My hypothesis is that rudeness in Chess is correlated with knowing some tactics but having little concept of how much they have left to learn. I feel that at around 1200 it started to change for me where players are starting treat their matches as learning experiences rather than fights.
I know what you mean. It's kind of remarkable that I can play people at a level (1400-1500) where we are both objectively pretty mediocre, yet some of them have such huge egos regardless and seem to want a form of respect which is actually just deference.
Interesting what you say about learning- I usually check out the profiles of people who behave badly and they're universally either trending firmly downwards or their rating jumps up and down wildly. No improvers.
My hypothesis is that rudeness in Chess is correlated with knowing some tactics but having little concept of how much they have left to learn. I feel that at around 1200 it started to change for me where players are starting treat their matches as learning experiences rather than fights.