in my humble opinion, the battling community exists but is driven underground by the mass of randoms that have been enabled for years (and just to avoid bashing the present this was something that started when i still ran the place soooo yeah i guess i can only complain so much but ugh) but yeah it can get pretty frustrating. your post actually hit the nail on the head pretty well at least in terms of how i feel about the situation.
probably won't get rse remakes until a few years down the road but looking forward to them, still playing through emerald, actually linking it up with xd as i'm writing this haha, should be fun. competitive is ok but ou needs to ban aegislash, charizard-x, mawile, pinsir, landorus, and thundurus before it becomes varied in a good way (aka not total chaos where you throw in thund as a catchall to setup sweepers cause otherwise you're toast) but ou isn't unplayable or anything, and there's still some room for innovation etc. personally i'm about to try uu which is a more traditional gen4 style meta as far as i can tell with more scarfers less (but still present) priority and some old favs like blissey pert nape etc so looking forward to that.
studying history, probably not too surprising. i've been watching hardwood classics on nbatv, usually lakers/celtics from the 80s is on, there was an awesome jazz/sonics game from 92 i think that was great. but i'm not a huge tv guy, just play a lot of ball and hang out here :x