i always suck at most competitive things. be it chess, or smash bros, or anything, i always feel like im so bad at it, and when i eventually lose i end up being really fed up with myself, cry, and not improve.
it's particularly bad when there is a rating somewhere telling me im going way down, and it feels so insulting. once i lost like half a dozen matches in smash and it put me at a score of 40'000, which means im at the bottom 40'000 people in the world playing. i've seen people with scores of 4M, so the game just told me im in the bottom 1% of players, which wow thanks.
i also played a bit of chess recently, cos i wanted to get into it. i did it with my brother who is a bit better at it, and got me to a slightly higher ELO score, and now im playing with people which are much better than me, but even then the computer at the end tells me stuff like "your accuracy on good moves is 4%" so i feel pretty bad.
if it was just with games, i'd be fine with it (even tho i percieve them as fun so it's kinda bad i cant play those). it's that i feel like everything around me is so competitive, jobs, art, school, everything, and i feel like im totally unfit to do any of those things necessary. all the weird capitalist struggle to survive, the pulling yourself up your bootstraps, haing to compete in the market, all that stuff makes me so anxious about my future that i wanna cry rather than having to deal with it. not that crying fixes anything.
kind of the reason why i want to be a teacher, since they dont get to do much competition after they've been hired, although i guess there is some competition in the hiring process. something for me to be anxious about next i guess.
EDIT: oh heck i forgot pokemon!! i was never good at it and tbh to be good at online pokemon you gotta use the same two things with maybe a bit of variation; using a non standard team is so punished. i never got more than 1200 ELO on showdown. the community is fun but i cant bear just having to sit and get beaten everytime
I like competition with friends where we're at a roughly comparable level of skill, the best might depend or vary, and it's animated by a spirit of fun rather than conflict.
Take your most basic shit that can be competitive, like Poker or Trivial Pursuit or whatever. Depending on the environment I'm in that might be a super narrow and focused experience, typically the kind of experience where people are really obnoxious about the rules. That kind of competition sucks. But the exact same games with people who know how to have a laugh, aren't sore when they lose and chat amiably the entire time, the competition can be great.
Online, don't get too hung up. Unless you want to dedicate hours (and against millions of people, you're looking at dozens of hours of practice to be viably competitive. In general, don't worry about being the best, develop a mental resiliency and try to remember the fact that 99% of people aren't going to be the best at 99% of the things they try, you're in good company.