We HATE each other sometimes (My own theory about TOXIC)

Why do we play League of Legends in the first place? Some may say to have fun, some for competitive reason (talk about grinding to gold and above), while others well they wanna kill some time after long hours of work or school. But what I wanna talk about is the common word of the LOL community, TOXIC.

Now, I've read numerous articles like why people like to rage or what triggers us to blame our teammates and all of 'em are TRUE. This time, I'm going to talk about some of my opinions of how do we start being toxic:

• The "Winning is everything" mindset

Trust me guys, I have this kind of mindset since I'm starting my ranked journey back in Season 4 (and so the rest of it). OK, how do I come up with this theory? It's because of RANKED GAMES! Ranked games are created to test the player's skill and ranks are determined based on his/her game performance. One of the factors that build up this mindset is the RANK TIER. During the previous seasons, there was this system called the ELO system wherein it is determined by the number of ELO. Now the rank tier system is introduced in the 3rd season wherein you win a game to earn LP, then win your promotional series (depending on the division) and once you win a certain number of games, you either advance to the next division or promote to the next tier. 

Going back to the topic, we want to win games because of the rewards (LP gain, end of season goodies, you name it). But when we start to lose, we tend to either be sad or blame our sucky teammates for that loss (even though it's our own fault for it); and if it gets worse we start being sour or what we wanna call, TOXIC. And once we became toxic, we spew out those poisonous words which may affect the morale of our team which means more DEFEATS and more chance of getting demoted if you are in a tier higher than Bronze.

• The Rank Tier ego

It's kinda related on the first one but I must say this is somehow true but this time, it concerns about our current ranks (for those people who completed their provisionals).

There is a common misconception about our ranks wherein Plat and above players means they have better skills than those in Gold tier below. Although we saw on the demographics on some articles about the ranked population, we didn't know how many of those top 1% in the Platinum community are seriously good or bunch of crap.  So, what triggers this mindset is this "ego" we had, that we are better than the rest of the dudes playing the game as if they're saying in chat na, "wag ka na mag LOL vovo" or "vovo ka <insert champ name here> uninstall mo na yan" whenever we see one of our teammate suck at the game. Whatever the reason was, let's always remember (myself included) that ranks doesn't determine the player (or summoner in the LOL terminology), skill and attitude does.

 (Please refer to the Darius chat)

• The BAD VIBES moment

Yeah, it is inevitable to have bad times in our lives including myself. I must say that this is one factor that happens within the life of a player whether they have problems with family, school, relationship, work, money or even our Internet connections. And if all these mishaps affect our gameplay, chances are we're playing our worst (which also means the start of the rage wars). So again, it just happens that there's nothing we can do about it.

So there you have it, this wraps up about my opinions or theories  about how do we start to become toxic. Even though LOL PH community is filled with toxic players, the only thing we can do is enjoy the game either alone or with friends and if you saw one toxic dude in your team, you can either mute that dude or report it to the GMs from the Tribunal, trust me they're very,very friendly guys. To conclude this post, allow me to share you a quote which based on the excerpt of one of JWittz's video about pronouncing Pokemon names: Before you start raging at your teammate, did you also play bad that made your team lose the game? If yes, why not let it pass? Save your anger for the real things that matter...

Like Teemo shrooms, with no pink wards or sweepers.

You know what else is toxic? TEEMO SHROOMS! AAAUUUGHHH!

If you guys have other theories or reasons why we start being toxic or you got toxic stories you wanna share, feel free to comment and I'd love to hear it from you. Thanks guys and see you the next one.

~Chas3R