When the moniker "gamer" started to reach my ears in the late 90s I was like "hell yeah I'm a gamer. I am a guy who plays videogames." I didn't broadcast it to the world but if someone asked if I played videogames I'd say "yeah, I'm a gamer."

Over the years my interactions and observations of the gamer community shown me almost nothing but toxic bullshit. It flipped me. Now if someone asks if I'm a gamer I'll say "no, I'm just a guy who plays videogames."

Part of it is growing up and being disgusted with the arrested development masquerading as a badge of honor. Snobbish elitism from the formerly bullied nerds. The clique bullshit. And because of the nature of extremism in some places/circles its just gotten worse. There's a celebration of racist opinions that's gotten bolder. I mean, it's always been there, there's the suspect dude who always played for the German team in the online WWII shooter who talked about "historical accuracy" and probably dropped the Gamer Word but that word was ubiquitous so it got lost in the sauce. These days they congregate on social media and feed into each other. Like containment on 4chan broke.