Why You Should Feel Pity For Flamers

We experience it almost every game and it's super annoying. They are irrational and have to cry about everything, they treat you unfairly, they seem to have huge egos and not seem to care about others. Remarks at your bad plays are very common and they annoy you or even offend you, more than you'd like to admit.

People's reaction to flamers can differ. Maybe they respond to their erratic behaviour with erratic behaviour of their own, maybe they even go to the League of Legends forums to voice their opinion on how horrible these people are. But here's what you should actually do:

Be nice. Feel pity for these poeple. Kill them with kindness.

The reason why these people behave like this in the first place is because they themselves have been treated like shit and must have terrible life situations. These are people whose lives suck and the only way to deal with the accumulated hate and sadness is to express it in this video game where everyone is anonymus. They aren't able to do this in real life because most likely they have not enough intimate or personal bonds that they can share their emotions with, no one cares about their problems or emotions so they gave up on it trying to fix their problems or to connect with anyone. They spend their lifes enduring their pain in vague regret or even vaguer hope that something good will come along. The worst of them have even given up on that.

Of course you can't help them with that, you're only a random stranger on the Internet, but you can try to at least ease the pain. If your toplaner cries for a gank, why not just camp him to try and better his day, or compliment his plays, even if they are mediocre. It's the little things like this who can change the mood of these people drastically and even prevent tilt in further games or just delay it. Being passive-aggressive or even arguing won't make them play better or flame less, only the opposite on top of worsening their condition.

I know it's hard, especially if you have personal problems of your own which is mostly likely the case, only the luckiest of us all have no emotional problems. But if there is one way to break the cycle of hate, it's this one. Knowing that you've made the day of someone else better who needed it will make your day a bit better in turn.