Boards›Player Behavior

Reducing the trolling by stand your ground option

The JigSAW·8/4/2017, 4:05:59 AM·1 votes·364 views

Okay, I can already sense the downvotes coming for the simple concept of "stand your ground" which means anything but turn the other cheek and mute, but, hear me out.

I've taken two years of psychology, and in my immediate family I have a psychologist who practiced for decades. The inevitable conclusion of League's situation is that it is unstable and the current behavioral "penalties" are simply not going to work. People find ways around getting in trouble, using masked profanity or phonetic/orthnographic versions of certain words. Trolls know how to agitate you, since they can sit there all day and do whatever they want but if you respond you're guilty. This is the wrong attitude to take.

The concept of stand your ground is simple; If somebody attacks you, you are allowed to attack them back once. No hate speech, no death wish/threat, just something that people would say to each other. If they attack you again, you get one more response and so on it goes. The only person taking punishment, however, is the initiator of the first attack and not the person who stood their ground and simply gave them their own medicine back at them.

Example:

Summoner 1: Wow you really suck dude Summoner 2: Leave me alone Summoner 1: Or what you gonna cry? Are you a little baby you -expletive- feeding trash? Summoner 2: How about you go (expletive) yourself?

In this exchange, Summoner 2 is not penalized. They are clearly provoked. Summoner 1 bears the full brunt of verbal abuse and negative attitude.

Punishing the victim of bad behavior encourages the proliferation of bad behavior. League is a gigantic example of what I say because as you can see, the trolling and AFK and such is getting worse and not better. So your method IS NOT WORKING. It never will, as long as people can bend and twist the rules and take advantage of technicalities. Dare you say anything back, you're reported and you suffer punishment.

In this way, you can trash talk directly back while not being punished (as long as you follow the concept of no death wish/threat, hate speech, etc) ONE TIME everytime someone hurls verbal abuse at you and they receive the punishment. This turns the tables on trolls, and yes I know they have many accounts and such but even those who will downvote me, ask yourself this question:

Is the current system of player behavior showing more toxicity the last three years or less toxicity in your experience?

If the answer is more toxicity, we need to start having a conversation. If you think the game is fine as it is now, that's your opinion. Either way, stop and think before mindlessly voting and bashing. It is demoralizing to be attacked repeatedly and if you dare say a word, you get punished and the trolls never do. In life we have no "ignore/mute" button - we have to deal with it. This method is far from perfect but its better than stand there and say nothing or get penalized like we have now.

12 Comments

Chermorg8/4/2017, 4:18:39 AM8 votes

There's a difference between "stand your ground", in which there's one aggressor and one victim, and League.

In League, if you "stand your ground", you are subjecting 3 (or 8) other people to your toxicity. Further, the legal/psychological concept of "stand your ground" is generally based on the expectation that there is some irreparable (or relatively extreme) harm that will come to you. If you seriously experience a "stand your ground" desire over League, you have bigger problems than a ban (in that you have an addiction to computer games that you need to work on).

Please note "you" above does not mean the poster of this discussion but is a general "you" to anyone reading.

Edit: I'd also really like to see your studies that "stand your ground" reduces any form of violence/negative behavior. All it does is make the victim feel a little better. Punishing the victim of bad behavior when they are also a perpetrator of bad behavior themselves is a common legal occurrence - if a bar fight happens, both people get arrested and charged, doesn't matter who starts it.

Silent Gravity8/4/2017, 4:32:47 AM3 votes

I've had a couple thoughts on the matter, not organized very well. The bolded thought at the end is the important bit.

A. You will never be penalized for saying, "Leave me alone".

B. If someone has the specific capacity to respond with only one line of chat for each line attacking them, then they have the capability to respond with 0 lines of attack. If someone is unable to control their responses, there is no reason to assume that they'd have the capability to restrict themselves to just one response per attack.

C. How strictly defined would the original 'attack' be? You'd get multiple people assuming that the neutral line written by their teammate was an attack, and thus thinking they're free to rip into them. That would start a cycle of attacks where both people feel completely justified in what they type. Just like now.

