I guess it just depends on who you're duo queuing with.
In my view there are two different factors:
Your deserved rating, and your actual rating.
Your actual rating is what you have after x amount of games, your deserved rating is roughly what your skill level justifies.
So someone could have an actual rating of 1200, but have a deserved rating of 1800. It happens all the time. If during your placement matches you get trolled, get d/cers (happens quite often in ranked games), have some bad teams, or just have some bad games, you may get put way below where you deserve. From there, it's an uphill climb to get to where you should be. The problem is that the lower the rating goes, the more likely you are to encounter trolls, disconnectors, and feeders. Higher ELOs sort those players out by virtue of requiring wins to progress. So in a sense, ELO hell is very real, and while you may be able to get out of it over a long period of time, you'll meet a lot of heartache and resistance along the way.
I simply play with people whose deserved rating is probably around platinum or diamond, but who are still stuck in silver or low gold. That way, assuming that the other players in the game actually belong in their ELO, it's an absolute stomp. This is because 2 people who deserve a much higher rating than what they have, will obviously make much more of an impact that 1 person.
Edit: As a solo queuer, I think it also depends on what lane and champion you play as well. If you're a really good Kat mid, for example, you could probably carry a lot more games than an Irelia top. This is because Katarina is one of the snowballiest champions in the game. She can crush most mid lanes (especially against lesser-skilled players), then gank top, bot, and jungle by virtue of being mid. In addition to this, she also wrecks in team fights as well, meaning at no point in the game does she ever stop becoming useful.
So my point is, there are probably some cheesy roles and champions you could learn (*cough* Khazix) that would be much more tailored for solo queue games, but I like to play what I want to play, not what I have to play to capitalize on bad players.