The bullying part is def. exaggerated to the point of extreme falsehood, but I've met more than a handful of people who placed wayyyy too much of their identity into increasing their heat tolerance. The worst ones are seriously this autistic and unaware of their cringiness, they would bully harder if they had the numbers and social skill to do so.
It's a different thing to geek out about hot sauces and have the flavor be the main reason, with the heat as a price to pay, but these mfs couldn't care less. They would lick the hottest toilet seat in the world if they thought it gave them bragging rights
People that make hot sauce eating into a competitive spectacle are the problem.
I grew up eating hot foods. I found that if you’re ever discovered eating unusually hot foods by a lot of people you end up becoming “that person who eats spicy stuff” and you get pushed to eat spicier and spicier things as people try to break you. It’s miserable.
It’s not about where your tolerance is at, but your comfort level. My tolerance is high but I’m not going all the way up to go to it, I’ll stay down in my comfort level. My comfort level is higher than many peoples’ tolerance, but I don’t get showy about it. There is a group at work of people who one up eachother with spicy foods. Most of what they have looks pretty weak. I eat homemade tteokbokki that probably crushes most of their sauces, but I’ll never let them know. I don’t want them bringing me synthetic, flavorless pain sauces.
There’s no point in eating something that’s painful to you.
I hope I don't get too annoying about it, but the times I am vocal about spicy food is basically every time I go out to eat at a "spicy" restaurant (Thai, Tex-Mex, etc.). I absolutely despise choosing the spiciest thing on the menu ("4/4 habaneros! get the kiss of death with this extra-spicy sauce!") and then it turns out the plate has maybe 2 mL of regular tabasco and/or a couple Jalapeños, well below my comfort level or my "yummy, spice!" level.
Every once in a blue moon though you'll find a place that has actually spicy food (either by mistake or recent immigrants who don't quite understand yet that many Belgians' tolerance stops at garlic and pepper, which is not an exaggeration), and it's the best thing ever. But everyone I'm going out with usually complains that it's too spicy... Can't win. I just wish restaurants would actually advertise rough Scoville units or something, rather than useless arbitrary scales.
If this is real i'd be interested to see the actual situation. To me this doesn't sound like bullying, just people joking around and flexing their heat tolerance, especially if the people didn't know how much work op put in and how much it meant to them. super hard to judge just on a story tho