THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ — McDialogue™An Exploration of Media Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™by Nelson S. Thall, Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca.
The Medium Is the Message: Proven Once Again by League of Legends
A Student of Technology asks:
A study published April 28, 2026 by the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in the journal Brain Sciences examined the cognitive effects of the multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends.
Of the fifteen League of Legends World Championships held since 2011, twelve have been won by East Asian teams. Korea alone has won eight. North America has never won.
Mr. Thall why have East Asian players dominated this game so completely, and what does their dominance reveal about the relationship between writing systems and the human brain?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The MOBA championship record is the empirical confirmation of something McLuhan understood decades ago. Of fifteen League of Legends World Championships since 2011, twelve have been won by East Asian teams. Korea alone has won eight. North America has never won. The Eastern cultures prevailed, which was totally predictable for media scientists because they understand the operations of the brain that each alphabet system accentuates. The MOBA game favours pattern recognition over logical sequential thought, and pattern recognition resides in the right hemisphere of the brain. Eastern writing causes the right hemisphere to be dominant. That is why the Eastern players prevailed and the Western players did not.
The phonetic alphabet alone causes the left hemisphere to be dominant. The left hemisphere processes information sequentially and analytically, one item at a time. It is the hemisphere of linear logic and serial decoding, not of pattern recognition. Two and a half thousand years of phonetic literacy produced left hemisphere dominant Western minds. Two thousand years of ideographic literacy produced right hemisphere dominant Eastern minds.
The Eastern player approaches the screen with a brain trained to recognize patterns instantly. The Western player approaches the same screen with a brain trained to analyze elements in sequence. The game rewards the first cognitive mode and penalizes the second. The championship record is the inevitable consequence.
The most important point, and the one most often missed, is that these effects are not produced by the content. The power of the phonetic alphabet to shape Western awareness has nothing to do with the content of the texts. The power of television to shape awareness has nothing to do with the television shows. The power of radio to shape awareness has nothing to do with the radio programs. The technological effect on the brain is far more influential than the content the technology delivers. The content is always the decoy. The medium is the message.
McLuhan once said that the relationship between the technological form and its content is tantamount to the relationship between an atomic bomb and a name written on its outer shell. Once again the evidence has proven that McLuhan’s reading of the effects of the various cultures’ writing systems is being proven time and time again by practical testing.
NOT ONLY IS THE MEDIUM THE MESSAGE. BUT NOTHING EVER WRITTEN WILL EVER BE AS IMPORTANT AS MERELY UNDERSTANDING THE INSIDIOUS POWER OF ANY MEDIUM TO ALTER YOU AND YOUR THOUGHT PROCESSES. THAT IS WHY YOU MUST READ THE McLUHAN DIALOGUES REGULARLY TO PREVENT BEING ENSLAVED BY THESE INFERNAL MACHINES.
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All intellectual property contained herein was conceived, originated and authored exclusively by Nelson S. Thall. Artificial intelligence aka a pseudo-conscious machine (PCM) was not employed. We hired a stenographer. No intellectual contribution or creative authorship is attributed to the AI tool. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
I can be reached at nelson@themediumisthemessage.com