D. How strictly defined would the 'one line' of response be? If I typed my retaliation out, but had a typo, would I be able to correct the typo on the next line, or would that be considered an additional attack?

D1. If you allow typo correction, then can I spend the next half-hour sitting in base, just typing out insults and then saying, "oops, typo. I really meant to call you ****"?

D2. If I'm typing my retaliatory insult, but get ganked, so I hit enter so that I can use abilities to fight back, would I get to finish my insult, or would I have used up my response with, "That's what you think you"?

D3. If I'm allowed to continue an interrupted insult all the way to the end, does it have to be a grammatically correct sentence or can I run-on for two hours?

D4. Can I type out the full Curse of Dunbar? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Dunbar_(archbishop_of_Glasgow) It's only one insult, really.

E. I'm spending a lot of my time counting the lines of insults directed my way, and making sure I'm safely back in a warded brush before typing my carefully length and intensity moderated insults, how long before it starts counting as AFK/throwing? Wouldn't the game be better if I just muted and concentrated on the game?

Nik Nikerson8/4/2017, 5:06:42 AM2 votes

Your example is clear cut. The problem is, most examples of "provocation" aren't so clear cut. There is a LOT of gray area.

Telephone Booth8/4/2017, 4:26:01 AM2 votes

No this just allows arguing in game. The point of not tolerating ANY toxicity, is to keep people focused on the game, in my opinion. Someone insults, you mute and keep playing, so youre not distracting everyone. With your way, it's saying it's okay to hold an argument/dick measuring contest in the middle of the game. He insults you, you insult him, he insults you, now you can insult him. What if you throw 2 insults in the same line? What if you spread your insult out through 5 different lines, but it's technically 1 insult, you just worded it in a way that it's lengthy and hit enter a few times throughout. Then they have to review it to make sure you didn't insult him twice before his second insult? Just a lot of ways this seems convoluted and not like a very clean, intuitive rule. It has to be black and white to prevent people's opinions from getting in the way and confusing things. It's simple, don't insult people. That's the rule. Don't be a dick. Ever. We have a mute button.

Also, if someone is trolling, and you insult them for it, is that okay? They didn't insult you. It's only an opinion most of the time when someone is trolling or not. I've been called a troll before, but I've never intentionally trolled someone. I don't see how this would fix anything. People would still troll. You think a troll cares if you insult them for it? Why would they stop trolling? I don't get that concept, personally.

I'm not gonna upvote because I don't like the idea. But I'm not gonna downvote you either because its an idea and youre coming from a place of wanting to fix things. You dont come across as bitter, and youre not exaggerating things, and I respect that.

Kitty Cat Tosha8/4/2017, 8:02:23 AM2 votes

This is a pretty long description of "but mooooom, he started it!"

The JigSAW8/8/2017, 3:01:26 AM1 votes

Well, interesting views and now its time for a little enlightenment.

The hypothetical situation about the standing your ground was never meant to be taken seriously, it was a red herring that was meant to get people to discuss whether or not there was more or less trolling in games for the last several years. That was the entire purpose. The "stand your ground" would get people to respond either negatively or positively and debate what could or should be done, but the real purpose was to see the view on the amount of trolling in the game.

From the responses its obvious a few people don't even think there is much toxicity in the game. Riot's publishing stats on trolling is about as trustworthy to me as the old Soviet Union having crime stats published in Pravda, sorry but that's pretty much the truth. Either these people are exceptionally lucky or probably outright lying, or maybe play once every week or two weeks at the most.

The fact people are posting more about trolling and requesting harsher punishments (myself included) means the current system is -not- working, and therefore we really do need a very thorough discussion on how to make the game more fun for everybody and clean up the bad elements. With that conclusion we also need people who are impartial and actually think in terms of what's right rather than what gets upvotes and popularity to have this discussion, so thank you for at least establishing the base criteria to work with.

scazzman8/4/2017, 7:43:08 AM1 votes

In all honesty. What needs to happen is escalated punishments for people who get caught provoking and antagonizing.