Coff’s face was a sight to behold as his screen faded into grey. The blood drained from his cheeks, turning them pale. But the muscles of his jaw popped in and out as he clenched his teeth in anger. And the humiliation burning in his heart, that was clear to see in his eyes. He mentally replayed everything that occurred. God dammit! I cannot believe I just did that! I was careless and didn’t notice that he was baiting me. And I fell for it like a noob! I knew I’d be walking into the Tower’s aggro to hit Alistar with Steel Tempest. But I thought my skills and reflexes were way better than his, that’s where everything went wrong. I was cocky and reckless. And I underestimated him completely. I didn’t stop for a second to think that his reflexes would be better than my own. I literally could not move fast enough when Alistar Flashed into me, and I didn’t even notice that I got knocked up with Pulverize until my Yasuo was up in the air. By that point, there was nothing I could even do anyway. There was no chance of escaping after that Headbutt into the Tower… Nope. The second he Flashed, it was all over. I cannot believe I just got outplayed that hard by some Diamond 5 Chinese player! You know what… ?
Coff genuinely could not believe that someone he considered so inferior to himself could’ve pulled something like that off. He knew exactly what happened, but he didn’t want to believe that Chinese players were skilled enough to pull off plays like that consistently. So he did the only thing he could do in this situation. Coff started typing in all-chat with the little Chinese that he had at his disposal.
「Luck! Trash! Come again! YOU ***!」
“Oh, look at that, guys. I guess he’s mad now,” Lin Feng said to the stream with a smile.
The people in the stream erupted with amusement.
「lmaaaao, he’s still so cocky after getting solo killed!」
「guess he still hasn’t leanre dhis lesson yet!」
「LILBRO hes a yasuo!!! Powerspike!」
「He needs you to kill him 9 more times so he can powerspike」
「lil bro, beat his ass one more time!」
「MIIIILKKK HIM!」
Lin Feng rubbed his chin. “Hmm, I think you guys are right. He wants to be killed more until his 10 death powerspike. He’s a true Yasuo player. Well, if he wants more, I’m more than happy to give him more!”
6 minutes after the start of the game, Lin Feng pushed the minion wave all the way out to the Blue Team’s Outer Tower in the Mid lane. Yasuo was being much more cautious and playing defensively, hanging underneath the protection of his Tower. And then, something interesting happened. Yasuo was locked onto a minion and started dashing towards it with Sweeping Blade. But right after the skill was activated, the minion moved. By the time the Sweeping Blade ended, Yasuo was now outside the Tower’s defensive range. Lin Feng noticed this golden opening presented by fate, and wasted no time taking advantage of it. His Alistar immediately engaged the Yasuo with a Headbutt-Pulverize combo. Yasuo was knocked up and further away from his Tower with no chance to react or retreat. His health plummeted.
While this was happening, the Red Team’s Jungler decided to sneak into the Mid lane. He was playing the champion Kha’zix. He crept in quietly from the right side of the lane, through the Blue Team’s jungle. And popped out just as Yasuo landed from Alistar’s Headbutt-Pulverize combo. Wasting no time at all, he pounced on Yasuo and shredded at the hapless champion with fangs and claws. Yasuo’s health dropped to critical levels. But Kha’zix’s attacks didn’t manage to kill him, and Yasuo found an opening to start running towards what he thought was safety. Unfortunately, he ran straight towards Lin Feng’s Alistar, who stood there waiting. Yasuo was trapped in a pincer manoeuvre! In the end, it was a final auto attack from Alistar that cleaved the life from Yasuo’s body.
Coff stared at his screen with a blank expression in his eyes as he struggled to understand what just happened. He could not comprehend how he’d just been killed again, a mere two minutes after his first death. Slowly, his face flushed red with both rage and confusion. I-I died again!?
《You have slain an enemy!》
As the announcer’s voice rang out, the people in the stream chat erupted with joy.
