The Power of Not Knowing Anything

Earlier today, one of my good friends currently level 9 (or 10 maybe?) was playing league and she asked me to watch her play and give her some advice. (Side note, I'm a terrible support and had no advice to give, RIP ME) . She also asked her teammates for help by apologizing profusely for her mistakes and her inexperience in a game that was pretty obviously smurfed up (probably 2-3 smurfs per team per game, or people who transitioned from other MOBAs). And, to my great surprise, the people on her team were very supportive, giving her polite pointers and general tips. When she screwed up, she'd ask what went wrong, how she could do better, and they were patient and kind and gave her good advice. And after 4-5 games straight of kind and helpful teammates, I couldn't help but ask her if her teammates are always that kind and helpful, and she told me that this was pretty normal. All the way from level 1, she's had barely 3 or 4 encounters with abusive people. Contrastly, if I screw up and ask for help up at level 30, people generally reply with "Git gud skrub" or "not my problem" or other generically unhelpful, and sometimes disrespectful and rude comments.

So why is the community so much worse outside of "wood division"? The only obvious difference to me is, of course, the number of games that people have played. I guess the general mentality at level 30 is that people say "I've been playing the game for a while and I know things work, so why don't you?", and for the most part, people get annoyed when they encounter somebody who doesn't know what's going on and needs help. In lower level games, people seem completely aware that there are people who don't know a lot about the game and that need help, and so people are much more open and aware of people who may need help.

So what can we take away from this? We all (I hope) want the community and overall response from our teammates to be more accepting of mistakes, to be more open to the fact that not everyone at level 30 is perfect.

I'm now going into my next game with the following mentality: I am not perfect. Neither are my teammates. And just like any level 9 or level 10 summoner, there can be situations where we won't know what's going on. So I'm not going to be mad at someone or flame someone if they don't know what's happening.