Please do not try to trade actively unless that's your full-time job. Passive investing using index funds is definitely not sexy, but it gets the job done.
Only if you have a significant amount of capital to play with. People looking into active trading are doing it because they don't have the necessary capital to make passive investing meaningful; they're looking for much much larger returns that you can get from an index fund, which necessarily comes with more risk. Traders are gamblers.
Active trading, by definition, incurs higher transaction costs than passive investing. Since transaction costs are generally priced per trade, active trading is more costly on a percentage basis for individuals with less capital.
It wasn't investment advice, nor did I say it was a good idea; I'm merely telling you why people choose active investing: they believe they can do better and there's enough stories out there of the "lucky" person who did better to keep that hope alive. In all likelihood they're going to lose their money, but you'll never convince people trying to win a lottery that they're better off accepting they can't. I literally said traders are gamblers, obviously that means I think active trading is gambling, that's not investment advice.