I guess, it's the same story as with studying the opening in chess.

You will get a higher rating short term because you will get a lot of "build order" wins. The downside comes when you start to rely on people playing the "wrong move" and when you stop thinking (reading) for yourself.

Copying moves is okay but the goal should be to develop an understanding, not playing "the professional's move".

So, my advice is - play moves you understand the idea behind.

To which may I add this advice: Play moves you do not understand in order to increase your understanding of them.

One streamer that I was playing once said "I feel like he went out and learned it just to use it on people. I don't like it." Which is true, I guess... why else would you learn it?

Play moves you have AN idea behind, so you increase the understanding of THE idea behind.

I do not think playing moves you have absolutely no idea about is very productive. Bad idea behind a move is superior to no idea behind a move. If for no other reason that it usually leads to understanding why your idea is bad and you can replace it with good/better idea.

Trick plays can be insulting. Not all, but many are of the variety of "I'm playing a move that I know is objectively wrong because I think you're too stupid to answer properly".

For the other sorts of pre-researched moves, it might result in "fake strength", when the moves you make are backed not by reading, evaluation and experience, but by superficial and half-remembered knowledge. Such moves are bad because they don't really help you progress as a player.

Why do you feel insulted? If you know the correct response, play the correct response. If the guy playing this keeps losing from it, he'll naturally be obliged to find better moves. This is not limited to trick plays. Suppose your opponent reads out a variation that seems to work, but in fact, it doesn't quite work. You know the refutation to that sequence that he read out. Is it insulting that he could think to play out a variation that is not working? Or he plays out a ladder that's not working - is that insulting? I don't understand the reason to find insult here.

Maybe it's because your opponent believes that he knows something that you don't. That's OK, isn't it? Show him that he's wrong.

Pre-research doesn't imply half-remembered knowledge. It could mean that you understand the nuances of a board position better than your opponent. Any sort of joseki study could fall into this category. If you win games by studying patterns, and go on to play stronger players, is that not progress as a player? Professional players do pre-research all the time on opening formations. In tournaments, it's good to start the game in familiar territory, so that you can focus your energy on the less-researchable aspects of the game.

Pre-researched moves are, in fact, a form of experience. By going over a position before the game, you gain experience about the nuances of that position. Similarly, by playing out a sequence in a real game, you also gain experience. It's nice to think that, as go players, we back all of our moves by precise consideration of all possible responses and sequences, without any sort of knowledge known beforehand. But I don't think that's the case. Otherwise, a player who just learned the rules would have the capability to beat an experienced player, since any additional knowledge is "superficial".

Trick plays can be insulting. Not all, but many are of the variety of "I'm playing a move that I know is objectively wrong because I think you're too stupid to answer properly".

The answer to all of that is literally in the part you quoted. A trick play is a move you know is wrong but that you play anyway. Unless it's teaching game and you're trying to test your opponent (and even then, I don't think trick plays would be the best way to test him/her). In a complicated position, you play move that your reading say works, or that you feel work when the situation is too complicated to fully read. Sometime you're wrong, but if you realized that before playing that move, you would play something else (unless maybe you're desperate and decide to gamble one last time before resigning).

Hmm... If this is what you think, lemme ask you a question? Did you ever fall for a trick play? I bet you have... and what do you think that makes you?

Generally, getting offended during the game by a bad move is not a smart strategy. Much better to punish it and move on.

PS>
There are advantages to being tricky in a game, I think. A simple example: when you notice that your opponent has a tendency to hang on to stones that should have been sacrificed, you might devise a 'trick play' to take advantage of it. Not to mention that it can be a part of a psychological warfare - you play a lot of trick moves and your opponent eventually gets overwhelmed and stumbles. If you are smart about it, it might work. I know some players who play like that and have decent results - although they do not progress very fast, so there is that.

Having said the above, I would never recommend it. And - of course - I would never play like that myself. I always make the best possible moves. Remember that if we ever meet across the board.