"Why do some gamers invert their controls?"

[Bread]

But there is a sizeable minority who do the opposite, controlling their avatars like a pilot controls a plane, pulling back to go up

Is this the minority though? I was very much under the impression a vast amount of players do this, and I can't think of many games I've played recently where I've had to adjust the settings to enable this. Pulling back on the stick to look up just makes sense to me. If someone were to press down on the bottom of the back of my neck, my natural reaction would be to look up. And if someone pressed at the top, I'd look down. That's just science.

People who invert the x-axis on the other hand are psychopaths and to be avoided at all times.