The consensus seems to be that salt is good for you in moderation.

But really though, I loved playing Awesomenauts at first, but I eventually ran into some assholes. The reason why I tend to avoid competitive online gaming is because I get tired of overly competitive gamers who become complete assholes or assholes who decide to get into competitive online gaming. After a while, I found a couple of people I liked, and I had some friends who played already, so I started just playing on teams with those people and largely ignoring the other team. I haven't really played in a while. It seemed like every other game had someone harassing someone (or everyone), and I already tend to stay away from people, so stuff like that doesn't draw me into the game at all.

It sucks when you're going along, having fun, and then all of a sudden, an asshole chimes in to call people names or whatever. When half of the players get sucked into the shit slinging over the course of the game, it just ruins the entire experience. There's a mute function, and that's great and all, but I'd rather not play than end up having to mute people all the time. (Though I guess if you play enough, you might end up muting all of the assholes.)

It's annoying, and it's frustrating, and that's not why I play games. I have a lot of games on Steam, and I don't feel like wasting my time on an experience that is so frustrating so often. Toxicity turns me off of a game, and maybe I shouldn't be so quick to let others scare me off or whatever (and the worst part might be that I met a few really cool people while playing, so I know there are awesome people out there who could potential become gaming buddies that I'm missing out on by not playing), but I'd rather play single player or just play games with people I know than deal with the asshole lottery that random MOBA games tend to put you into.