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If you're trying to reform, you might be looking at it the wrong way.

Turtles Are Okay·6/19/2019, 6:01:48 AM·1 votes·2,057 views

In my job, I get to understand humans at a very raw level, what drives us, what makes us who we are and why we do the things we do. While I've never had the direct job of exploring why people are very, very toxic in a game and I mean that kind of toxic where your favorite sentence starts with "k" and for some reason you keep mentioning certain, well-known diseases, I've had the opportunity to explore much else and extrapolation could be done.

In short, to anyone that's seriously consider to "reform", as in, to better yourself or change yourself: don't. It'll be anticlimatic and you're bound to enter an infinite loop.

It is my belief and I've seen people turn around that if you exhibit extremely toxic behaviors to the point of getting multiple accounts banned and I mean for the worst stuff, not just being negative, that you most likely don't excel at any (or all) of these areas in your real life: money (safety) , career (safety), social status (esteem).

These 3 pieces are heavily connected to Maslow's hierarchy of needs as shown by the parenthesis. Your needs importance (although food is more important than, say, status) is constantly updated by how satisfied the other needs are, for example, although, at a base level our physiological needs are the most important, most people living in the western world have them satisfied where as an african child will not - the pyramid is different in terms of what's more important. All of this means that you enter a constant state of existential stress, the end-result: you give in to your instincts easily. Because humans have egos, anyone who disagrees with them, even if they will claim that they are open to criticism and "learners", nobody really is, will be shown the door. Humans don't like to be made to think they are not the main character.

Take all of that and give people supposed anonymity and what happens is an unchaining of the ego ("Ego Unchained", lmao). The contrast is that the more your needs are satisfied, or rather you believe they are, even if you're lying to yourself, the less likely you are to give in to instinct and react the way some extreme people do.

We all have these thoughts, but we choose not to give in -- almost exclusively because our needs are met and we don't care about engaging in these behaviors that are so raw.

As such, trying to suppress your behaviors in an artificial way will never work and even if, say, you manage not to get banned on your new account, the stress is still there and eventually you snap back, you lash out somewhere. It might not be in League, but somewhere, you'll be searching for that release.

First: fix whatever is in your life that's going wrong. It's the only way.

Second: only spend as much money as you're willing to lose when you eventually get banned again.

I was perma-banned myself and looking back, I was trying to make it even bigger in my life at the time and I was extremely stressed. This meant I had no patience for others and this translated into me saying different things in my games that I'm not proud but they weren't the worst. Now I mostly complain because now I don't have time to play as much as I did before and when something wrong happens, it irks me that my short free time was wasted. It all comes from something else. It's not League itself, although the system seems to have been built to maximize tilt potential, but you. This is not to agree with everyone that's said "it's you, not your team" because that's just sugar talk used by people with an agenda but rather to recognize that your complex behaviors are rippled from very raw places.

Good luck.

8 Comments

Umbral Regent6/19/2019, 6:56:22 AM2 votes

For the largest part, I disagree with what you're saying, although there are aspects that I do agree with.

I can see how the Hierarchy of Needs can play into exacerbating stressors in League and causing people to lash out, and - while I disagree that it's the only way to alleviate the issue - I do agree that it's worthwhile to try and fix those external factors that would cause one undue stress.

What I strongly disagree with, though, is this;

In short, to anyone that's seriously consider to "reform", as in, to better yourself or change yourself: don't. It'll be anticlimatic and you're bound to enter an infinite loop.

Reform and personal change are absolutely things people should be striving for, especially if where they are presently is unenjoyable to them or harmful to their ability to exist in social situations. Sure, sometimes the ultimate results will be difficult to notice, but that far from guarantees that it'll be anticlimactic or result in an infinite loop of trying and failing.

The main issue with reform/personal change is that success hinges entirely on the individual's desire to change. My grandma always told me this, and it rings true to this day; "nobody can change you but you." And if someone doesn't commit themselves to whatever change they're shooting for, then they're not going to change. That's anticlimactic, and it's a result of poor dedication.

At the end of the day, sure, it's better to prioritize maintaining mental and physical health and personal well-being over personal change, but that doesn't mean the latter should be excluded.

Second: only spend as much money as you're willing to lose when you eventually get banned again.

This, to me, is a terrible mindset to have. You're setting this ultimatum for yourself and others that there can be no success, that no matter what, you'll inevitably snap and lose your account again, and so you should prepare for that eventuality by not spending so much that you'd pain yourself for the loss.

It's unrealistic, overly cynical, and it helps nothing, especially when reform is well within the realm of possibility. People have changed from being toxic and have since kept stable accounts without getting banned again. All it takes is dedication.

Oleandervine6/19/2019, 7:26:23 PM1 votes

I played League when I didn't have a very high paying job and when I didn't have a lot of flexible money, and I've never been a raging dick online. League is built in such a way that the outside world can't really matter because of the constant mental investment you have to input into League - in short, you've got to tone out and enter the zone to play in League, and that means you're more often than not going to put reality on the backburner while you manage your character in game. So the assessment that Maslow's Hierarchy is affecting your behavior in the game is not a very good assessment, as the immersion in the game would basically nullify your attunement to the Hierarchy of needs. Furthermore, to play a game like League, you HAVE to have some established needs fulfilled in the hierarchy, because you wouldn't have the time or opportunity to leisurely play League otherwise. So again, trying to apply Maslow's Hierarchy to League doesn't really work as the leisure activity in and of itself requires a lot of your hierarchal needs to already have been met to a degree.

The truth of the matter is that some people are just not mentally resilient, and let their emotions get the best of them. This is because they're undisciplined or they're spoiled and grew up thinking that they could get whatever they want without consequence.