「hahaha get fked!」
「he asked for it again, and lil bro gave it to him!」
「that was so satisfying to watch」
「I bet he’s raging his ass off!!」
As Lin Feng walked back to his tower, he muttered, “It’s always the same with these Yasuo players, sigh. First they want more, and then they get upset when you give them what you want. It’s such a strange request. Now he’s going to rage in all-chat instead of playing.”
One of the hallmarks of League of Legends was the raging. It didn’t matter what region one was playing the game. It was the same everywhere. In China, Korea, EU or NA, there were players who constantly raged in the chat. And the raging was so inextricably tied to playing League of Legends that it was elevated to the level of tradition. Playing with others who raged in team-chat and laughing at players who raged in all-chat added to the experience of playing League in a way that no other game could replicate.
Coff was yet another player who joined in on the time honored tradition of baby raging in all-chat after making mistakes that led to his death. He was upset after his first death, but retained some control over his anger. After the second death though, Coff was fuming and lost all sense of reason. He started cursing up a storm in all-chat, first in broken Chinese and then in English. Eventually he gave up the pretense and started attempting to curse in Korean. His rage had hit a point where he no longer cared if anyone could understand him or not, he simply needed to vent all of the ire in his heart. Unfortunately, his Chinese was horrendous and his English was not very good either. That made it difficult to understand what he was trying to say. Once he switched to Korean, the thoughts became slightly more coherent. But almost all of the words he was attempting to use were caught by the language filter.
It was nigh impossible to understand what Coff wanted to say, but the sentiment was understood by everyone watching the stream. Coff the Korean was very, very mad. And that delighted the viewers to no end. Some attempted to piece together what he was saying in various languages to laugh further. Others just made jokes. There were even a few enterprising ones who took the initiative to try and add Coff as a friend, so they could poke and prod at him some more. Coff’s incoherent rage added an entirely new dimension of entertainment to the stream.
Lin Feng, unlike the chat, remained completely calm and relaxed. He was smiling not because he cared about Coff’s rage in the slightest, but because the viewers on the stream were enjoying themselves. As far as Lin Feng went, there was nothing worth thinking about with Coff’s raging. He’d been playing League of Legends for a long time, and he’d lost count of how many he’d run into who’d given into the baby rage that Coff was currently writhing around with. Besides, there was no point in paying attention to it. Lin Feng knew that with the two kills he’d gotten on Yasuo, his Alistar had pretty much won the Mid lane for his team. There was no way that Yasuo was coming back to present a serious challenge. And so, Lin Feng decided not to engage with Coff in all-chat, and instead peacefully farmed minions in the Mid lane.
Once the game timer hit 8 minutes and the minion wave was pushed all the way out in the Mid lane, Lin Feng decided it was time to take his Alistar to help out his teammates. He looked at the minimap on the right-hand corner of his screen, and started to roam towards the Bot lane for a gank.
He circled round through the tri-brush and waited for an opening. The second that Blue Team’s Jinx walked out too far, Alistar charged into her with a Headbutt and Pulverize. Jinx was knocked up into the air with half her health gone. Then Alistar unleashed a barrage of auto attacks and an Ignite. By the end of the lethal combo, Jinx lay dead on the ground at Alistar’s feet.
The Jinx’s Support in the Bot lane was a Thresh. One who tried to avenge her death with Death Sentence. Thresh hooked Lin Feng’s Alistar and tried to drag him under the Blue Team’s Tower. But Alistar’s Unbreakable Will made it impossible to cage him with any crowd control skills for long, and Lin Feng broke free easily. That’s when Lin Feng noticed his teammates furiously running over to help. Instead of running away from the Tower, he decided to have his Alistar tank the bolts and dived under the Tower’s range to continue attacking Thresh. Both the Ad-carry and Support on his team arrived, and the three of them attacked Thresh together.
《Double kill!》
The longer the game went on, the more terrifying Lin Feng’s Alistar became. He’d already scaled to the point where he did enough damage to insta-kill Jinx. It had only been 10 minutes since the start of the game, but the balance was heavily tilted towards the Red Team. Lin Feng’s team. And once the game moved into the teamfight phase, Alistar wrecked devastation and decimated the Blue Team’s champions.
