in live poker, and online poker i have seen people make the most cruel comments over and over again, beyond the level of trolling

what is it about poker that brings the worst out of many people, losing money?

i can understand how talking smack can be part of someones strategy, and i respect that part of the game...in this case im talking about a level of disrespect that is over the top. i dont feel like i need to give examples because im sure all of you have seen it too. sometimes i feel like 30% of all poker players are miserable, hateful and petty but i have no idea why

am i the only one that sees this?

I play a lot of live poker and can't say I've ever run into this over and over. Sure you have the irritated pissed of drunk or poor loser from time to time, but fortunately most are respectful or at least on the level of tolerable in my own experiences.

I used to play a lot of backgammon online. Most for free but also a bit for money back in the day on party poker.
I have since quit for two reasons.
One, I wanted to focus more on poker.
Two, mostly because of all the mean and nasty comments.
From people I lost to but especially people I beat.
Telling me how horrible I play but am so lucky, yada yada yada.
When it comes to competition, people are terrible humans, no matter the game.

OP isn't referring to drunks or losers ... but to regs. I think this has reduced greatly over the last several years, as more and more of the new pros are about money, not ego. Deriding other people, disrespecting them comes from a place of low self-worth. So the dynamic becomes, "I am better at poker than you, so I am better than you. I will talk down to you and insult you. Never mind if you are a neurosurgeon. I replace my feelings of an actually weak ego by supercharging it in the arena of poker, and then demeaning others who can't match me there." This isn't a complex dynamic. It's bald-faced.

It's called homeostasis.

Humans* try to maintain some sort of equilibrium.
With respect to human psychology homeostasis refers to an equilibrium between good and bad experiences. If you have many bad things happen to you you tend to want to pass on bad things to others (it's basically the reason why losers beat their wives. They have experiences of being inferior e.g. in the workplace so they need someone else to feel inferior in order to regain some semblance of 'balance'...or they try to force positive experiences which can take the form of smoking, gambling, doing drugs, etc.)

*you will actually find the concept of (chemical) homeostasis in all living things - from amoeba to higher lifeforms. All have mechanisms that work against any deviation from the norm. Emotions are - when you get right down to it - also a chemical reaction.

I've definitely been the sore loser at the table, angry player, berating others players' bad plays, and a bunch of other stuff that I'm not proud of and would never do in any other venue. I'm working on not doing any of these things anymore, but sometimes in the moment of seeing half a paycheck go up in flames in a split second over someone's ridiculous play that got lucky, it's hard to control yourself. Losing money is emotional.

I don't think it's the game of poker itself that's emotional, it's the loss of money. For example, if you're playing poker for chump change with your friends for an amount that nobody cares about, no one would ever get angry at the game. But if some pickpocketer takes $500 out of your wallet, you are MAD.

If I were to go to a table where I'd have to sit down with an amount of money that meant anything to me...I wouldn't sit down. This is NLH and I will get sucked out on for my entire stack occasionally.
The minute I convert my bills to chips I look at it as monopoly money - counters in a game.

Similar. If you're keeping a reasonable percentage of your net worth in your wallet then you're setting yourself up for grief. Be mad about all the credit card/drivers license/etc. that you have to get made again. But if you're keeping amounts of money in your wallet that really bother you to lose then you're doing something wrong.