"Person X, who does frivolous activity Y, has conflict with competition Z".
If we're so far removed from the raw struggle to keep body and soul together that we can not only play Y, but have competition Z surrounding Y, then we are truly succeeding.
In the end, we know that Billy, Steve, and whoever is the current record holder are all insanely talented at the game Donkey Kong and this at point, it reminds me of arguments over which tall building is taller, resorting to measuring from garage entrances to radio masts, when in reality, two buildings that are 500m tall and within 1% of each other are so far above everything else that the 1% doesn't matter anymore. But we like absolute clear-cut black and white labels on things, so the arguing will go on.
In this case it doesn't help that Billy comes across as very weird and unlikeable, the movie plays this up, particularly in contrast to Wiebe (who seems pretty nice) but it hurts him more that he's been a bit evasive and turned in a few questionable submissions.
And re the tallest-buildings-within-1%-of-each-other thing, that's just it. People who suck at a game and report outright fraudulent results are generally outed pretty quickly. But the big scandals - like the ones I linked above - often occur when those who are already at the very top of their game feel pressure to compete and cut a few corners to get a score or a time just ahead of what they are normally capable of achieving. And those communities are not centered around discovering who happens to be roughly in that top 1% of competitors, but around a leaderboard of ranked scores. They share tips, strategies and there are genuine friendly rivalries between competitors.
What's interesting now is that the pool of elites in the world large enough to engage in frivolous activity is now so much larger than before. So instead of some royal scion who's very into fox hunting, we have fairly relatively poor people who are passionate about all kinds of other things.
I find it hard to be too dismal about more people having the freedom to do things other than backbreaking labor that is necessary to stay alive. How many more people now are able to keep their body in shape and soul happy via "frivolous" artistic ventures or sports? And of those, how many of them refresh themselves by doing something that may ultimately seem as important as Isaac Newton's idle musings about math or Byron's poetry?
Which 'it' are you referring to in the previous sentence (or in the original comment)?