How could you ever hope to measure and compare the relative vitriol of internet communities? Anyone's perception will be heavily biased by what the media likes to report on (drama on Potted Plant Watering.com is a lot less likely to make the news than tweets about violent video games, which are on the list of talking points already). The most vitriolic ones are probably sub-forums that we've never even heard of.

"teenagers"

Is there evidence that gamers are the most vitriolic? Seems a common accusation but not a commonly sourced accusation, especially with a source that controls other variables. I know there are plenty of anecdotes, but there are such anecdotes about other groups as well and it could be that vitriolic from other groups isn't given equal coverage.

...the gamers that have specifically been cultivated as fans by the AAA distributors and their studios. For years.

There are plenty of people who consider themselves gamers that won't touch "gamers" and their community with an 11-foot pole.

I am particularly miffed about the current gaming business environment, wherein many games require a constant network connection, force you to play with strangers, and set up the gameplay to encourage frequent in-game purchases. And you can't pause it for a week and pick it back up right where you left it. Why would the major distributors care about people like me, who will wait until all planned DLC is released, then buy the complete package on sale and then not buy anything else for 6 months, when they can string along addicted superfans who will pay $15 per month, forever, and also take the place of well-programmed NPC scripting and AI by being a vicious live-human opponent for everyone else that plays?

See Fallout 76 for an egregious example of this. There are no NPCs in it. So the intentional experience for players is to wander around an empty-feeling world, full of mutant animals whose main challenge is to kill them before they eat you, getting quests from holotapes, and to have human griefers--who are bored with the game, but still either want to get their money's worth out of what they paid for it, or to punish the developers by ruining the gaming experience for others--pestering them constantly to activate the dueling function or launch nukes at each other. I'm not going to subject myself to that, or pay money to allow my misery to be someone else's fun.

But I had zero hesitation whatsoever in snapping up West of Loathing, or its DLC, Gun Manor. That's single-player, offline, pausable, scripted, funny, and has simple mechanics with clear win conditions.

No online leaderboards or competitive mechanics or guilds or clans or PvP means you don't ever have to play with people who make the game less fun for you. If there's no meta-game, you never have to touch the out-of-band communities. The "gamers" become irrelevant. Maybe someone writes a FAQ with spoilers, that you might look up if you get stuck.

"Gamer" has come to mean the worst aspects of the online gaming community, like having unhealthy obsessions, of slamming people for their appearance, sexuality, gender, or anything that sets them apart from "normal" gamers. It's trash talking that's been weaponized and perverted into something deeply dangerous.

That whole scene should be burned to the ground starting with 4chan.

If your community can't keep your members in check, can't provide good examples, you're going to slowly corrupt and mutate into something you can't control. It happens every time.

The term gamer means nothing anymore. The only requisite is to have an interest in playing games. There's no conditions attached to the point where people argue over what is a "real gamer". The only way to discern gamers as different "groups" is by what games, forums, sites, and platforms gamers frequent. Reddit, 4chan, ign, eurogamer, pcgamer, kotaku etc.

I find toxicity is often attached to multiplayer games of the competitive variety with player interaction.

There are billions of gamers worldwide. It is just people.