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Dear everyone who belittles and degrades other players

Shannon DeVille··4 votes·533 views

I know that sometimes games don't go well and sometimes people get steam rolled from lack of skill and sometimes its out of their control, but please be considerate that some people cannot continue to better themselves when they are being attacked, harassed and embarrassed by angry team mates. A lot of people may be able to just mute the nonsense and never think twice about how rude it is, but some people like me who have anxiety disorders can't cope with it that way. Nobody can control the situation if their pick gets countered by another player of even higher skill than them. If a player is not playing up to par, offer suggestions. Offer to help them get a kill or let them switch lanes if it's a decent move to do so. Don't say things like "this (insert champ here)" or "don't smoke crack before you play League next time" and report them for not doing their greatest. I am fully capable of games ending with 30 kills and 5 deaths or less, but not under the embarrassing and humiliating pressure of a nasty person.

I enjoy LoL with all my heart and have been a faithful summoner since season one, but please remember that behind those champs who are having a poor game are real live people, some of which suffer from disabilities and your humiliating words do a lot more than just insult them. You might not care when someone does it to you, but when I'm shamed and mocked in front of people who don't even know me from Eve, it makes it very hard to concentrate and do better because the first thing a brain does to prevent an attack is to disassociate from the issue and I can't control that. By making me feel like garbage, you're making me quite literally useless to the team who needs me because my brain is not processing enough to function. What's more than that, in rare cases if the conditions are all wrong and the harassment is extensive, your attacking and degrading words can cause me to have a seizure. I shouldn't have to play my favorite (and only) game in fear of my own team mates. I have always loved LoL but I truly miss the days where you could play and everyone was so helpful and supportive. It's becoming so toxic that I've started to have my service dog keep an eye on me while I'm in game because a couple times I've been so close to something that can endanger me and spoil the game for the rest of my team, all because someone chose to repeatedly belittle and hurt me.

Please consider what you're about to say before you hit enter. My condition may be worse than others, but I know I am not alone. Many people cave under ridicule and making them feel ashamed and attacked isn't the best choice to make. Ahri

8 Comments

Nyll Kiggers2 votes

if your brain cant function after a little flame, u shouldnt be playing any team games ever

dragfin121 votes

{quoted}

if your brain cant function after a little flame, u shouldnt be playing any team games ever

The new generation of gamers are soft and have little to no discipline, integrity and self esteem. This is the world we live in because so many parents were lazy raising their children. We have to deal with it because you can't fix this mess of human beings anymore. They see anything and everything as a threat to them and developers have given them the tools to abuse that threat and enables them even further down that path of life failure. The world is not a sweet and nice place and these people will find that out eventually and will wonder WTF hit them.

Corpin2 votes

From a different perspective anxiety can be instilled by parental abuse. Not every person you deemed a snowflake essentially is bred from lack of discipline.

There is a fine line either way, examine all sides before judgement is made.

Morgan le Fey1 votes

Mental illness is not soft. It is not weakness. It is not pathetic. Real mental illness is brutal. It is a nightmare. It takes what you see, what you hear, and what you think, and it twists it until it is unrecognizable. Those who think that it is "lazy parenting" and "no discipline, no integrity" are, quite plainly, either incapable of or refusing to process the very real horror of an illness that destroys your ability to perceive the world around you in a healthy way.

The world is not a sweet, nice place. I'd like to make it one, and I believe that it is every person's responsibility to try to get it there, so I don't focus heavily on the cruelty of a shattered and broken world. That said, this is a cruel, shattered, and broken world. By neglecting the impact of mental illness, you don't just contribute to that brokenness, but you also refuse to even try to comprehend it. Deep, profound mental health issues are another brutal part of all of this pain and brokenness. You don't know fear until you have stared into the abyss of your own mind and seen horrors worse there than you can dream of seeing in the waking world. Even worse, some mental illness is the result of real horrors in the waking world. Some people replay their worst moments - catastrophic, traumatic instants or ages in time that most people in first-world countries are lucky enough to never experience. Time and time again, when it's least expected, it strikes.

