Once I was a gamer with a lot of disposable income. I bought a lot of stuff and from that stuff fielded competitive armies, or as competitive as I could make them. I was more interested in playing games than painting or modelling. I loved the fluff, and still do. Oh yes, this was before Google and many of the forums that exist today. A lot of my info came from friends, White Dwarf, and personal experience. I started with the advent of 3rd ed and the Dark Millenium game supplement. My first army was Dark Angels.
Today it's a lack of time that dictates my hobby. I like fun games more than competitive games, but I like playing a competitive game every so often, so I enter tournaments, maybe 2 or 3 per year. But I'm limited by time what I can collect and paint, so have to be very picky and very informed about what I'm getting into when it comes to buying, assembling, and painting units. I've given up on MEQ-oriented armies and have stuck with Orks, Eldar, and IG. I'm still trying to sell my Chaos Space Marines, and hopefully this'll happen when GW gets around to revamping them sooner rather than later.
I'm definitely more of a hobbyist now than I was but I still need to get into a painting routine (other than for tournaments) but I definitely like fluffy lists as opposed to powergaming lists. However for tournaments fluff must bow to power in my mind and think everyone should be free to bring as competitive a list as they can, as long as they've put time and effort into painting their models (or paying money for painted models).