You know that if someone eats hot peppers regularly they literally lose the ability to feel any heat from peppers milder than habaneros, right? The neurons responsible for interpreting that specific type of pain response get overstimulated and die off, fundamentally changing how you experience them^[Not only in intensity, but also in duration. With no tolerance people seem to experience prolonged burning from capsaicin and hunt for ways to take the burning away, whereas with tolerance even the hottest peppers fade away to completely undetectable within a minute or so. You get a brief flash of pain, a bit of lingering warmth, and then maybe a barely detectable tingling after that.]. That's part of the trick to it, and why they're addictive: you stop being able to feel most or all of the pain, but it still trips nerves that are saying "I have been severely burned, dump endorphins immediately this is an emergency" giving a warm fuzzy floaty body high.

cultivars bred for spice challenges.

The hottest pepper I've ever encountered, and the only one that actually made food too hot to eat (I ate it anyways), was an Indian cultivar bred to season large pots of stew. Other hot peppers like ghost and scorpion have incredible and unique flavor profiles unlike anything else (although of those, scorpion peppers are easier to pair into dishes because they've got a sharp, tangy flavor that works with a lot of things, while the sort of smoky taste of ghost peppers clashes with a lot of things).

Why would I want people to think I'm macho?