All is well in the world, right?
But there was a major shift in things. I wanna say it started around 2014 and came to a head in mid to late 2018. The major battlegrounds were things like the all female reboot of Ghostbusters, Gamergate, “New” Atheism, the new Disney Star Wars films (especially the Last Jedi and Solo), Marvel Comics, and several other areas. Hardcore and longtime fans of these hobbies were suddenly being accused of gatekeeping and excluding people, especially women.
My experience had been that for the most part, girls/women didn’t want to be seen doing these things, but when there was one, she was accepted with open arms. I will also admit that these sorts of boys are probably not the greatest at reading social cues or knowing how relationships are supposed to work. So there were probably girls who may have liked said hobbies, but were too afraid of committing social suicide by being associated with them or who were turned off by the boys’ lack of social grace and/or hygiene, possibly.
This type of "gatekeeping" is actually good to help keep what made something good/popular in the first place more "pure," for lack of a better term, and more inline with the original premises and ideas. In other words, gatekeeping for reasons like race/gender/etc. is not a good thing, while gatekeeping for merit reasons or to ensure the product/IP remains intact should be commended. However, bad actors/media will accuse fandoms of the first kind of gatekeeping when they're really engaged in the second kind. A slightly different example is that we all benefit from the American Medical Association gatekeeping who can and can't perform surgery. (see: In Defense of Gatekeeping)
I also truly believe there are people who (previously) secretly loved something geeky but couldn’t let on in public that now are free to enjoy it without social stigma, and that’s a good thing. But there are also bad actors and opportunists who get accepted along with the new and casual fans, and eventually they cause the havoc.
So after a honeymoon period of great growth of geek culture, the pendulum has swung the other way. Most of the backlash stems from “nerds” having their spaces being invaded. “Nerd” and “geek” are no longer the insults they once were, but words like, “toxic,” “incel,” and, “masculinity,” have replaced them. Essentially, what it comes down to is that these types of “geek” hobbies are being socially “gentrified” to an extent. Someone on a reddit post put it fairly perfectly and succinctly:
So to see gamers, especially “nerd” gamers, accused of doing the opposite [excluding people], is very upsetting. It’s not just a false accusation, it’s a movement to try to exclude and eject those very gamers who were so welcoming in the first place.
It's called social gentrification, and it's something I've seen discussed many times in this sub. The pattern basically goes like this:
1. A nerdy hobby (video games, comic books, etc) suddenly becomes cool and mainstream.
2. An influx of new, non-nerdy fans enter the hobby.
3. Creators are encouraged cater to the broadest audience possible, which often involves dumbing it down, removing sexy women, and putting in token gay and minority characters.
4. The old fans don't like the changes being made to their hobby and start to complain.
5. Progressive bloggers and writers attack the old fans for not being "inclusive" and write articles smearing them. The old fans start being seen as undesirables (again) by the public.
6. The old fans are driven into the shadows, some abandon the hobby in disgust.
7. Eventually the hobby's mainstream appeal peaks, and begins a slow decline. The casual fans lose interest and find something new and trendy to follow.
8. The hobby becomes nerdy and uncool again, leaving only the hardcore fans.
On second thought, Step 8 may be wishful thinking.
I think that in all businesses/industries, there are growing pains. Once geek culture caught on, several corporations saw it as a new money-making opportunity where it wouldn’t have been such in the past. The proper way to please the long time fans and the newer, more casual fans simultaneously is always a tough tightrope to walk. There’s something in the business world called the Pareto Distribution (closely related to the Matthew Effect), and in this context, it turns out that something like 20% of the fans were responsible for 80% of the revenue that companies like Lucasfilm earned. And instead of appealing to the hardcore fans, they pandered to the other 80% while trying to recruit increasingly greater numbers of less passionate fans by means of "wokeness" and diversity instead of coherent story and character growth.
To those of us who are old enough to have experienced both sides of this story, it feels disingenuous when normies loudly proclaim how great this culture is when it is what used to be made fun of, like they’re only doing it because it happens to be popular at the time. In sportsball (a term that geeks use to throw a little shade back at the bullies), they call that being Fairweather Fans.
