What used to be a fun game ruined by try hard community

I'm just here to vent.

I grew up on this game, I loved this game, my dad was a 1800 player back in early 00s. I have watched every SoTL video in the past 3 years, my dad and I have practiced build orders on AI, and wins just can't happen for me no matter what I do. I started out in the unranked lobbies. After getting my ass handed to me on nomad I thought I should try BF noobs lobbies. Turns out those are the favorite hangouts of smurfs. I turned to rated games hoping that ranked matches would at least put me in a competitive bracket but apparently such a thing does not exist for me. I've looked up the rankings of the players I'm matched up against aoe2.net, one guy was at 20,000 rank. He's in the 2nd percentile, wins like 20% of his games, and he hit me with a scout rush that knocked me out in the first 10 to 15 minutes. Maybe I do suck, but when I used to play this game as a kid I could expect to win one out of every two to three games just having fun with it. To come back as an adult with practiced strategies and not be able to win against anyone is beyond discouraging - I'm pushing a 15 loss streak.

It seems that people playing DE now are competitive to the point of madness, it's not possible to play for fun and have a good game like I used to be able to do back in the day on MSN and that is such a sad thing to see competitiveness take over to this extent and crush this game.

I doubt I'm alone in experiencing this, and my last word before I say goodbye to a game I used to love is that you guys are not going to experience any growth in this playerbase or in your community with the brutally competitive mindset that has taken over. Try and have fun with it if you can remember what it's like to do that with a game.