1200 is time to start memorizing openings

i got to 1200 without any opening preparation, but i'm stuck. 1200 is the time to start memorizing openings. if you fight some tryhard on the sicilian and you don't know how to deal with it, opening principles won't help you. you auto lose after the opening is done 

1200 is as far as you can get with opening principles and tactics. 

and anyone who disagrees, you talk to them and they say why yes i started playing chess at the age of 6 with my papi who played chess for 30 years, trained by his papi who played for 30 years... i never had to learn about openings its all my amazing brain doing all the work ! yeah sure buddy. 

i'd even go as far to say this game isn't about skill but pattern recognition so grinding 50 thousand games and studying 15 books will get you grand master. 

Who are you arguing with?  If that's what you've decided, you can do whatever you want.

Pattern recognition is a learned skill.  Some people are born with perhaps more talent and aptitude but it is definitely a learned skill.

I can't put names to many, if any, openings and I got to over 1400 in Rapid. It would be disingenuous to say I don't know any openings because there are certainly recurring sequences and ideas which I follow at the start of my matches and I always play 1.e4. This probably isn't the fastest way to learn Chess but I like to solve problems for myself. You might prefer to learn differently. Matches at 1400 are still characterised by blunders and mistakes so I wouldn't expect opening study to be a magic bullet for improving your game. However you can't get very far without learning something about openings or you're doomed to fall into your opponent's opening traps and/or run down your clock on positions which your opponent doesn't need to analyse. You don't have to learn them formally but you will need some familiarity with them even if that's simply through experience.

I dont know anything about any opening(except fried liver attack) and I have managed to reach 1780 for now so idk

The fried liver attack is good to know for your level of Chess, but unfortunately, it can be countered with consistent ease. The issue lies in the fact that with only 1 piece to attack, your opponent will be able to place all of his troops in a position to trade safely on your behalf.

Now, the solution is just a bit more difficult, but you can make it a lot more effective. In your first game, do everything in your power to put your opponent into a situation that he cannot get out of unscathed. Don’t take a piece, but you have to be very patient and work with your opponent. Do not take a piece, but you have to be more aggressive. If he is making a trade with you, you can always make a mistake by taking a piece instead of playing around him. In your example above, I am assuming he did just that by moving his knight from B-4 to A-4. This was a very aggressive move that was completely unwarranted. Now, instead of just playing around him, you can play your pieces on his right side.

If you play sharp openings without memorization,  then sure, you'll lose quickly.

After 1.e4 c5 2.c4 with a typical development (Bg2 Nge2) nothing bad will happen to you i.e. you don't need memorization at 1200 to play this way.

This surprises a lot of people... but chess is not an intelligence test, it's a skill. An actual skill just like sports or arts or etc.

And like any skill it takes hours of study and practice to be even a little bit good... and the people who have done that practice have a big advantage over those who don't.

@1

"i got to 1200 without any opening preparation" ++ Good.

"1200 is the time to start memorizing openings." ++ No.

"if you fight some tryhard on the sicilian and you don't know how to deal with it, opening principles won't help you." ++ They will help you if you apply them and if you look for tactics.

"you auto lose after the opening is done" ++ You lose after you make a mistake.

"1200 is as far as you can get with opening principles" ++ No. Even IM is possible.

" and tactics" ++ Yes, 'chess is 99% tactics' - Teichmann

"this game isn't about skill but pattern recognition" ++ Yes.

"grinding 50 thousand games" ++ Yes, Kramnik studied 10,000 games per month.

"studying 15 books will get you grand master." ++ Yes, more like 20 books:
https://rafaelleitao.com/chess-books-grandmaster/ 

Suffice it to say you are incorrect.  And looking at your last few games, your issue is not the opening, but in making 1-move threats.

Having been over 1100 briefly in Rapid before almost dropping below 1000 again my problem is periodic bouts of blundering and miscalculating exchanges. I am generally irritated after that happens and don't wish to continue but do in an impaired state of mind. Another problem is becoming irritated because my opponent hasn't resigned in the middlegame when lost and being resentful at having to go into an endgame, sometimes under time pressure. I still fall for tricky openings and tactics on occasion too. Point is, none of this is linked to opening theory.

Problem with family-based training; you don't know how well grounded your theories are.

Spend a whole life trained by the wrong people and you remain oblivious to the established literature and never make it to any level as a result. Time to put those peppers up the behind. Pure chess is very hard core and theory-based. Study is at least as important as practice (and not play).

I want to enjoy playing and will do so more if I can stop obvious blunders. I think that can be achieved through play and puzzles. I will gladly plateau after that. It's the obvious mistakes which irritate me in turn leading to shallow, uninteresting games rather than some arbitrary ELO I haven't achieved yet. I feel like I "should" be better at chess because I generally have an analytical mind with good attention to detail but I seem to be pretty poor at analysing multiple chess positions during games.

chess is all about memorization, argue all you want, to make it very high you need to memorize lines and endgames etc, no one in the history of chess has made it very far by just playing chess, most of the time you are looking at games, watching videos and reading books, memorizing stuff, that is all there is in chess, it is not some magical high intelligence games, 90% of games are won in the opening and other than that it is your opponent blundering by not knowing popular lines, that is why pros play blitz and classical chess is mostly draw, perfect game of chess is always a draw

I have too many other interests to commit too much time to studying at the moment. I just (mostly) enjoy playing but get irritated with the blunders because they are avoidable and degrade the experience.

Please share where you got those statistics from, I'd be fascinated to see them.

No, knowing 50k games by heart helps but without the ability to calculate extremely well, no one becomes a GM. Also, memorizing opening lines won't help you much. Try to understand the resulting middle game structures and ideas instead... You do that by going through annotated model games. 

yes

Could you expound on this point please? 10k is a huge number in only 30 days. The number of games and minutes in a day just don’t seem plausible. Perhaps he didn’t  study entire games but portions of them?

Yeah, if he spent 1 minute on each game it would be 5 hours a day.