/plaza/ - General/Random

Integrating into my worldview. Rather, I already had, but now with more conscious thought behind it

some interesting points here, though I would say these are largely old ideas about the merits of gatekeeping.

I think this article doesn't really do much to discuss all the messiness of these systems in practice, though. it's easy to apply this model to a subculture/movement if we assume that it has a "true identity", but few are so concretely defined - it is quite common for there to be significant differences in how each person perceives or envisions the culture, even within the most dedicated portions of the "geek" group.
I think it's easy for someone advocating a particular instance of gatekeeping to link to this article, which gives them a handy new intellectual term to replace "poser" or "normie" - "MOP". but the labeling of someone as a MOP is rooted first in an assertion about what the true identity of the subculture is, and I think in reality, that is often at the heart of conflicts about gatekeeping.

that is to say, I think just about anyone can acknowledge the necessity of some types of gatekeeping, in certain scenarios, especially when it comes to the prevention of exploitation from "sociopaths". but gatekeeping is not inherently just; one can force out members of a subculture for bad reasons, or over myopic internal quarrels. for any new influence, a subculture can attempt to reject it and expel its proponents, or it can attempt to integrate it and change as a result. the former does not always "protect" the subculture from some destructive, diluting, commercializing force, and the latter doesn't always invite such negative forces. therefore, it is not enough merely to identify something as a new influence; one should justify why it deserves either integration or rejection.

>>2638
>an assertion about what the true identity of the subculture is
to clarify, I meant an assertion about what that person wants the subculture to be
>one should justify why it deserves either integration or rejection.
and for this part, I'm referring to justifications for gatekeeping - that is, if someone is making an argument in defense of their use of gatekeeping, I think that linking to this article (or making an equivalent argument) and saying "gatekeeping is good, actually" is not enough - they need to explain why the new influence would be harmful to their vision for the group/subculture.
one might argue that MOPs inherently represent a possible threat that will "dilute" the subculture, merely by way of being an outside influence, but taken to the extreme, this prevents anyone from entering a subculture (even the earliest members), which obviously doesn't work. also consider again how the term "dilute" is dependent on an assumption about what the subculture should be - why is it that the force must "dilute" instead of expand or modify?

>>2635
Pic related explained it better. This article is written by a sociopath citing other sociopaths to justify sociopathy within his own subculture (which was all-but degraded even when this article was written).

I don't agree with this typology where everyone has some role to play, as seen in pic related it's more like various infrahuman creatures spawn in to destroy and parasitise anything good you create. I also don't see how "monetizing" a hobby is an important or necessary skill, it seems like just another kind of parasitism akin to the social parasitism the article bemoans.

>>2641
>I also don't see how "monetizing" a hobby is an important or necessary skill, it seems like just another kind of parasitism akin to the social parasitism the article bemoans.
the article doesn't seem to assert that it's necessary for niche hobbies; it's just posited as necessary if you want to take it past that level and make it a "big thing".

that aside, I really dislike your image for the way it drips with the typical "oppressed nerd" narrative of its time; this dual villain model of the dumb, socially vampiric seductress and the party-crasher "jock"/"alpha"/"dudebro". the way women are depicted in particular reinforces the stereotypes that lead to women receiving undue scrutiny whenever they attempt to engage with a hobby dominated by men.
also, I think it kind of incorrectly frames the "core members" as helpless. at panels 3 or 4, they could choose to assert the importance of the core guidelines or whatever, assuming they have legitimate complaints. in panel 5, they could defend their community's core members if they're being unfairly insulted. in panel 6, they could choose not to casualize the game/hobby - if they lose the interest of the new members, that shouldn't be a problem, since the comic asserts that they're bad for the hobby anyway.

>>2641
As much as I hate this image, it's the best explanation of the deal with gatekeeping that I tend to see. Clearly not a hard hurdle to clear. The issue is less any kind of malignant invasion and moreso that any hobby is only going to have a small minority who cares about the hobby by default. It's a delicate situation; no one is obligated to care about your hobby to participate, and yet the more people who join your hobby that don't care about it, the more dilute it becomes, and it can quickly lose all it's flavor. The smaller the hobby, the worse it is. I think the "end stages" in that picture apply to only those hobbies that ascend to the zeitgeist through this process, for example anime in general or Warhammer 40,000; most hobbies never reach this phase.
>>2642
I do think there is a certain helplessness to the situation. You can't just make people care about the things you love. No one is obligated to care about the things you care about; their focus is elsewhere, on some other thing, likely suffering through the same thing there as you are. There is not any "bad thing" to fight against, it is more like the entropic nature of the universe has turned its gaze to your interests. There is no defense to mount or guidelines you could assert in these situations.
As an aside, I wonder at what point we hit critical mass where the people trying to gatekeep hobbies themselves do not really care about that particular hobby, which I would say is the real issue people have with gatekeeping. I think of those American comics commentary videos.

>>2643
>There is not any "bad thing" to fight against, it is more like the entropic nature of the universe has turned its gaze to your interests.
I agree that there often isn't a "bad thing" to fight against - for example, in instances where some obscure piece of media suddenly becomes popular, the media remains unchanged. old fans may be upset that the piece of media is no longer as effective as a portion of their identity, or that people they don't like very much are now offering their opinion on the media, but I think these are pretty minor.
a more understandable complaint is when a community or movement gets overtaken, because then something slightly more concrete has been "lost" (changed). but even in those cases, those people aren't necessarily "bad", they may just have different (yet equally sincere) priorities and preferences than you.
>There is no defense to mount or guidelines you could assert in these situations.
what I meant is that if you can really point to concrete issues downstream of a changing community that you have ownership in ("they don't follow the rules", "they just talk instead of playing the game", "they're insulting other players", etc), you can set stronger guidelines or take action in your group to prevent that kind of thing. but a lot of times when people have these complaints, it's not nearly so immediate to them - it's "people elsewhere are engaging with my hobby in a way I don't like" (in your words, possibly because they "don't care").

