I have been gaming since '94 but I feel like I'm at the end of considering myself a gamer. There's zero appealing things about the community now.

When everything was about console wars, I was thinking "who cares?" since I didn't see an issue with whatever consoles people used. Then PC master race came in and just pissed off everyone with their unnecessary elitism. I didn't think much of it, but eventually it got so bad that I'd regularly get hate mail for mentioning I play a Nintendo game or any game that isn't PC. Not even taking a stance on console wars, just for admitting I played certain games on a whatrver console.

I also played fighting games, starting with Super Smash Bros Melee. I got so much shit for it because it's not a "real" fighting game. The local scene and regionals were filled with terrible people, and you'd have to be good at the game to get any basic social decency or respect out of people. I ended up just quitting because the community was terrible, only playing with my friends when it was just us (they were the top players in my state, so I still got a competitive level but avoided hanging out with their Smash friends).

I played League, enough said there. You already know.

Eventually I moved in with the state champion for Street Fighter without knowing, I found out when he asked if he could host weekly sessions at our apartment. It was loads nicer than the Smash players, but there was a huge skill gap between the top players and the rest. It was 24/7 bitching about how the top players don't help bad players get better, but I saw the top players of our state help them every day with SF4 and they just never applied any advice or practiced outside of our apartment, then complained whenever the top guys played against each other because "fucking elitist illuminati sessions". Our group of friends constantly got dragged into drama due to percieved slights from our top players. I didn't even have to be part of the gaming community, being near it dragged my mood down.

And now I started playing Overwatch and I feel like that broke the camel's back. The beta was amazing, and I went to /r/overwatch to learn and read tips but that place is filled with asian jokes and ocassional race realism/stereotypes about our cultures. It's even more concentrated than in the default subreddits except maybe r/news.

I'm just letting out steam, no real point to this post. I'm going to just play only with my friends for now on for all games I play, ignoring everything else in gaming community/news. The community is straight up toxic and attracts the worst, most maladjusted people.