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This community makes my head hurt.

ApexInTheCircle·3/22/2019, 12:46:52 PM·1 votes·2,408 views

I play so many online games and League is by far one of my favorites that I keep coming back to. But I have to admit that I've never seen so many sociopaths in one place.

When I get extremely upset with a teammate who is feeding or trolling, instead of looking at what they're doing wrong I look at what I could have done to prevent them from doing what they're doing (Could I have suggested they build differently? Should I have ganked for them more? Should we have done a lane swap after their first death etc etc) And I really wish this is how more people thought, but that's not how it is. You have teammates tearing each other apart limb from fucking limb trying to alleviate all responsibility for their bad plays or screw ups. My lord the 2007 call of duty community was better than this. I legit wonder sometimes, what the fuck has become of us? When did we become so damn narcissistic that shitting on your own teammates has become the norm?

And for the record, no this did not happen to me, I play in the same room as my roomate and I legit sat there for 20 minutes watching his game where 4 people tear apart their own teammate in all chat like a bunch of starving animals for giving up first blooded and coming back to lane to have the enemy jungler come out of bush and die again. 2 kills and they rip this poor dude apart for 20+ minutes.

/rant

4 Comments

R107 Games3/22/2019, 12:54:48 PM3 votes

It's natural for players to get upset at a player that is actively being a detriment to the goal of winning the game. Competition is strong in games like this.

Just mute if you don't want to hear it

Red Mage FTS3/22/2019, 6:00:14 PM2 votes

I want to say that its a growing, universal thing. The protection of annonimoty brings out the worst in us online.

dnsup3/24/2019, 12:01:38 AM1 votes

But I have to admit that I've never seen so many sociopaths in one place.

Well, think about what causes you to play a game in the first place. Then think about what causes you to feel bad in game (other than things caused by player behavior). And after a game. And before a game.

And then add external, independent experiences - mostly stressors, but also "bad education" kind of things that lead a person to believe that certain situations and behaviors are okay because they are expected.

  • This isn't a trivial task for anyone's imagination; it's nonsensical to assume we can make sense of someone else's experiences, since we can't even literally share experiences with anyone. Small differences of place, time [age], etc. circumstances (money, genetics, inter-generational influences, ...) are compounded by time and happenstance such that even people who begin in a similar way may end up vastly different.

Here is something I think people should ask when they participate in a common activity en masse with millions of others:

  • "Is the observed unusual behavior of this group fully explained by qualities which are peculiar to the group? Or does it depend on qualities peculiar to the circumstances?"

I phrased that as if these two questions form an exhaustive, either/or-style deal, but they don't. A simpler illustration might be to point out that even some of the gentlest species of social animals become absolutely murderous when certain combinations of circumstances arise.