League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“Luocheng, come look at this Weibo post!!” Lin Dong shouted to Luocheng as he entered the house.

Luocheng had left Beijing early the next day to return to Shanghai.

The air in Beijing was filled with haze and smog, putting a huge damper on Luocheng’s mood, but that being said, the weather in Shanghai wasn’t much better either.

“What happened?” Luocheng asked, puzzled.

Walking over to Lin Dong’s computer, Luocheng saw the post.

Luocheng thought that the profile picture of the poster looked a bit familiar, and upon looking more closely, he realized that it was that diving f**ker from before, Cao He!

Luocheng read the post out loud. “Is e-sports even a real sport? If it is, then all us athletes would just go and play video games all day, why would we need to train so hard!”

This kid even dared to post it on Weibo!

Luocheng and Xie Lianda were already livid from the events that had conspired yesterday, and this retard had the gall to post it on Weibo as if he wanted the whole world to know he was against e-sports!

“There’s already over a thousand comments, this dude is just looking for trouble!” Lin Dong said.

Lin Dong scrolled further down the page with Luocheng’s eyes following, and they soon found the comments below the post that was exploding. They could practically feel the crammed jumble of words screaming in their ears, it was a riot!

“What’s going on, there are so many people commenting.” Luocheng said.

“Hehe, I’ll tell some other e-sports players to share the post. You know how many LoL players are out there!? Tens of millions of players out there follow every single League related post! Once this post gets into their hands, it’ll be one of the biggest internet wars of the year. Look, it’s still updating, and if my guess is correct, this little troll is going to get on Tencent’s trending page by tomorrow!!!” Lin Dong said gleefully with a wide grin on his face.

Bullying us e-sports players, even going as far as to talk so arrogantly on Weibo, this b*tch was just asking to die!

Lin Dong admitted that he had done a little something to make sure that the post was shared around more, but the rest was completely out of his control, and Cao He was bombarded with countless angry replies from e-sports fans all around China!

“Look at this one!!” Lin Dong laughed as he clicked into the profile of a Shanghainese internet personality, happily reading it to Luocheng.

“Apparently some people have dived headfirst into sewages a few too many times, how could e-sports not be considered a sport? E-sports has already been recognized in several official international competitions, professional players are expected to train vigorously every single day to outshine the rest of the competition, in no way do they have it easier than you simple-minded athletes, but sure, keep on dismissing e-sports.”

Lin Dong scrolled down further, showing Luocheng another post:

“Come to think of it, diving is also just jumping into a pool of water, so what do you have to say about e-sports? At least e-sports pro-players create success with their own hands and endless hard work, unlike some individuals who live off government fundings and yet can’t seem to have any substantial results. Some people get first place in some random non-international competition and start getting cocky!”

The people on Weibo worked with incredible efficiency, not even a full day had passed and countless people were commenting, attacking, and sharing this Cao He’s post.

At night, when Luocheng found several thousand comments under Cao He’s post all dissing Cao He and supporting e-sports, Luocheng breathed much easier, his stress from the day before completely vanishing.

It looked like e-sports’s internet community still had good intentions at heart, and most importantly, Luocheng found out from a few more famous accounts that the people knew the difference between competitive e-sports and regular gaming. They weren’t nearly as clueless as the dim-witted Cao He.

Of course, there were still many people who had poor views on the topic, for example. “I play e-sports as well, but I still don’t think e-sports should become officially recognized. If kids stopped focusing on their studies and turned to e-sports, neither their parents nor the country as a whole would agree.”

Toward these types of people, Luocheng just scoffed.

They were talking as if professional basketball or football players were still obediently doing their schoolwork. It was true that e-sports hadn’t been around as long, but when the day came that e-sports could stand on the same ground as basketball and football, would ‘kids should focus on school instead’ really still matter?

Everything started off with people protesting, but was it just because people were stuck in their old-fashioned, conservative ways, or was e-sports really as horrible and detrimental to society as they said it was? If it were really such an atrocity, how would you explain the LoL All Star Competition being held in a six-thousand-person stadium? How would you explain the viewership for the S International League being higher than any previous NBA game?

As for the matter of if the country recognized e-sports as an official sport, many students would drop out of school to play games instead…

Don’t be so immature, don’t think that just because you’re a university graduate, you’ll earn a lot of money and have a high place in society. People like you can’t be saved by even the best of education.

Truly good education taught students how to fight for what they wanted, how to stay determined until they reached the end, how to plan out the next step to help them eventually achieve their goals.

Schools were never opposed to students going into basketball, football, diving, music, art, dance, or e-sports, but did you choose any of those paths? Or were you too scared to even mention it to your parents?

How many children only got good grades because their parents told them to? How many students went to university because their parents told them to? When they finally got into their parents’ dream university, they suddenly found themselves without their parents’ constant monitoring and discipline, they didn’t have rankings or praises from their teachers or school reports, so what was their reason to continue studying?

Nothing! Some didn’t even know what they wanted to do, and their life after graduation could never turn out the way they wanted it to.

But of course, from the ages five to twenty-something, a vast majority of people only studied because their parents wanted them to study. They had never even thought about what their dreams were, what they wanted to become, or how they could find a sense of belonging in society!

As a college-dropout who went into e-sports, Luocheng had never thought his decision to quit school and pursue e-sports was anything to be ashamed of. If he had the talent and passion, why would he stop himself from achieving success?

Whatever they sacrificed, they had to make it. Luocheng and his friends were ready. No matter how hard they had to work, they were all prepared, and as long as the people didn’t completely ostracize them, they would show everyone the beauty of e-sports!

They were no longer just fighting for a game, they were fighting for glory!