The first thing that socially excluded nerds do after they find a community that accepts them is, of course, raise barriers and gates to keep out other people who don't confirm to their particular monoculture.

Which is a shame. It's a digital medium, it's not a limited consumable, you should derive nothing but joy from other people sharing your hobby.

It is getting better, though. Every year, it feels like there are more and more spaces with a cardinal rule - if your behaviour on the net, makes other people feel unwelcome - you are not welcome.

The nerds have reason to believe that if their community accepts new people, eventually they will be excluded from their own community by the most popular newcomers. That's the whole reason they started their own exclusive community in the first place.

I wouldn't want to live life like a Sentinelese tribesman, I think the uncontacted tribes in Sentinel island would be happier in the long run if they integrated to the global community. But I understand why they don't.

Virtually every community excludes people in one form or another. Describing this as a fault of “socially excluded nerds” is a weak ad hominem. Subcultures have a right to be monocultures if they like.

The Boy Scouts of America, for instance, were weak & foolish to allow girls to join. Men’s clubs exist for a reason, just as women’s clubs do. Sanctimoniously valorizing “everyone is welcome” as an unqualified good is foolhardy.

That rule is a rule that excludes many socially excluded nerds. So if there are more and more spaces like that, then the nerds that those spaces exclude, are probably going to go make new communities and attempt to keep out the people who just excluded them.

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Just like blacks or gays should derive joy from people stealing their dress and lingo? Why? We create communities to find like-minded people who enjoy the same hobbies. Claiming that they "should be" anything is unhinged and part of the reason they hate you so much.

You are just ignoring reality and pretending that because the label is the same that the implementation is too. No, they don't share hobbies, they share the barely share the label and have polluted the term to the point that it's unusable.

In the past gamers were exited for new engines, pushing forward graphics and gameplay into the unknown. Now we all just use the same engines and "gamers" are excited that their niche subculture unrelated to gaming is painted on the 15-year-old engine. There is nothing "gatekeeping" gamers other than your own interest in games, if you don't have any genuine interest in games then you aren't a gamer, it's really that simple. Compare the behavior of Eminem and Vanilla Ice from the start to the peak of their career (background, come-up, acknowledging the White elephant in the room, co-sign/credibility).

What did we get for gaming? A hostile corporate takeover and femwashing and then the total collapse to were people only play a handful of forever games and indie titles. People claim that identity matters, that's not true, participation matters. If you are gay/bi but don't interact with the gay/bi community out of some prejudice or you are closeted you shouldn't feel justified co-opting gay culture when it becomes profitable. Similarly if you game, but thought that was wack nerd shit and you would never tell anybody beforehand (men&women, but mostly men), but now that there is money it you want a slice then you are just an exploiter.