Chinese gamers respond to emotional Reddit post about how LOL helped a son through his father's death

It’s amazing sometimes just how small the world we live in really is.

About a week ago, a UK-based redditor submitted a post about how League of Legends helped him get through the death of his father and a breakup with his girlfriend. That post was ultimately removed, probably for violating the subreddit’s rules, but not before it caught the attention of a few people in the Chinese LoL scene.

Click to enlarge and read the original post in full.

Yesterday, a number of Chinese gaming blogs published articles about the post, with translated excerpts from it. In just a day, the comments on Chinese sites about the tale (more than 700 comments and counting just from these two sites, likely thousands in total) have already far outstripped the comments the post originally attracted on reddit (just over 350).

So why has the simple post struck such a nerve in the Chinese scene and generated so much discussion? There are a bunch of reasons.

To begin with, OP’s post struck many Chinese gamers as similar to the stories that frequently occur in the Chinese news about video game addiction. And his decision to throw himself into LOL following his father’s death struck some as disrespectful, so many of the commenters came to question OP’s decisions:

Judgment

Guangxi Netease user:

Fuck, isn’t this just getting addicted to a game in order to escape reality?

Duowan user:

Your dad died, your girlfriend left you, and you’re still playing games? You deserve to be single.

Hebei Duowan user: