Forgive the ambiguous almost clickbait-like nature of this headline for a moment – we tried writing a typical news headline but it didn’t really capture the crux of this story.
British LEC caster and former pro League of Legends player, Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont, was a class act in solo queue earlier today, on his ‘POST LEEMONT’ account.
Caedrel was streaming (around the 6hour 50min mark) his Lee Sin challenge against LoL player Agurin, who most recently played for Unicorns Of Love Sexy Edition. The two junglers are competing to see who can climb the highest in ranked solo queue using only Lee Sin.
The in-game chat immediately took a serious turn, with Caedrel’s Master-tier top-laner, hi im alfarouk (playing as Jax), a 17-year-old based in the UK, saying: “I swear if it’s a remake, I’m uninstalling jumping out of my window and uninstalling this game, I’m done with life.”
Caedrel and some other members of the team began to ask the player what caused this and tried to lift his spirits, to be told by Alfarouk that his parents are getting a divorce and selling their house, meaning he will also have to move school. He also said he lost 400lp in three days.
Caedrel responded by saying “let’s win this game then” and “much love”, and regularly complimented him throughout the game.
Alfarouk (aka Shihan) ended up going 7/3/4 and Caedrel went 10/2/8, and they won after the enemy team surrendered.
Caedrel and Alfarouk ended up chatting after the match, and Caedrel sent him a friend request.
“Life’s gonna be okay and everything’s gonna turn out fine,” Caedrel reassured him. “I know it sucks right now, and I know it must be hard for you, but time will heal things and there will be a brighter side to things as time goes by. Stay strong man, there’s a lot of life ahead of you, with or without League. Much love dude. You will have a great life. And on the lose streaks, that happens to everyone – it sucks but you’ll get back to the elo you deserve.”
Alfarouk expressed his gratitude and appreciation of Caedrel’s kind words, saying: “I didn’t know you were Caedrel, mad respect man.
“Made me kind of cry.”
Caedrel responded: “You’re gonna make me cry now.”
The moment was felt by Caedrel’s community who were watching the stream.
Viewer DonJake – who would go on to cast in the English LFL broadcast – said: “Big shoutout to you for putting a bit of light into a community that can be really toxic at times. Lots of love to everyone in the chat, we are all gonna fucking make it, man. Peace and love to all of your families.”
Caedrel and Alfarouk continued to chat, and it turns out that Alfarouk has his own Twitch channel, though he doesn’t stream regularly. At the time of writing, his follower numbers have leapt to almost a thousand following the incident. Caedrel offered him a gifted sub and VIP status in his chat.
Alfarouk also said that he used to stream, but his PC broke so he’s playing on a 40fps laptop which can’t stream his gameplay.
“I won’t let this guy play on a 40fps laptop, especially if his life is tough like that, I won’t allow it,” Caedrel said.
So Caedrel offered to buy him a new PC.
This spawned a Reddit appreciation thread about Caedrel’s actions.
So, yeah. Maybe you can see how it was hard to write a headline saying ‘Caedrel buys a PC for a player who has a 40fps laptop’, because that doesn’t capture the heart of this story at all.
And for anyone thinking Caedrel did this for ‘clout’, maybe stop and have another think. Caedrel is an LEC caster with almost 100,000 followers on Twitch. Clout is not really something he needs. Maybe take it for what it is – a kind spontaneous gesture.
It’s also a reminder that for all of solo queue’s toxicity, there are real people behind the screen, and we don’t know what they are going through. So as Caedrel suggests, the next time you might be feeling frustrated in solo queue, why not try spreading some love, instead of some flame?
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
Imagine being in Master Tier – literally top 1% of all players – and whining in chat about losing a few games. League just isnt that important… people need to reevaluate their priorities.
He’s a kid. His parents are going through a divorce, he has to say goodbye to all the friends he made in school and start life in a new one all over again. League of Legends might have been the only thing in his life that was going well for him. When even that starting going to the shitter, can you imagine how that must feel? The one thing that he’s good at is suddenly not so good.
Give him a break.