I understand why corporations would sell out - the promise of money. Someone has convinced them about this phantom potential audience out there that’s just waiting, even chomping at the bit, to take part in the great cultural experience that is geekdom, and will only do so once they see themselves represented on screen, or page, or whatever, and that it becomes sufficiently woke/diverse. The best example is replacing Tony Stark with a 10-year-old African-American girl in the comics (and later in the MCU). I imagine that someone convinced the editor-in-chief that there were hordes of young, black girls who would just love to buy and read Marvel Comics, but the fact that Iron Man was a straight white dude turned them off [in my head, it probably went like a Screen Rant Pitch Meeting]. If Tony were to be gender and racially swapped, not only would the old fans continue to read the book, but all these new fans would flock to the All-New, All-Different Iron Heart! (spoiler alert: neither thing happened)
At some point the corporations decided they can bleed the fans dry with fake paid fansites/reviews, and to longtime fans, it looks more like a soulless cash grab from the new owners of the IP, especially when the original creator(s) have sold their IP to a new company. Lucasfilm and Blizzard are perfect examples of this.
Nerds care about things like consistency in canon, the story and character development, continuity, the rules of the universe, and lore, and feel like they’re just being exploited for money and fame. “Normies” don’t usually care about those things terribly much, and just want the street cred and the t-shirt without doing the legwork of reading/watching the source material. When companies pander to the normies they tend to alienate the original (and more hardcore) fans.
In summation, I really hate to see my neighborhood of pop culture being so ruined and exploited. Different sections of the hardcore fans are fighting back and they're catching hell for it. But I think it's a fight worth having.
A few good articles:
A great article on Social Gentrification
Another great article on the evolution of Subcultures (very relevant)
I also truly believe there are people who (previously) secretly loved something geeky but couldn’t let on in public that now are free to enjoy it without social stigma, and that’s a good thing. But there are also bad actors and opportunists who get accepted along with the new and casual fans, and eventually they cause the havoc.
So after a honeymoon period of great growth of geek culture, the pendulum has swung the other way. Most of the backlash stems from “nerds” having their spaces being invaded. “Nerd” and “geek” are no longer the insults they once were, but words like, “toxic,” “incel,” and, “masculinity,” have replaced them. Essentially, what it comes down to is that these types of “geek” hobbies are being socially “gentrified” to an extent. Someone on a reddit post put it fairly perfectly and succinctly:
So to see gamers, especially “nerd” gamers, accused of doing the opposite [excluding people], is very upsetting. It’s not just a false accusation, it’s a movement to try to exclude and eject those very gamers who were so welcoming in the first place.
It's called social gentrification, and it's something I've seen discussed many times in this sub. The pattern basically goes like this:
1. A nerdy hobby (video games, comic books, etc) suddenly becomes cool and mainstream.
2. An influx of new, non-nerdy fans enter the hobby.
3. Creators are encouraged cater to the broadest audience possible, which often involves dumbing it down, removing sexy women, and putting in token gay and minority characters.
4. The old fans don't like the changes being made to their hobby and start to complain.
5. Progressive bloggers and writers attack the old fans for not being "inclusive" and write articles smearing them. The old fans start being seen as undesirables (again) by the public.
6. The old fans are driven into the shadows, some abandon the hobby in disgust.
7. Eventually the hobby's mainstream appeal peaks, and begins a slow decline. The casual fans lose interest and find something new and trendy to follow.
8. The hobby becomes nerdy and uncool again, leaving only the hardcore fans.
On second thought, Step 8 may be wishful thinking.
I think that in all businesses/industries, there are growing pains. Once geek culture caught on, several corporations saw it as a new money-making opportunity where it wouldn’t have been such in the past. The proper way to please the long time fans and the newer, more casual fans simultaneously is always a tough tightrope to walk. There’s something in the business world called the Pareto Distribution (closely related to the Matthew Effect), and in this context, it turns out that something like 20% of the fans were responsible for 80% of the revenue that companies like Lucasfilm earned. And instead of appealing to the hardcore fans, they pandered to the other 80% while trying to recruit increasingly greater numbers of less passionate fans by means of "wokeness" and diversity instead of coherent story and character growth.
To those of us who are old enough to have experienced both sides of this story, it feels disingenuous when normies loudly proclaim how great this culture is when it is what used to be made fun of, like they’re only doing it because it happens to be popular at the time. In sportsball (a term that geeks use to throw a little shade back at the bullies), they call that being Fairweather Fans.
At some point the corporations decided they can bleed the fans dry with fake paid fansites/reviews, and to longtime fans, it looks more like a soulless cash grab from the new owners of the IP, especially when the original creator(s) have sold their IP to a new company. Lucasfilm and Blizzard are perfect examples of this.
Nerds care about things like consistency in canon, the story and character development, continuity, the rules of the universe, and lore, and feel like they’re just being exploited for money and fame. “Normies” don’t usually care about those things terribly much, and just want the street cred and the t-shirt without doing the legwork of reading/watching the source material. When companies pander to the normies they tend to alienate the original (and more hardcore) fans.
A few good articles:
A great article on Social Gentrification
Another great article on the evolution of Subcultures (very relevant)
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