Now I’ll be the first to admit that I am a sore loser. I don’t take losing well in competitive environments- I never have.

That being said, I do not understand flaming teammates as a strategy. I’m having games where I see people being torn into after a perceived mistake during the first round and things just spiral from then on. Everybody is quickly tilted and a winnable game is completely thrown because we are too angry at each other to coordinate.

I’ve gone from Bronze 1 to Gold 1 in the last 2 months, and as I make my way upward I’ve noticed that while the quality of players has steadily increased the quality of human being has followed an inverse trend.

Two games ago I played with a duo who both used to be platinum, but as I later learned had lost 18 out of their last 19 games and they were PISSED. They didn’t belong here. I died trying to clutch clutch a few rounds in, then proceeded to clutch 4 rounds and continue the game- but I didn’t hear the end of it. After a while I did get frustrated and just flamed them both down to dissecting their dorky midwestern accents and letting them know that I was fragging over them and like schoolyard bullies facing the first sign of self defense they got a lot quieter.

And then everybody clapped- actually not at all. We just quietly lost a frustratingly winnable game because two vertebrates with an ego problem couldn’t say the right things.