A Social Media Experience: The Unexpected Connection

Hello followers!

I’m not sure how many of you know of this game, but I frequently play League of Legends. I always used to think of this game as “just a game” but after one of my matches today, I realized that it is so much more than that. It is a social media experience that connects me with people across the globe. And thus, my topic for today, is

A Social Media Experience: The Unexpected Connection

So for those of you who don’t know, a very basic background about League of Legends, which from here on will be called LOL (Ha). It starts, generally, with two teams, each of them having five players. These players can be invited from your friends list, otherwise they are randomly chosen. Each player gets to choose a character, and then the game starts. There are three “lanes of play” so typically two people take the bottom lane, two top, and one person holds the mid lane. During the game, your characters use six total spells as well as a basic attack, and they kill enemy minions, champions, and eventually try to take down all of the turrets and enemy structures in their lane. Obviously the mechanics are a lot more advanced, for instance, there is a forested area that allows players to change lanes to surprise attack an enemy, but we don’t need to go into that for now.

Anyway, I started a game with four other random people, and normally in LOL, whoever calls a lane first (top, bot, mid) gets that lane. But, people online are stubborn, and don’t feel the need to follow social niceties. As it were, I found myself calling “top” only to have another person call “solo top” fifteen seconds later (there had been other comments in between). I tried to explain that I had called top, and they were welcome to join, but after loading, as I ran to the top lane, they started to tell me to leave and go to another lane. Getting frustrated at this point, I thought about the typical internet bully when they use social media. It is likely that they were trying to get a ryze (LOL players will get that) out of me, and the best thing to do would be to troll them, since nothing makes an argumentative player more unhappy than when someone doesn’t try to argue with them. Henceforth, the only comment I typed in response to this player telling me to “go bot” was the statement “Long hair don’t care.” This served my purpose to sufficiently aggravate the other player, and eventually he just stopped talking. We both ended up staying on top lane, and ok for the most part. We lost the game, probably due to me. However, it was definitely a victory for yours truly, as I learned a valuable way to solve conflicts on the internet. And I like to think at the end of the day, this guy still remembers the name LuphosMoonChild. If he doesn’t, maybe I’ll see him again. And in the chat box I can type “My hair got longer since last time :) ”  Until next time? Until next time.