Was this community as toxic in the early years of this game?

Before elo and ranked were a thing, and people just played normals? Seems like now most people care more about climbing the ladder than they do about having fun, back in season 2 I used to play normals only with a few friends and no one even knew what the meta was, now I go into low silver on my smurf and people actually dodge or abuse you if you don't pick a popular LCS tier champion.