Is this punishable?
Okay, a little preface here: I made this account a couple months back and wanted to see what rewards I got on it. I ended up getting some really cool skins that I like, so I decided to stick with it and practice Kayn, a champion I love but am not very good with. I hopped into a normals blind game and this unfolded.
We got into game and all was going well - I was lagging a lot, getting randomy spikes of 150-200 ping. My internet does this sometimes and I can't really control nor fix it, so I often joke about the enemies DDOSing me. If that's, like, a reportable thing that people take offense to, I'll stop saying it, I thought it was just a funny joke.
My wifi seemed to be having one of those days - constant 100-150, sometimes 200 ms despite nothing else on my computer running and no one else using the internet. I asked the enemy Malzahar to stop DDOSing me, went on with my clear, yada yada.
Our Yasuo wasn' having a very good time against Renekton, as you could imagine in such a matchup. He died twice early on and then, being vs a Renekton, decided his lane was lost and went bot to try and salvage a kill (which I can understand, playing against a fed Renekton is just horrible.)
Our Karma then accused him of intentionally feeding (which he wasn't, at all) and threatened to report him for inting and flaming (all he'd said was 'how does renekton run faster than me without boots, its gg)
The Yasuo was, suprisingly, a pretty cool guy, and we joked around in chat with our Kassadin. I love doing things like this in normals - chilling around and joking with my team to help cool things down if people are losing and/or tilted, and I think it worked in this situation, since Yasuo seemed to be on the verge of tilting. Well, that's what I thought, anyway.
Fastforward a little, and I'm ganking the botlane - their Kaisa is very low hp and for some reason towerdiving our Ezreal. I completely miss my W but still manage to get the kill since she was so over-extended.
Karma passive-aggressively comments "my eyes", which I agreed with in chat, since the play was pretty damn awful and my ping didn't really help matters, ecks dee.
Fast forward a little bit more to the mid-game, and Ezreal is very fed. Our Yasuo and Kassadin aren't doing as well, being 1/3 and 3/8 at this point, but me and botlane were doing well for ourselves so I didn't mind.
Then Karma types this in chat.
"x9 kassa and yas for int/grief, x9 kayn for verbal/grief/afk"
I was kinda dumbfounded, because A. I was 3/1 and doing well in farm, and B. I literally hadn't said a word to anyone in a negative or harsh way. Up to this point all of my chat had consisted of me bantering with Yasuo, calling him a smurf as he makes his E dashes through gromp and raptors. Probably the worst thing I said was 'accusing' the enemy team of DDOSing me, which, like I said, I'll stop making that joke if it actually gets to people (not that it was very funny to begin with...)
That's when the flame started getting really bad. I couldn't do anything without these bot laners spam pinging me, and asking people to report me for "verbal, grief, and afk". I assume they weren't happy because I was farming too much? Because I made a few missplays? I honestly don't know why they thought that. As for verbal abuse, that one has me pretty lost too. Maybe they didn't like my joking banter? Even then, it's not even verbal abuse, so if it annoys you, why not just mute?
I questioned her, asking how exactly I was griefing/flaming. She responded by calling me a cringey 12 year old, thinking I was being DDOSed (when it was clealry a joke) and griefing by...not helping in fights? Farming too much? I really don't know.
It just goes on and on the whole game. You might question me on why I didn't mute them, and truth be told, I probably should've. Their mindless flame made me play worse and just get anxious, to be frank. But the two main reasons were, I wanted to know everything they said, and two, I wanted to see them flame me right to the end, so that I wouldnt forget to report them lol.
Now going to the post game lobby. Karma said that I was "soft-inting", just because I misplayed a couple of times and wasn't in as many fights as I probably should've been. Then she proceeded to point out a pretty sad 9 game loss streak I'd had the previous day - I had been practicing a champion I had not played in about 2 years, so it was unsurprising I lost a lot. I happened to get Odyssey Kayn in my 10 year anniversary reward and really wanted to master the champion - because I remember just how fun it was to play :D
She then says, "he probably does this every game." Implying that I was trolling every game just to lose? I didn't really get it, at all. The Ezreal chimes in, saying, "just report him, he'll lose his account soon enough."
Also, Karma somewhere in the game stated, "she's honor 4 so she knows how the system works."
This game rattled me because I honest to god have not met players more toxic than these 2 in years. The last time I was flamed this hard was when I played my first ranked game, ever, and wasn't doing well.
This wasn't even ranked. This was a BLIND PICK NORMAL. And we were WINNING. Wtf?
Now, I used to be toxic, I've been banned a few times myself. But for season 10 I've made it my goal to get to gold, and I consider myself greatly reformed. I like to think I'm good at bettering the mood in my games.
Can I be punished for this? I didn't verbally abuse or swear at them at all. I mainly just bantered and didn't let them get to my head and make me start flaming them back. The only time I really retaliated was when I told my ez who was hard flaming me to eat a snickers, lol.
I'm honestly super super paranoid, I don't want to get chatbanned. Even though I don't think I said anything punishable, at all, it's just...worrying, how sure they seemed that I'd be punished. This was really mainly a rant, getting my feelings out rather than an actual structured post lol..but I'm super worried that I might be punished. While typing this I received an instant feedback report (this one gave me the deepest satisfaction I've ever felt from an instant feedback report) and nothing's happened to me yet, but still, I'm sick to my stomach with worry.
Should I just start muting all in games and stop with this cringey joking stuff? I thought I was raising morale within my teammates, but I guess not all the time..could they have validly reported me, I just haven't been toxic in enough games to be punished? I'm really worried, I wanna avoid a chatban at all costs. I'm done with being toxic.
TL;DR cuz this is a huge wall of text:
I'm practicing Kayn on a level 16 account in normal blind pick. My bot lane subtly flames me at first for making some misplays, then goes full-out passive aggressive hardcore flamer mode on me by telling everyone to report me for griefing, afking and flaming when I did none of those things, and I believe they wanted to report me because I misplayed and was sort of afk farming my jungle. I'm super worried that I'm going to end up punished.