YEKINDAR: “My parents’ addresses were leaked and sent to me in private messages along with threats.”

If you look at my social media follow requests from when I was playing for Team Liquid, you’ll see [This refers to the period between the Intel Extreme Masters Rio Major 2022 and Intel Extreme Masters Rio 2024. — Ed.]. My parents’ addresses were leaked and sent to me in private messages along with threats like, “Dude, we’re going to kill your parents—here’s all the info”—it’s absolute madness. I swear, it’s awful. If there are people in the audience who are doing this, stop it—it’s disgusting.

Initially, that was exactly how we saw the situation. But later, during an interview with Jame, I pointed out that at that time, Team Liquid was lagging behind in terms of gameplay and the metagame. The team essentially had no clear structure; people were playing spontaneously, so I had to build a system for them from scratch. After this conversation was published on HLTV and other outlets, it seemed as though people had taken my words negatively. This didn’t come directly from the team members themselves; rather, it was a general impression based on what was happening in the media. We spoke with Jame as friends, but after the interview was translated and published, my words were misinterpreted due to the nature of the translation and how the information was presented in the press.

The entire modern system is built on how social media influences people’s thoughts and feelings for the sake of a few clicks. During difficult times, this puts enormous pressure on you, because you start to depend too much on other people’s opinions. Absolutely everyone has their own weaknesses and insecurities, and that’s completely normal, regardless of your level of self-confidence or gaming skills. What helped me was completely eliminating that negativity from my life. I stopped reading comments, focused on the things I believe in, and started listening only to the people I trust. I’ve completely moved past that stage and dealt with the situation, so past grievances no longer hurt me. Sometimes it gets absurd, like when family members send you links asking why people are saying such bad things about you online. Social media pushes the false idea that you’re supposed to be liked by absolutely everyone, even though, in reality, it shouldn’t matter to you.