I am a high performer (because my boss is a dick...I'm my boss) and I work everyday with a twitch stream of Hearthstone running on my laptop. It's background noise that helps me focus. When I need a little break, I tune in and pay attention.

Try not to project your own limitations on to other people!

Depends on what I'm doing. If I'm grinding through stuff I know exactly how to do, but can't automate away, I find having something like people talking or an audiobook I know well running in the background actually helps me focus. It occupies just enough of my mind that I don't feel tempted to get distracted by the internet.

I have a whole range of preferred noise depending on the task, from dead silence for hard, tricky problems up to what I just described for easy but important detail work. I even know exactly what kind of music I want to listen to for different tasks, and whether or not I want vocals in it.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to what works for people.

I do the same thing. I can listen to talk radio and read a book at the same time. I get similar responses to what you have said here.

There's probably some relation between this and growing up with the TV on 100% of waking hours, even when no-one's watching (which is really common).