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.
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.