.e. "Yo, that was a fking great play my guy"), wouldn't it be fine to rebuff a toxic player while using insulting words? I know the word "toxic" is overused by toxic players when flaming, etc., and an advisor did include "toxic" in a list of words that indicated toxicity in the aforementioned OP's chat logs. But no matter how I think about it, I think most people would say it's OK to tell a genuinely toxic player that they're toxic. To me, that's calling out bad behavior, not "hitting back".

Insulting words aside, I am also a bit confused about calling out bad behavior using "toxic" language. I try to avoid telling players that they're bad at all costs (I'm sorry, I'll rarely get frustrated and make perhaps one comment if I see a bad player. I try my best not to though.). However, I will call out rude players (i.e. ADC is taking an absolute dump on the support in team chat) and tell them, almost verbatim, to "ADC, stop being toxic". Or, I don't know, "ADC, just fking zip it idiot, that's not cool". Maybe "stop being a toxic pos". Insert profanity in the previous examples, and it'll be pretty similar to what I'll say to badly behaving players, in order of increasing severity. I don't think I've ever "flamed" someone back for being toxic per se, but I think I have spoken rather severely occasionally when defending poorly performing players. Where does that leave me? I'm a bit confused now. Maybe what I'm doing IS flaming back. Hell, I'm starting to have trouble understanding what flaming even IS.

As a case study, when the other team's Hecarim started emote BMing, I later called him a POS in all chat. Didn't escalate my insults past that and only made negative comments about the BMing like two times. Not enough in my opinion to even come close to targeted harassment. How do I stand on the Rito scale of morality? I'm lost.

Also, what's Rito's stance on dubious chat? I was really getting annoyed by Hecarim emote BMing (I'm sorry, but if Rito wants to foster a sportsmanlike community, "gg ez" and emote taunting really need to prioritized higher as harassing behavior), so when we were losing and a teammate asked to surrender in team chat, I replied by saying "we should try to win, I want to stomp my boot on Hecarim's face." I restrained myself from saying "I genuinely hope that Hecarim just dies irl" because that's just wrong. But when I said the stomping part, I guess I did subconsciously and unintentionally make my statement a bit violent. But I truly mean this when I say that when I used the word stomping, I meant the steamrolling-in-video-games definition. Now, say a teammate was disturbed by my language and decided to report me. Where would I stand? Banned? I realized after sending my message in the chat that "Oof, it was a bad idea to send that. People could easily interpret my comment as being violent, even though I meant to say that we should absolutely blow the other team out of the water and win in order to get revenge on Hecarim for BMing". Even if I didn't get reported for this, how would I stand on the ban-mater? Would I be able to explain my genuine mistake to an advisor if I ever had to appeal a permaban?

Sorry, I'm tired, so what I wrote might be very wonky. I hope you guys understand my point without it having become long-winded. If I somehow get banned because I admitted to some dubious behavior I displayed in my previous game, let it be Tantram that sends me to the depths of hell.

14 Comments

Ekitaih5/15/2018, 8:08:16 AM2 votes

I understand what you’re getting at here. I also know who you are referring to. I’ll simply say this: Toxicity is truly a person by person basis. One person that you call a “moron” might just laugh it off and not report you. Someone else might find it disrespectful and report you. As far as rules for Riot, they are quite ambiguous. There is no clear definition, as you say. But it’s not about making mistakes. It’s about having a pattern. Say you call someone a “f**king moron” for 30/35 of your games, vs someone who only did it for 1/35 of their games. The one who did it 30/35 of his games would have a harsher punishment. Out of fear of name shaming, I will not say the person’s name in the other thread. However I will say this, he’s had several warnings. Permabanning is used as a last resort option. He was given ample opportunity to change his ways, but instead he continued on his path of bullying. Using “moron” and “delusional” was only a couple of his many issues. Arguing in game chat is most times seen as a negative environment and as we all know, that is a reportable offense. It’s not conducive of a positive game and can be very distracting to other players. Blaming team mates (something he also did) is also seen as negativity and griefing. Ultimately you just have to be a decent human being and apply the “just walk away” rule. Mute, report, and move on. Ever heard of “The better man walks away”? Apply that to League chat and you won’t have any problems.

Tempname27593025/15/2018, 7:24:36 PM2 votes

ez fix: dont chat

SangreDeNoche5/17/2018, 7:52:52 AM1 votes

Also, riot outright lies about how reports work. They've been on record saying "it's number of games reported, not number of reports" but literally every time I've ever been punished, which was for the longest time once every 2-3 years it was when I got multiple 4 man premades in my norms who were toxic and shifted all blame onto the odd man out (me, who was not in their 4-man group.) That's how it started this year too but with them "cracking down" on toxic players by making it a grind to undo parol I've been hard pressed to get my honor level back. They said they would reset everyone at one point but after making sure that happened I logged off for 3 days and came back to my honor level sunk back to before the reset. Fuck me, right? lol