From a gameplay perspective, what exactly is the difference between normals and ranked?

I see a lot of people who play nothing but ranked, maybe a normal here and there to cool down, but 90% of the time all they play is ranked. And here I am, not a single ranked game on my account for 3 years straight, thinking "wtf is wrong with you". Personally I can't see any difference whatsoever between normals and ranked.

I get that ranked is supposed to be the tryhard place, where wins actually matter in some way, a place to bring your very best, to compete against your peers, blah blah blah. But on a fundamental level, when you look at the gameplay, there's literally zero difference between them. Look at it this way: does the summoner's rift in a normal game magically change into ranked summoner's rift when you queue for a ranked game? Do the rules of the game change in any way? Do champion abilities change functionally between the game modes? Are the strategies used by players more or less effective just because it's a ranked game?

Absolutely not.

So why the difference in attitude? Why do we treat ranked (and the people who play it) differently than those who play nothing but normal games? As someone who literally never plays ranked, I get inundated constantly with comments about how I'm not as skilled because I'm not ranked. Sometimes people ask "How did I even get queued with you, you're unranked lol" (this mostly from the plats and diamonds that I play with/against in normals). I realize that normals MMR and ranked MMR are completely separate entities, but I'm not trying to bring up that old debate.

I think what people fail to realize is that a player can still be quite skilled and also be unranked. The one and only thing that differentiates a good normals player and a good ranked player is the shiny boarder around your name when you have a high rank. Faker would still be Faker, capable of doing Faker-things if he were unranked. Take any LCS-level player and remove their rank. Does their skill suddenly fly out the window? No. They're still an LCS-level player. The only thing that changes is we lose the ability to quantify that player's skill. But objectively you could still examine their play and say "yes, that person is good at the game".

The same is true of any player. Ranked or not, a person can still be a great player and unranked at the same time. Believe it or not, there ARE people who don't give 2 shits about the competitive aspect of this game. Some people just don't care about competition. Not necessarily because they would rather play for fun, but because competition in and of itself does not interest them. The difference here is key: the former plays for fun and doesn't care about how well they do. The later may play for whatever reason they wish, fun or otherwise, but will still try their hardest to win and give their 100% every game. In both cases, judging one's performance on a linear scale against that of his/her peers (i.e. competition) is not even considered.

That said, I know that a big part of ranked revolves around the ability to play with a coordinated team, especially with dynamic queue. However the same could be said for draft normals, as they use the exact same queue system as ranked players do. All that's missing is the motivation to coordinate with others. Personally I think it's laughable how focused our society is on competition, especially considering that the only reason we evolved with the need to compete against each other in the first place was because available resources were limited. Not so in the modern world (unless you're living in a third-world country, RIP).

What are your thoughts on this? Why do you treat ranked differently than normals, even though they're exactly the same in terms of gameplay?