What experience do you have with the subculture i.e. via what portal.
> gamer because it has so many strange connotations
With gamergate, and "gamers are dead" anti-gamer PR from gaming/activist media outlets; members of the gaming culture have been associated a culture war. With so much propaganda on both sides it's hard to determine what is real.
As for my own experiences: I grew up playing games as did all the people I spent time with in my youth. I've played countless games online, starting somewhere in the late nineties, and joined a number of communities built around those games. I've found that most communities and public servers are quite loud, rude, and unpleasant. I usually have to put in some work to find a circle of like-minded people who just want to enjoy the game in a civilized manner.
The absolutely worst I've come across was probably the Worms 2 online play. Nothing but kids thinking themselves cool by swearing and insulting each other. The best ones were the community some of my friends built in Dungeon Siege, role playing communities in Jedi Knight Academy, and some of the casual guilds in Elder Scrolls Online.
As with many things in life, you've not found the right people. I know some high level players (perhaps a level or two below the best) in a niche but well-known game community. They're very welcoming and are happy to play against me repeatedly despite the fact they all crushed me without a sweat. That said, I do think that the industry wide move towards skill based match making has made games far less endearing than they were in the past. It used to be that people could find the server that was right for them, be it competitive or casual, and do what they wanted. Now most big games don't give you the option to play against people outside of your skill range and you're constantly facing people about as good as you. To me, that's pretty boring long term.
But there's unfortunately a loud enough unpleasant portion of the gamer community that describing myself as a gamer to people outside of my closest circle of friends and colleagues tends to invoke a picture of gamers screaming insults and rage quitting whenever they lose and insulting and laughing at people when they win.
For gaming, it seems to me this to me this is more part of the public perception than for other hobbies. Or perhaps I'm just too far removed from an outside view of it.
I also notice how toxic some regular airsoft/paintball players can be, especially young men/teens.
On the other hand I wouldn't say it's something I myself "center" my identiy around. If you ask me who I am my first response is usually that I'm a father of two. But if you ask me what I do, well.. I develop games for a living and I play games for fun. That covers a big part of how I spend my time.
Pretty sure non of them got a career in gaming tho