A big part of this, I think, is that gaming allows a person to really bury their head in the sand, stop learning on a general scale, and disengage with life.
You could say this same thing about any other hobby out there. I'm a guitar player. Most experienced guitarists do exactly this - sacrifice so much time to practicing, learning songs and working through things. You can see it too with artists. Social alienation can happen with most hobbies.
I would also argue that competitive games foster this insufferable-ness because they inherently drive this community that idolizes the gods of whatever game they play. The community lashes itself to a very small elite clique of pro gamers that ultimately become the role models for what you, the community member, should aspire to be.
What community? Gaming is not a hive mind community like you described it to be. There are good communities, some even ran by leftists. I used the Doom community for example. They have been around since the 90s and they have an old guard of players and modders that go back to the 90s and those people have routinely rejected the edgelords and alt right bigots. The Brutal Doom people had to make their own community cause no Doom forum really wanted to tolerate them.
All that "hardcore and casual" talk is just marketing stuff, much like how the term "gamer" didn't exist until recently with marketing.
The problem is seeing being a "gamer" as an identity. But playing video games as a hobby, is a completely different thing.
You could say this same thing about any other hobby out there.
I don't think you could say it about -any- hobby, because I don't think many hobbies have the capacity to be wholly engrossing in the way gaming is. Music might be one that shares this in common, but I couldn't say, I take your word for it.
What community?
Any competitive game has its own community that surrounds it.
Gaming is not a hive mind community like you described it to be.
Firstly, I'm speaking on the subject of -competitive games- in particular, not video games as a whole. And for competitive games, they totally are. Just lurk some forums for a while, folks are driven in such a way that they either accept some common axis that define what matters and what doesn't, or they're discouraged from participating in the game and therefore the community. I guess perhaps to further specify the clique I'm describing, these are games that have centralized multiplayer - no player managed servers, all players are forced to play with the general population of a given game
All that “hardcore and casual” talk is just marketing stuff, much like how the term “gamer” didn’t exist until recently with marketing.
It was the inverse, these toxic communities emerged first, the "hardcore", and then the corporations picked it up as a marketing tool.
The problem is seeing being a “gamer” as an identity. But playing video games as a hobby, is a completely different thing.
You're essentially just saying the same thing twice. OP asks: Why are gamers so insufferable?
Gamers are the self-identified hardcore, the people who don this identity upon their selves. The people who are insufferable by nature because they aspire to be the elite in their chosen realm. Folks who play video games as a hobby are not Gamers because they do not take up this mantle for themselves, they just want to play a video game and have some fun.
You could say this same thing about any other hobby out there. I'm a guitar player. Most experienced guitarists do exactly this - sacrifice so much time to practicing, learning songs and working through things. You can see it too with artists. Social alienation can happen with most hobbies.
What community? Gaming is not a hive mind community like you described it to be. There are good communities, some even ran by leftists. I used the Doom community for example. They have been around since the 90s and they have an old guard of players and modders that go back to the 90s and those people have routinely rejected the edgelords and alt right bigots. The Brutal Doom people had to make their own community cause no Doom forum really wanted to tolerate them.
All that "hardcore and casual" talk is just marketing stuff, much like how the term "gamer" didn't exist until recently with marketing.
The problem is seeing being a "gamer" as an identity. But playing video games as a hobby, is a completely different thing.
I don't think you could say it about -any- hobby, because I don't think many hobbies have the capacity to be wholly engrossing in the way gaming is. Music might be one that shares this in common, but I couldn't say, I take your word for it.
Any competitive game has its own community that surrounds it.
Firstly, I'm speaking on the subject of -competitive games- in particular, not video games as a whole. And for competitive games, they totally are. Just lurk some forums for a while, folks are driven in such a way that they either accept some common axis that define what matters and what doesn't, or they're discouraged from participating in the game and therefore the community. I guess perhaps to further specify the clique I'm describing, these are games that have centralized multiplayer - no player managed servers, all players are forced to play with the general population of a given game
It was the inverse, these toxic communities emerged first, the "hardcore", and then the corporations picked it up as a marketing tool.
You're essentially just saying the same thing twice. OP asks: Why are gamers so insufferable? Gamers are the self-identified hardcore, the people who don this identity upon their selves. The people who are insufferable by nature because they aspire to be the elite in their chosen realm. Folks who play video games as a hobby are not Gamers because they do not take up this mantle for themselves, they just want to play a video game and have some fun.