You would need to be removed from the medium to see exactly why it's such an uncool hobby. My partner, for example, has zero interest in gaming, and in fact knows less about gaming than I though was humanly possible due to osmosis.
She rarely ever sees me playing a game (we mostly see each other on weekends, I play games during the week) but the odd time she does see, then she watches me playing games like, Yonder or Mario & Rabbids. Removed from game mechanics, the story, the atmosphere, all she sees, from the odd glance to the TV when she lifts her head from her phone,i s cartoon characters doing cute/ funny shit. On Facebook there are videos being shared constantly of people raging out on call of duty. When we go shopping and I bring her to a GAME shop, she looks around her, not at the games, but the staff and the customers and clearly thinks, wow, kids, man kids and some hygienically challenged people.
She last played games when she had a PlayStation one, now she is 25 now her last gaming experience was, and I quote "we had a playstation but never any games for it, just a dancing mat and some music cd's that showed arrows that you could dance too". She didn't realise that DDR was a game.
Now she has been with me, and she is around my home were I have a library of over 2000 games, an arcade machine, 5 televisions, and a gaming room filled with toys and retro game consoles, she looks at me and says "I love you and your seriously nerdy hobbies". She doesn't alienate me and I don't see her as a some kind of uninformed "normie". But when I put myself in her shoes, as one who was grown up without video games, gaming is a very socially removed, Immature, nerdy as fuck hobby.
And I agree. Some people don't want to fuck uncool dorks. Let them be. When I was on the dating scene I swiped left to any girl whose hobby was horse riding which is close minded, but I don't owe anyone the benefit of the doubt on Tinder, social stigma is everywhere.
