Holy shit, talk about toxic!
There were players who, from across the room, were screaming at the top of their lungs about how someone "fucking sucks", "loser", "awful", etc etc.
It was extremely embarrassing to be a part of. I'm never going to a CS-oriented event like that ever again.
I can't believe people are still playing Counter Strike. We had servers for the original version (Half Life 1 based) way back in the dorms in like 2000/2001.
In short, I think it comes down to the fact that people do not have to maintain a social persona when going through the match making queue. I think people are default assholes and don't behave nicely unless they know they'll see you again/you become familiar.
A lot of the communities I've seen start off super friendly and fun when they're small (because you're playing the same small pool of people) and then reach a tipping point when toxicity takes over because you rarely bump into the same people over and over again.
I think that could be solved by modifying match making to preferntially rematch you with the same people over and over again, in effect simulating a smaller world.
Separately, toxicity is contagious, which also agrees with my observation that larger communities are more toxic. I wonder if Valve has done any analysis on how behaviour is affected after interacting with tilted/toxic players.
nowadays due to matchmaking systems you get random people in every match which you never see again
sadly the resultant behaviour is not surprising