My story has been I was always the quiet "nerdy" kid who had no social life and just sat in the basement playing video games and never had any friends. I was ignored for the most part of my life, not by my parents but by the other kids. I was too little to play sports, too shy to make friends. I always took refuge in my video games, the one place that I could do what i wanted to do without being made fun of (it would be a pretty wierd if the NPC's told you you were a loser for playing the game huh). It was also the place i had control and could actual be someone. I could be the "hero" and so i just got made fun of more for the amount of video games I played. Then internet games and voice chat came around and i've actually made quite a few lasting friendships through video games.
I don't see why people think "gamers" have no lives. We probably interact, joke with, work on teams with a lot more people than others do, its just not face to face. And why are video games such a bad thing? In sports, you practice, play multiple games, work with teammates, get better, play in tournaments. Isn't that the exact same thing you do in video games? So how come gamers get the short end of the stick. A lot of us put in way more time and energy and effort and build up more knowledge and skill and brain work than non-gamers at whatever they do.
Maybe the "normal" kids are just to insecure about not being cool so they have to make fun of the kids who don't need to be "cool" to have fun and have a good life

Go hang with the jerks and self centered fake kids. I'll go chill with my genuine friends and have a night to remember eating mushrooms, shooting zombies, leveling up, and running through an aperture science facility