After some decent discussion with other posters I suspect the root of the opinion gulf in this thread is that I am approaching this from the perspective of gaming having become primarily a relaxation hobby, something I do infrequently to unwind and have a good time (usually with friends), and the people replying to me are mostly hardcore competitive types for whom this is their primary competitive outlet.

At 30 years old and with most of my time dedicated to real-world pursuits, I simply no longer have any fucks to give about maximizing how fast my numbers go up on a screen, compared to the very considerable fucks I gave about my various rankings and achievements ten years ago. The idea of wasting time on DPM graphs or grinding exploits holds zero attraction to me now and I no longer understand why anyone would bother doing so when it inherently rewards nothing except a fleeting sense of superiority, which can be gained without all that time and effort, but I can certainly understand the AWD example because it represents considerable value in a real world scenario.

Thus we have a cultural impasse where I find this tangential shit increasingly muscling in on my relaxation time and other people can't live without it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