Competitive nerd culture.

When the human mind is at its most developmental and impressionable state we throw all the kids together in school. I personally believe that this environment, where we spent 60% of our developmental years, is far from the environment which our brains were evolutionary designed to deal with. But our culture dictates it, and we continue the cycle.

I digress. Let's talk about Gym Class and Nerds. Gym class serves two purposes. The first is simple: No school administration trusts parents. So they take it upon themselves to Do away with child obesity, one embarrassing chin-up at  time. The second is where it fails miserable. Gym class is supposed to teach teamwork and give people confidence. In reality it teaches us that some people are just born physical better then others. And if you don't have physical prowess, you should be left out and ignored.

Through sports teams, and gym class most school kids get a taste of winning. Anyone who has little interest in sports, might never get that taste. It's not like the person with the highest test grade gets to flaunt it around, and the person with the lowest grade gets left out.

Wizards of the Coast is a genius company. Because they, along with Bungee, Nintendo, Marvel, Capcom, and Activion found a way to profit.

That nerd who felt left out and defeated from gym class can go home, pick up his X-box controller and see his name cresting the leader-boards of the Halo 2 universe. Suddenly he has found the thrill of victory. But there is no coach for the videogame player to tell him to be a good winner. 

Then that nerd picks up his first Deck of Magic The Gathering. And suddenly he found a game that rewards intellect over physicality. So he goes to a card shop to play and gets defeated hard. In time he learns, just throwing money at the game will make it so you can win easier. So he does, and he wins, and he feels that victory that he has lusted for. Imagine a man lost in the desert for days and days. Finally he finds an oasis. He is going to drink until it kills him, because of his fear of being thirsty again.

I've been to drunken frat parties, and I've been to the videogame room at anime conventions. More often then not the drunken parties are full of bros being friends, where they VG room is full of people with solid looks on there faces, staring stressful at a game of Super Smash Brothers. I've seen baseball players line up to shake hands, and I've seen M:TG player gloat about screwing someone over in a trade.