"Help me to not hate competitive?"

I don't even know where to start with this. It could well be made into a massive wall of text, but I'll try to sum up in small points.I hate the idea of competitive Pokemon. I really do. I've tried to like it, but I simply can't.It reduces Pokemon to nothing but numbers and natures. It goes completely against the entire established spirit of Pokemon to, for example, churn out dozens of eggs, disposing of the newly-hatched Pokemon until one meets your criteria.Playing with your favorites isn't even an option. If you're not using a combination of the best/most viable, as dictated by Smogon or other such places, you may as well forget it. Even if you don't lose, it seems other players will decry you for so much as breaking the mold by using a Pokemon that's in a lower tier.Competitive players seem to very frequently view non-competitive players as lesser, and I've often seen it said that anyone who plays Pokemon and isn't interested in/doesn't like competitive is just "too stupid" or "too lazy" to learn/understand EV/IV/Nature/Ability/Moveset/tier or whatever else. It smacks of elitism when the fact of the matter is that a vast majority of Pokemon players don't go to those extremes.Hackers, apparently, are utterly rampant. Players who use some tool or other to hack in Pokemon that's the perfect spreadsheet of numbers in a Pokemon costume that they want, with the claim that they would have gotten it legally eventually, and they're just saving time. That sounds detestable to have to deal with.Everyone seems to refer to the exact same sources. If everyone is just using the same cookie cutter formula, what is there to do but just meet the number quota, and then hope RNG works in your favor?Honestly, I can't see the fun in any of it. What's worse is that because competitive is talked about constantly, and it's getting more deeply integrated into the games, it feels like you have to participate to some degree, or you're less-than. I've never actually competitively battled myself; I've been actively resisting it because it feels so toxic and pointless. I've read up a lot about the community and the standards and the kind of experiences people have with the more elitist competitive players, however.At the end of the day, you're never going to be the best. There's no prizes, there's no proof that you've put in all the time and study; all you end up with is a team that's viable until places like Smogon say that it's not and everyone starts using something else, rinse and repeat. What are competitive players actually striving for? I hear a lot of talk from people saying that "VGC sucks", which I take to mean that most competitive players aren't actually...competing. They're not entering the big competitions and competing for prizes or cash or fame, so what is it done for? Either they aren't satisfied with winning because it's not perfect yet, or they're bitching that they lost to either hackers or a "bullshit" strategy. What are competitive players actually getting out of this? I'm not saying that you need proof or prizes for it to be worth it; I just don't understand what the end point is.In a way, I want to like competitive; I do. It's buried in me a little bit now, which I hate. I have to resist restarting the game if I get a starter without a "useful" nature, which makes it feel like even the slightest bit of that mindset rubbing off on me has damaged my ability to just enjoy the game. Can anyone help me to understand? I've looked at message boards and comment sections answering why people enjoy competitive, and all it ever seems to come down to is "I WANT TO BE THE BEST, IT'S IN THE THEME SONG" or "not playing comp is boring" or "I enjoy crunching the numbers and devising super complicated strategies"The one I understand the least is when people talk about the satisfaction that you get from completely raising a Pokemon, fine-tuning every minor aspect of its numbers to get the perfect fighter. How does any of that apply when it seems like these Pokemon invariably end up shoved in a box with all the other untrained "scrubs" the person has caught in the wild when a strategy change or new ban comes into place?Please don't say "just try it and you'll see!"; that's not the point of this thread. I'm not trying to mitigate my dislike of the idea of competitive by forcing myself to do something I know I'm not likely to enjoy; chances are I won't ever truly get into competitive or doing anything with EV/IV training/breeding; I just want to understand why it's even the slightest bit fun for anyone that actually does.I know this thread will probably get a thick handful of downvotes and very few comments, but I honestly just want to know/understand. via /r/pokemon http://ift.tt/2sj5EAw