There are a few games that are legit made to played on the hardest difficulty and still be enjoyable but it's certainly a small percentage of the overall game market. But hey, some people are a lot better than me, and that level of challenge for them is either fun or not especially difficult.
The games that use the insult difficulty name thing are generally in genres that relish the idea of nerd challenge or old school challenge. Yeah its childish but its videogames. I could see if it was half of the game market doing this. Maybe that would be annoying. But its a tiny tiny percentage that do. Not everything has to be for everybody.
Especially when your game is kill the Nazi's and your character is named "B.J." Blazkowicz.
Personally I only bump up the difficulty when I'm familiar with a franchise and I know their version of normal is really easy. COD, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, would be examples of that.
