The best way I deal with toxic players/people I have to interact with is by omitting attention to them.

Attention is far greater than meth for toxic players. Just ignore them and focus on the game.

I think of all the toxic ppl I had on my team in valorant, by 5-6 rounds in, they are either quiet or cooperative and nontoxic cause I keep focusing my coms on stuff relevant to the game like pinging locations. Maybe 1/10 continues to be an ass, but it's rare cause they still queued up and have to go through the game with their team to try to win, and it's rare for people to deliberately grief.

Instead what frequently happens is someone starts to talk back to the toxic player and guess what? You're just adding more fuel to the fire.

Toxic players are a necessary evil, especially for the softies out there (seems like a lot in this sub based on the amount of posts I see here). I'm a wholesome/nice player fyi. I don't like trashing on others; it is dumb.

Anyways, the reason toxic players are good is because you have to learn to deal with people you don't want to. Growing up playing in a far more toxic gaming era of toxicity (think 8-12 yrs ago where being politically correct and filters never existed), it helps you become more resilient. It's a valuable skill in life for when you have to work with irritating people, whether it be on a sports team, group work, actual work, etc. Learn to become unphased and to focus on the tasks at hand and you'll probably feel better not giving a damn about what some anonymous random gaming trash talker has to say.

Don't focus on giving toxic players your attention. Focus on playing the game. If it ends up being that intolerable, just mute and report them as a worst case scenario.