Anything with a uniform will attract a certain number of people who are in love with the uniform and think it makes them look cool or tough or ... . Me I tolerate dive gear. Its job is to let me stay underwater for a while. If I could rent portable gills and leave all the dive gear home (except my camera and something to protect my skin from critters) I would.
The question is not whether you have been to a cool place or ten, but how that enters the conversation. If I ask somebody where they have dived and they give some examples, that is fine. But what happens after that. Are they only interested in what they have to say but not interested in other's experiences? Do they not care about what anybody else has to say? When I say, that was a nice dive we just did, and they say well it was ok but you should have been diving with me at 500ft in the Red Sea with the King of Saudia Arabia in my brand new $5000 wetsuit. Then not ok. How, why, and when things are said and not said is often more important than the actual content.
I have done some of the behaviour that was described by the OP as what could be seen asarrogance, but in my case, nothing could be further from the truth.
Two quick examples:
I am a vacation diver. I am also retired and living on a pension. Unfortunately it is not uncommon to go a year or more between dive trips. As a result, my air consumption the first couple days stinks! After a couple days, it gets better and by the end of a trip, I am often among the last back on the boat. When this happens, and I mention it, it is not because I am arrogantly bragging about being the last on the boat. It is mentioned because I am so happy to see things get back to what I consider "normal". Although some may interpret it as arrogance, in my case, I see it as exuberance.
The other example often occurs when discussing places where I have dove. Yes, I have dove in a lot of really cool places. Many of those places are what some might consider "bucket list trips". So what some people might hear as "I've been to Fiji, Socorro, Isla Guadeloupe, etc." what I am trying to say is that I was lucky enough to find a LDS that was run by someone who loved to travel. He organized some very cool trips and over the years I was fortunate enough to have been along with them when they went on some of these trips.
I am not giving everyone a free pass by any means. Of course there are people out there who are arrogant. (There are even one or two here on ScubaBoard for instance who like to pass off their opinion as though it is fact and hate it when someone dares to question their statements.) All I am saying is that sometimes enthusiasm can be misinterpreted as something else.
The question is not whether you have been to a cool place or ten, but how that enters the conversation. If I ask somebody where they have dived and they give some examples, that is fine. But what happens after that. Are they only interested in what they have to say but not interested in other's experiences? Do they not care about what anybody else has to say? When I say, that was a nice dive we just did, and they say well it was ok but you should have been diving with me at 500ft in the Red Sea with the King of Saudia Arabia in my brand new $5000 wetsuit. Then not ok. How, why, and when things are said and not said is often more important than the actual content.