Well, if you must know, most competitive battlers are elitist, or at least act like they are. And it isn't just Smogon. But if you want to know WHY so many people on and off this site consider Smogon to be an elitist site, look at what people like Ragnarok say about it having 'the best system' for dealing with the tiering decisions and such, right before closing the thread so nobody can tell him in how many ways he's lying. It doesn't have 'the best system'. No competitive battling site has 'the best system'. Even when I was DOING competitive battling, I knew this. If his attitude isn't elitist, then I don't know what is. And nobody's fooling anyone by claiming that he's anything but a mouthpiece for Smogon.
To be fair, it isn't just Ragnarok. It's most competitive battlers. Reference your post. Every single time someone criticizes competitive battling, people always jump on that person like they've got some kind of disease. Then a mod closes the thread and tells the person who criticizes it that they're wrong.
On top of that, I can't come onto a single Pokemon site without seeing people talking about competitive battling. And I can't watch a single let's play of a Pokémon game without having to suffer through the guy droning on and on about his competitive battling experience, which nobody watching the LP cares about. So we may not HAVE to follow competitive battling, but we don't have much of a choice, since we can't avoid it online. Now that I think about it, maybe it isn't the elitism that annoys me so much. I mean if anything, this is a pretty elitist site in and of itself, but it doesn't really bother me. Maybe it's just the fact that I see people talking about competitive battling everywhere.
And as far as TPCi is concerned, it's sad when the people that created the tournaments don't know what they're doing. Just saying.