About

"A Worrying Trend" is an expression used to describe an up-and-coming phenomenon with feelings of apprehension, most prominently in the context of mainstream news media. In League of Legends, the phrase has been also used as an in-joke among the fans of the game in reference to a controversial tweet regarding the in-game ranking of Cloud9 player Balls.

Origin

On September 14th, 2015, Riot Games shoutcaster Joshua Leesman (a.k.a. Jatt) posted a tweet^[1] in which he referred to the solo queue rankings of player Balls from the North American League of Legends team Cloud9^[3] as a "worrying trend" (shown below). Within two weeks, the tweet gained over 1,100 favorites and 240 retweets.

Spread

Immediately after the tweet was posted, Leesman's statement was hotly debated by League of Legends players on Twitter. That day, Redditor MadlyChemical submitted a post containing various reaction tweets to the /r/LeagueOfLegends^[2] subreddit, where it received upwards of 3,500 votes (82% upvoted) and 2,400 comments in 10 days. Also on September 14th, Cloud9 player Hai Lam published a blog post^[4] responding to the controversy, in which he defended his teammate Balls and criticized Leesman for "posting the tweet without relevant context to it."

Shortly after, Lam tweeted that the post was deleted to prevent causing more "drama."^[5] On September 19th, TwoPlusTwo Forums member NiSash1337 replied to a thread about the League of Legends World 2015 tournament noting that The following day, Redditor picflute submitted a post to the /r/LeagueOfMeta^[6] subreddit noting that the /r/LeagueOfLegends moderators recognized that the phrase "worrying trend" had become a "meme." On September 22nd, Leesman tweeted a graph displaying an upward rise in "Worrying trend meme usage" with the caption "A worrying trend indeed" (shown below). Within 48 hours, the tweet received more than 2,900 favorites and 870 retweets.

The following day, YouTuber WhoLetMeJungle uploaded a video titled "Sneaky & Incarnati0n – A Worrying Trend – Korean Solo Funny Moments," featuring footage of Cloud9 players Sneaky and Incarnati0n playing League of Legends and making several jokes referencing the "worrying trend" tweet (shown below).

Search Interest

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External References