Flaming and Friendship

The majority of Bronze players are not toxic.  That's right.  The majority of Bronze players are not toxic.  Most players will at least start out the game with a positive attitude.  Despite the fact that I purposely try to tilt the team by choosing off-meta picks in champ select or "accidentally" banning their pick declaration, they're usually OK with it.

However, once the game starts, they may begin to get more toxic depending on how things are going, but that isn't actually different from any other ELO bracket.  I do feel that people are more vocal in all-chat in lower ELO, and perhaps the amount of outright verbal abuse and profanity is greater than in higher ELO brackets, but toxicity exists in all levels of play, and is not categorical of just Bronze.

I think that the stereotypical Bronze toxicity comes from people hopping on the bandwagon once a player is targeted for flaming.  I intentionally make myself an easy target, and once one guy starts harassing me, others on the team will join in, and the inevitable all-chat message will invite the enemy team to harass me as well.  I honestly don't care what these Bronzies think of me, but if it were another Bronzie under verbal assault, they can easily break or retaliate with their own barrage of verbal abuse.

An interesting phenomenon that occurs is that people can actually become friends through a common enemy.  After flaming someone for an entire game, they'll add each other after the game.  I've actually seen it quite a few times.  In the post-game chat, a few players will let loose the last of their slander upon me before exchanging a few cordial messages amongst themselves, presumably adding each other to their friends lists afterwards.  Whether or not this is a good basis for a friendship is up to the reader to decide.