Gonzo Awards: Most Pointless E-Drama

Esports is basically now populated by a gaggle of bored children who feign outrage to pass the time between TikTok videos. This drives some of the most pathetic "controversies" you will ever see.

Previous Winners

🥇 2011: Naniwa Probe Rush

🥇 2012: The cruel and savage banning of HLTV from Prague FOREVER

🥇 2013: Not listed

🥇 2014: DeMuslim Vs Major

🥇 2015: Rahim Gets Bullied

🥇 2016: No Award

And the winner is… “Won’t somebody think about Doublelift’s Feelings”

As we’ve established by now esports fans are the worst. It wasn’t always like this… You can go back about ten years and find a comparatively healthy branch of nerd culture, video game enthusiasts that would actually leave the house and socialise while cheering on players whose skill they admired. Those fans have grown up now and moved on but they have been replaced… Sadly they have been replaced by the type of slack jawed drooling idiot who will publicly post about how this very sentence is some form of ableism.

The new esports fan is the offspring of media based fandoms and sports fans, as if a K-pop Stan and the type of sports fan who unironically uses the nickname “Pessi” went through the teleporter in The Fly and slithered out the other end. Only in this industry there is no Geena Davis waiting to put the fucking thing out of our misery… No instead they are pandered to and encouraged, championed as necessary for the industry to succeed even though they pay for nothing and ultimately ruin everything.

As such every year will throw up about a dozen or so utterly insane “dramas” that are completely fabricated. These bored morons need something to do and it’s not like they actually care about the game on a level greater than the last TikTok video they watched so they’re more than happy to spend a day or two feigning outrage over some utterly benign happening. They are at their worst when they are spurred on by one of the idols, which happens surprisingly often in an industry filled to bursting with fakes and phonies, and will go to unbelievable lengths to ruin the life of whichever person they just heard of five minutes ago.

So let me take you back to February of this year… The LCS broadcast is about to go into unchartered territory in that it is about to have a broadcast segment that is based in reality instead of the usual bland fawning it serves up as an analysis. Gabriella ‘LeTigress’ Devia-Allen delivered a monologue about how Yiliang ‘Doublelift’ Peng’s upcoming encounter with his former employers TSM would be a grudge match. Why would it? Well Peng and his partner/manager had been involved in a very public spat after TSM’s CEO Andy ‘Reginald’ Dinh had been fined and sanctioned after a Riot investigation into bullying within the organisation. Both had criticised Dinh’s behaviour even prompting a legal response from TSM. Devia-Allen talked openly about these things and correctly suggested they would add an extra level of spice to the competition.

These types of things are of course fair game to talk about in the world of sports and there are plenty of examples that I’ve listed when writing about this at other publications. For instance, when Conor McGregor disgraced mixed martial arts by throwing a dolly through a bus window and injuring several fighters, generating three counts of felony assault and one count of criminal mischief for which he was charged, the UFC not only didn’t ignore it but included it in the promotional material for McGregor’s upcoming fight. Of course esports fans, who will never waste an opportunity to burn a witch, especially if they are a woman, decided to pretend talking about the history of TSM was the worst thing to ever happen on an esports broadcast.

At first the fans were angry because she was “picking on” TSM by, you know, accurately detailing everything their CEO did. Then a TSM manager would add fuel to the fire by saying they were “saddened” by the segment because it somehow disrespected the TSM players by not talking about them enough even though the segment ended by pointing out they were a promising, young team. Because this matter was so important it was then also shared on the main League of Legends subreddit being branded “unprofessional” and compared to featuring Andrew Tate on a broadcast. Almost everyone agreed.

That would be bad enough but even Riot Games themselves decided to throw their talent under the bus. Keep in mind that any broadcast segment goes through multiple levels of scrutiny from conceptualisation to recording so it’s safe to assume everyone thought it was OK. When faced with a childish mob suddenly it was worth an apology using language that made it sound like it was all the doing of one person.

Devia-Allen was then forced into a public apology which in any sane industry would have been the end of it. This is where Doublegrift, who would often attack LeTigress’s work and refer to her with the unbelievably shit nickname ‘Le Cringetress’ on his streams, decided to really twist the knife. Via Twitter he demanded a further apology on behalf of everyone who “experienced workplace abuse and workplace harassment” while of course simultaneously being too stupid to realise that she herself was now going through harassment for her work that he was all too happy to exacerbate. Keep in mind it was completely transparent that this was done not because he was genuinely offended but ultimately because he simply didn’t like her style of commentary. His contribution is what helped drag out the drama with an entire new fanbase getting into the dogpile, TSM fans and Doublelift Stans unified again for the common cause of harassing a woman on the internet.

Two days later the abuse had gotten so bad she decided to take a break from the broadcast for mental health reasons. By August she announced she would no longer be part of the LCS team and while no reason has been explicitly stated it’s obvious that the roots of that were firmly embedded in the hysterical overreaction to the TSM broadcast segment.

So there you are… Another wretched day in esports for those who simply try to make it a better business and provide value to the same fans that will one day turn feral on you. Hard to imagine another industry where a woman could be harassed and forced out of a job they loved for the transgression of mentioning things that actually happened in a broadcast segment pre-approved by her employers but then again nothing should surprise you in this shit business.