Is it just me or am i playing on rank lobbies even though i select pubs ?

If you're saying that "ranked is sweaty" and "pubs is easy" and "this season they're both sweaty"... then not really. I played a few ranked matches the other day - can't even remember why - and it was literally what I imagine hell to be like. When I die I will be trapped for eternity in an Apex Legends ranked hopper.

Pubs seemed like it was off to a rocky start, but it settled down pretty quickly to being just the normal annoyances: bad, but not disastrous, matchmaking; the normal amount of low level enemies who play like they just won a regional tournament; all the annoying seasonal changes like Ash. She needs to go.

No, your not wrong. Just watched a 3 stack of masters squad in pubs. Lets face it, they cant walk on players in ranked, so they head to pubs and do it there. That's the way I have seen it playing out. Streamers even jumping on alt accounts and playing pubs so they can arm pat themselves on the back that they owned a bunch of plus or minus average players . Just an Ego thing for them.