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.
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.
These aren't "newcomers".
These are people in the same tribe being excluded or hazed for superficial reasons, nothing related to their shared interests and nerdiness over a subject.
The exclusion they practice is not an exclusion over values and interests, which is why they didn't fit into mainstream culture. It's one of immutable identity.
Which is completely fucked, and has no excuse in a public space and forum. None at all.
Yeah because they make other people feel unwelcome lmao. Being dicks gets them booted.
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.
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.
That isn’t to say the author is wrong, exactly, but you can Chinese Robber Fallacy any kind of toxicity on social media these days. What I’ve found matters a lot more in communities is active moderation against bad behavior. Even the author acknowledges these posts got removed, but treats it like a bookend as though it’s an admission of failure.
However, talking about the importance of actively curating community isn’t as interesting, I guess. Mods continue to be the least appreciated job on the internet.
PS love you dang.
There's a saying that labels make you dumber and the (largely downvoted) comments mentioned in the article demonstrate this.
No, the underlying group of toxic gamers is still alive and kicking today, even if they may not be entirely visible in your circles.