>>2638
>for any new influence, a subculture can attempt to reject it and expel its proponents, or it can attempt to integrate it and change as a result. the former does not always "protect" the subculture from some destructive, diluting, commercializing force, and the latter doesn't always invite such negative forces
Wasn't one of the points made was that any one person can shift in and out of these roles?

>>2667
yeah, fair point - I'm moreso criticizing the perspective I think some readers will have than I am criticizing the article itself.
though, I think the term MOP (member of the public) could potentially contribute to that perception by focusing on the fact that they're "outsiders". sure, we could get around that by saying that if they have a neutral or positive impact, then they're no longer a "member of the public", but that feels like a conflation. I don't feel like the person in question needs to have a particular dedication or frenzied interest in the thing (i.e., be a "geek") just to avoid having a negative impact.

This is a brainfart that could be explained by something as simple as >>2641, this is no better than a twitter screencap thread. This guy seems to be a system autist, it's what I thought at first until I saw his obsession with buddhism and fully confirmed my view. This necessity to give new names and create systems stopped for me when I was 14 and realized I wasn't going to reinvent the wheel, someone like that getting even the slightest fame shows we are indeed doomed to fail as a species. >>2643 brought a good point that things like anime and warhammer can never become truly mainstream, it requires a very high level of autism to get into it, even more with things like visual novel or chinese wuxia light novels. But the problem with gatekeeping is that it creates a cannibalistic and creatively bankrupt industry, unlike something that gets consumed by normies and get to expand creatively and hell, might actually let something good come out of it once in a while unlike with the anime industry that shits one or two mediocre shows per year while the others are straight up garbage only worth the time of slop consuming sub-humans.

>>2669
>I think the term MOP (member of the public) could potentially contribute to that perception by focusing on the fact that they're "outsiders"
Agreed. Personally, I prefer labelling them as 'consumers', something inexorably tied with the qualities of a "MOP" and undoubtedly neutral. And it's ok to be a consumer, I think people who try to blame them specifically for ruining a sub-culture instead of the sociopath are silly. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a solution to the "sociopath" phenomenon - unless you take the task of altering our western social infrastructure.
>>2678
>But the problem with gatekeeping is that it creates a cannibalistic and creatively bankrupt industry, unlike something that gets consumed by normies and get to expand creatively and hell, might actually let something good come out of it once in a while unlike with the anime industry that shits one or two mediocre shows per year while the others are straight up garbage only worth the time of slop consuming sub-humans.
Is anime really the best example of this? I assume the reason for the vast amounts of 'slop' airing is because of that is what sells the most among normies. Some of it is probably shocking to our personal cultural taboos but there's a different set of values there (Not that I'm speaking as an expert of Japanese culture, this perception is just something I've obtained through years of passive observation).

tl;dr what's the point? It's soul or masses, so either swing your ban hammer (faithfully) or accept what comes.

my subculture was ruined by mops
it became so popular only one of the original creators is remembered.
the sociopaths and mops replaced almost everything
new mops aren't even aware what the original New Thing was, but they kept all the same terms, so it's difficult to find the original Thing any more.

I didn't come away from that blogpost with a takeaway on gatekeeping, so I don't find the >>2641 comic better or more concise.
The defense of Evil here is more focused on assuring the BENEFITS of a larger audience (money and sexual access to Chapman. Culty lol) accrue towards the rightful "geeks" who laid the foundations, and away from the mercenary "sociopaths" simply around to reap social capital.

Yes, there is that tangent about "optimal ratios" of entryist versus core audience, but I took that as a grain of LessWrong-adjacent autism and glazed on by tbh. It mostly seems to strike this (sociopathic?) view of "MOPS" as, like, fertile soil or cattle. Vital to the overall success of a subculture, but needing to be corralled away from exploitation.

Also, quoting le /v/ comic
>The original game has largely become an excuse to flirt/smoke/drink or whatever the fuck
Admire the austere commitment to the Monkpill, but "Such is life." Moshikashite... You blew it? That was your ticket out of being a crotchety grognard, idiot!

>>2711 You are mistaking being a member of a sub-culture with being intellectually superior to others, this is not the case at all. Do you think the average MLP insane brony has 140IQ? Hell no, they just have an extremely niche interest. A lot of NEET's who spend their entire lifes watching anime and playing video-games only consume low tier slop even though they dedicate their lives to it.

>>2718
>focused on assuring the BENEFITS of a larger audience (money and sexual access to Chapman. Culty lol)
eh, he also characterizes it as the only way for a subculture to escape its niche and become a true force in the broader culture ("more than just a geeky hobby")
>It mostly seems to strike this (sociopathic?) view of "MOPS" as, like, fertile soil or cattle.
in the comments, he identifies himself as a MOP in certain communities, so I think he's at least evenhanded about it

>>2717
could you tell us what it is, anon?

>>2718
>I didn't come away from that blogpost with a takeaway on gatekeeping
huh, was that just my reading?

>>2724
>You are mistaking being a member of a sub-culture with being intellectually superior to others, this is not the case at all.
I wasn't implying this at all. I was saying the anime industry probably wouldn't be where it is today, at least in Japan, solely because of fanatics.