FFLogs will have nothing to do with you if you join a static or raid group that chooses to ignore them. Nobody will be pointing at numbers, and you can raid the way you want. There's no official competition boards, and you shouldn't care if other people talk about it if that's what they enjoy. It's not like we have a cohesive "raiding scene", so I don't really get how other people focusing on competition and efficiency should dull your enjoyment of it. I know there are plenty of folks who prefer to take a more organic approach.

I've met my fair share of people who just drop "lolz ur deeps sux" based off parsing, and yeah, those people are jerks. That's why I'm not personally a fan of parsing. The key word there is "personally". I know plenty of people who use it as a tool to encourage themselves to do better/learn from, and that's their prerogative, too. Not everybody-or even a majority-who uses parsers is doing it as a means to shame/compete.

We're playing a game, and games get competitive. People are always looking for ways to be efficient. Ignoring the fact that half of these "nostalgic old days" posts neglect to take into account that games are always going to come off as shiny and exciting when they're new and that luster is going to fade as we become accustomed to them/complete them, the idea that FFLogs/parsing is some new phenomenon is laughable. I remember raiding with a group in vanilla WoW that required everyone to have a parser and to keep their numbers above a certain %. It's been around for as long as video games were around, and improved technology only means that it's easier for folks to find and use these tools.