This is spending dark days, physically unable to move despite your best efforts because of pure mental health - not even necessarily things we can see on neurological tests at the moment! Not necessarily structural stuff! It's being curled up on the ground, screaming aloud at a horror that no one else can see. That's not necessarily even a hallucination - it's your mind creating the horror, even horror without subject. It's a defect in fight/flight that causes it to activate constantly at any little stimulus when there's no actual danger. It takes existing fears and nervousness and amplifies them a thousandfold. It warps your senses, hurtles your mind back and forth, and lays waste to your emotions. It invokes responses that make no sense, and pulls fear to the surface of your mind even as you know that there's nothing to be afraid of. To every sound, your body and mind respond like it's a roar of attack. Every touch, like the tip of a knife that's ready to plunge into your skin. Every taste, like it's acid burning a hole in your tongue. Every smell, like it's mustard gas preparing to torture you. Every sight, like it's spines crawling through the ground to impale you ass-to-mouth. You know it's not, but that's no comfort. Even when under control, after years of therapy, it doesn't stop. You just learn to "catch" it. You slowly, oh so painfully slowly, learn to delay your reaction long enough to trigger your tools. The nightmare is still there, and it still jumps at you constantly. The demons never quite leave. After a great period of time, if you're lucky, you get better at ignoring them, but they're always there.

That's what crippling anxiety disorders look like. They're not just "oh gosh, hold me, someone said mean words" like you seem to think. They're hellscapes beyond the reckoning of those who haven't experienced either them or true trauma. Go ahead - squawk about weakness. There, at least, you have more experience than people who have truly crippling mental illnesses and have survived.

Obviously, depression is less... dramatic. I'm not going to go into as much detail on that one, as I don't have the experience to describe it, but from what I understand, the worst depression is no better. Other mental health issues, again, don't have the personal experience. My experience with extreme mental health issues is only in anxiety.

Honestly, I dislike making such frank posts about this. I'd rather be positive, happy, and generally nicer. Negativity and harshness are not fun, and I get enough of that from my own brain that I prefer not to focus on it outside. However, I cannot stand people who continue heaping abuse on those undergoing pain they cannot comprehend. You may as well tell the folks who've been set on fire that they're just whiners who've never experienced real pain, or those who are starving in the wastelands to stop whining and go to the store to buy something.

Mind, not all mental illness is as bad as I've described. I've described the experiences of myself and a couple very close friends who've undergone similar trials. However, such disrespect is insulting and, frankly, foolish, ill-conceived bravado. Simply understand this: you do not know their life. Respect that, and respect your own limitations. You don't understand this. That's okay! But do not pretend that you do.

Airbane981 votes

Idk about other people but ill gladly take constructive criticism

As long as it doesnt make me worse at the game

Lauchmelder1 votes

I am a calm person. But if you give their botlane a collective 10 kills in 8 minutes I will ask you to "Stop feeding ffs"

Shannon DeVille1 votes

I love constructive criticism. I mean, my builds change every year on my regular champs because I'm always finding better methods from people randomly giving me suggestions.

NinjaGuy691 votes

My condition may be worse than others, but I know I am not alone.

I suffer from chronic anxiety too and by best suggestion is for you to speak to a doctor about low dosage anti-anxiety medication. Also, realize that it's not the end of the world when people flame you online. Don't take it personally and just brush it off and mute them. If you're having a string of bad games, just take a break and do something to relax. Turning off the lights in my room and doing breathing exercising or listening to quiet, smooth jazz helps me a lot. Good luck.

Lastly, I'm glad that you have a service dog to help you out and give you companionship. I bet he's a cutie (I love dogs).

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSVv6eBMXmLQB0xDMQ9o-Wk1E4vJueovgYgToVfxyohJBs1yqp4

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