Red Team’s players finally noticed Lin Feng’s summoner name and started asking questions.
「ali, you’re a streamer!?」
「you’re freaking amazing!」
「wait, are you a chick!?」
Lin Feng happily replied, 「Yep! Yep! And Yep! Come over and watch!」
He was more than happy to help advertise Su Xue’s stream and bring her more viewers.
Eventually, around the 20-minute mark, the opposing team unanimously agreed to surrender.
Lin Feng exclaimed, “Didn’t I tell you guys? You see now? I’m really good with Alistar too!”
A truly strange conspiracy
Dev Thought: So you guys know how Putin’s been on the news a lot these days, yeah? Tons of interviews with pictures of him, and lots of video footage from old appearances and interviews. I was looking at… something about the whole Ukraine thing, and I noticed something slightly odd. See, Putin’s head was not shiny in the picture they had of him on the news. Which got me thinking about his hair situation. Specifically, if Putin was a True Bald or someone who shaved his hair down because he liked the style. Now, when you look at a True Bald on television or the news, you’ll notice that the top of their head is shiny. This is because there’s lots of lighting that they use in studios to make sure they have good footage. The same thing applies for photographs of an official nature. Lots and lots of studio lighting. The True Balds have a distinctive shine that results from the reflection of the studio lights on an unbroken chrome dome. False Balds do not have this shine because they still have hair follicles that break up the light. When I noticed that Putin did not have the shine of a True Bald, I assumed that he was a False Bald who did it for the look. But I couldn’t be sure. There was some shine, but not enough to state definitively that he was a True Bald. My theory was that he was a False Bald who was in the process of transitioning to a True Bald. But I couldn’t stop thinking about this, so I started googling more pictures of Putin to figure out what his Bald Status was. And that let to even more confusion. The most recent pictures of him have no shine at all.
That’s when I decided to Google what the deal with Putin’s hair/hair loss was. In my head, I figured there’d be someone who did his makeup at an interview or for an official ceremony who could provide an authoritative answer about Putin’s hair loss. Instead, I stumbled into a truly insane web of conspiracy theories and possible deep state cover-ups spread across some shady websites. I’m going to summarize the information that I discovered for you guys.
1.) Putin’s hair, and any potential hair loss that he may or may not have, is a deep state secret of Russia. I’ve read from multiple sources on different forums that Russia actively roots out and takes down any sites in Russia that discuss what’s going on with Putin’s hair. One of the sources also stated that there is a department in Russia that scours the internet for pictures that depict Putin’s hair in an unflattering way to take them down either through legal procedures or illegal state-sanctioned cyber attacks. Another source claimed that no one who has done Putin’s makeup for any official video footage or photography will speak up about it for fear of imprisonment. And that they are briefed on the consequences of disclosing anything about Putin’s hair to the public, and sign a document affirming their silence.
2.) Another source claimed that Putin uses some kind of fiber-optic weave to create the illusion of hair when he leaves Russia. This is for multiple reasons. First it is to project strength and vitality. But the second reason is more important. The source claimed that the special strands used to create Putin’s fake hairline are Russian military technology that makes it difficult for snipers to use laser scopes or correctly assess the position of Putin’s head through a scope. They did not go too deep into how this technology works.
3.) There is a dedicated community of people out there who scour through 4K footage and high resolution pictures of State Leaders and celebrities to determine if they are True Balds, False Balds, or Balds in Disguise. At the time of writing this TL Thought, there is much debate in the community about the status of Putin’s hair. It has turned into a polarizing issue, where some people have evidence that he is a True Bald and others believe that he is a False Bald. Both factions have a plethora of footage and images to back up their claims.
4.) There are other theories that suggest that Putin has a variable hair status that he uses as a tool to trick the leaders of other nations into believing that he is at an advanced age/deteriorating health/very strong and healthy.
In the end, I stumbled down this weird rabbit hole for a few hours and still have no answer about Putin’s hair status. We may never know if he is a True Bald or a False Bald.