When I grew up in the 90s, it was the same damn thing wasn't it? It was even worse than it is now because kids would get bullied for liking nerdy shit like video games instead of getting out and being active.
My whole life I felt ashamed of video games and especially the massive collection I amassed once I got a part time job at 16 and then joined this hell.
And think about it, before any of us joined this forum how much did we really know about games anyway?
I bet all of us went from thinking, "Yeah this is a real cool game you've probably never heard of called Gunstar Heroes" to realizing there is literally an entire sub-section of the gaming community where guys are buying and selling actual arcade PCBs, superguns (finding out what a supergun is and that they exist was a mindfuck for me at 17), etc. and that whatever I thought made me a 'real' gamer was just child's play. After getting into buying real arcade games and Neo-Geo that's all what SNES and Genesis look like.
Then you spend the next couple of years living In the Hunt getting big boy things, like a Saturn modded to play Japanese games, a consolized MVS, even stupid shit like Crows The Battle Action because only 1,000 were made. Then when all that's done you realize none of this shit even mattered, now you've got a massive collection of games but no real life skills because you spent all your free time working and then buying games from grown men on the internet.
Fuck now I'm way off course. Clearly I have issues. I'm pretty happy owning some Chinese knockoff switch that has 2,000 games downloaded on it. That's all I need nowadays. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I wish I had the courage to try and meet people who had the same interests as me. But even back in high school I didn't like the people who openly said they were gamers. I guess life is just like that then. Cheers faggots