League: just like don't be an asshole

Playing League of Legends can be a bit of an ordeal. You never know when you’re going to be stuck with just the most insane, illogical, nasty human beings who don’t know what they’re doing, don’t know what YOU'RE doing, and seem to exist in this warped reality where nothing makes any sense. And I mean that’s fine, you have a right to be weird and nonsensical, that’s fine. You know what I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is when you’re weird, nonsensical, and also a jerk. When you start thinking you can verbally harass your teammates because they missed a q on Lee Sin or they flashed into a wall or whatever. Like yeah that’s frustrating, and there’s this instinctual desire I admit to call people out on their mistakes and stuff, but when you start beating people down for it it just makes the whole experience so unenjoyable for everyone, including yourself. If you’re one of those people that goes into a match already in a terrible mood and you just unleash all of your crap on everyone else, well, I mean for one thing you’re making other people suffer, and for another you’re just making them hate you. You’re inviting people to start flaming you too for flaming them in the first place. And I see this happen, less lately, but especially when I first started playing the game—all the time. And I think some people really do want to start this negative flame war that just escalates, because they like seeing that they’re hurting everyone else, and they like having that sort of effect, I guess. People do go into games with the mindset of I’m going to be an asshole and flame everyone and it’s just what it is is a reflection of how you are. Like you can yell at me for flashing into a wall, and that’s a technical problem on my part and yeah maybe I’m not the best player in the world, but it comes down to me not being a great player, but being a friendly person, and you being maybe the best player on the team but an absolute asshole who probably has some serious personal stuff going on if this is how you treat everyone in a game. You end up showing us you’re messed up and maybe that’s a call for help or something? Maybe not, maybe you’re just trolling and you think it’s funny and you’re twelve. But we don’t have to put up with it, and the smarter players are just going to mute you and get on with their lives. I used to engage people who were flaming me, but I don’t do that anymore because what happens is it just makes me and you and everyone feel even worse, and it makes us lose the game on top of that, a lot of the time. I’ve done a fair amount of solo queue during my time playing this game and I have so much less fun when I’m on my own. Because if I’m in a game with a really toxic person, but I’m also playing with a friend, then it ends up not mattering as much because I’ve got my friend to support me and we can talk about it together and laugh at how ridiculous some person is being when they you know tell me I’m a pussy for not going in or whatever people yell at me for. League can be a really negative experience and it can be really emotionally difficult when you’re yelled at for an entire game and you’re verbally abused and whatnot. But it can also be a really positive one if you’re playing with people who are nice, and considerate, and cooperative. There’s no way to weed out the jerks completely, like yeah you can report them and maybe Riot will ban their account or something but that’s not foolproof and on top of that you shouldn’t just ban every jerk out there because they have a right to play the game, at least until they’ve proven that they just can’t be reasonable. And after that point, yeah they’ve lost their right to play the game, or at least they should. I don’t go into any game wanting to cause trouble, wanting to make people flame and feel bad about themselves, and that’s not even necessarily because I’m a really wonderful person, part of it is because I want to win. And I know that when you flame, you tend to lose more. If you don’t accept that, well you’re wrong, and you’re going to have a much harder time getting out of Bronze or Silver or wherever you’re stuck at. When you play cooperatively, and you play with a positive attitude, yeah it sounds kind of cheesy but honestly that’s going to help you win a lot of games. So you might as well, even if just from a selfish perspective, not be a jerk.