Most of the people playing it are outside of the US and not speaking English. They also fit the teenage target demographic.
I too imagine the series to end at Soul Society, when Aizen, Gin, and black dude's name I forget rise to the heavens.q
I feel like you aren't supposed to be anything. You just are and there's your perception of it. This mindset makes it hard for me to motivate myself to do anything sometimes. Oh well.
Belief in one isn't mutually exclusive. I believe there is intelligent life out there somewhere else in the universe, but I don't believe people's accounts of UFOs.