ARAM - All Mid All Mean | A Perspective on Trashtalk & Disrespect

I have never in my 6 years of playing League, felt the need to go to the Boards and rage or complain about my fellow players, Riot or the game itself, despite the rampant, unapologetically negative and disrespectful behavior I have experienced on a daily basis in a good 9/10 games a day on the NA server (no matter the gamemode), but this most recent experience on my first ARAM of the day just after login has really taken the cake in terms of how sickened I felt afterwards, and thus, this will be my first official "complaint" thread about the community/playerbase.

Context

For the sake of context, swiftly following my team being aced in ARAM, I suggested to our Blitzcrank player in chat "Don't pull Trundle" (which is what instigated a fight that we lost hard), and as per the modus operandi of the casual League player, who do not take kindly to words that even REMOTELY might be considered someone else daring to "tell you how to play the game", he appropriately responded "STFU." I quickly hit all three mute buttons as per my own habit when these sorts of replies occur, and chose to cut off any potential further conflict between us in chat as I would imagine Riot would want (since of course, as everyone knows, the chat log is really the only place where meaningful offences can be made in-game).

My team seemed to agree instantly with my suggestion, one player even typing ^^. It was at this point that our Blitzcrank player chose to AFK until game-end, and as I had him muted I did not see any further comments from him beforehand but I can infer from my teammates responses that it was a certified "ragequit."

Now, if my day on League of Legends began with a simple ragequit and that was it, I would have been fine to go on to the next game with the hope that I could have better luck next time finding players with a tighter grip on their emotions, or perhaps I would just /mute all and stay silent in chat for the sake of my teammate's oh-so-fragile emotional states.

Unfortunately, the AFK was only just the beginning of what became a wonderfully unnecessarily negative situation. After the player ragequit from the game, I messaged in All-Chat a request to report him for Negative Attitude and Leaving the Game, both of which were offences that were easily provable, both to the enemy team (as the player just left and never came back, and my entire team corroborated my request) and to Riot's system.

Several players on the enemy team proceeded to suggest that we had somehow bullied or insulted the player enough to provoke the player's ragequit (as though the mute feature doesn't exist solely to end verbal abuse in chat by others), and that he was well within his right to leave, and countered my request by promising to report all of us instead of the AFK player, even throwing in insults and trash talk directed at me for good measure.

Food For Thought

I will be honest with both the potential reader and myself, I have definitely not been a model citizen in-so-far as respectful chat to my teammates in my time playing this game, and I have certainly been the catalyst for many lost games off the back of a few choice words that would tilt my teammates beyond the point that they could snap back, and I have to own that and know that I haven't been blameless in situations like these, and I would say this particular one is no exception. I'm not attempting to paint myself as the victim anymore than I feel personally antagonized for no reason after the aforementioned experience, but to my credit I have never once (although I'm sure there was always a case to be made that it might have been merited) been suspended or banned on any account of mine for any reason, with only a few chat restrictions to my name in the way of punishment.

That being said, what made this particular instance of player behavior irrevocably a justifiable reason for my choosing to instantly log out and not play a game more for the rest of today was knowing that not only would I have to endure one of the many unfortunate daily challenges of an AFK player, which is just an ordinary occurrence in this game, but that said behavior would be _enabled _ and _praised _ by my opponents, without a shred of sympathy or cordiality on their part for our plight.

**The worst part of all of this, is that this is hardly the first time I have experienced pitiless players who are so hellbent on winning and enjoying themselves, they haven't a second thought to consider that perhaps they ought to respect those on the losing end and owe them their due respect if a player is being observably, deliberately disrespectful (and leaving the game before it concluded is perhaps one of the most disrespectful actions available to someone in League of Legends). **

I LOVE THIS GAME'S PLAYER BASE. SO MUCH. [slayer-jinx-unamused]