The Competition Drive
You’d be surprised at how cultural niche’s have an impulse to establish competitions to determine who the best is. They have it for essays. They have it for cheesemongers. There’s something to this. There will always be an outsider saying, “can’t you just do that for fun, for the sake of it, as a hobby?” But to the person whose purpose is entangled in that niche, the subject matter almost doesn’t matter—there’s a universal drive for mastery.