Separate comment for a separate topic, but I think sometimes what drives some of the gatekeeping in nerd culture, especially among the older fans, is how tough it was to be a fan when you were a kid if you are now over a certain age.
Like, I'm about to be 41. When I was in middle school in the mid '90s, to be an unabashed fan of nerdy shit was to suffer an actual social cost, and probably moreso for the folks ten years my senior. If you were reading the Star Wars EU books, or Star Trek Next Generation books, or hell, even Game of Thrones in 1996, you were almost certainly a giant dork and treated as such. Telling someone you went to an anime convention or a Comic Con was, like, a secret you kept to yourself.
I'm not advocating for this approach, fandom should be more than dorky white guys and should be accessible for more people, but I think that's where some of this sentiment comes from.
"This week in horrible AI enshittification: Googling “[female celebrity name] bikini” now returns AI-generated pictures of those women."
There is an even more horrifying version of this that I have seen an ad for on Twitter, where it is pushing some app by selling the idea that you can "see your crush" in, like bikinis, or whatever. I just assume this is some sort of AI nightmare where you input photos of real people you know and it spits out AI generated racy photos. Just gross.
I just said something similar about the plant discussions! Though I'm more cynical about it, I think there's more piggybacking that amplifies whatever is trending exponentially which then results in more frustration.
You're missing a mode of interaction here, and as usual it has profound explanatory power but significantly undermines an implicit value judgement in your claim: presentation mode. In presentation mode, a person brings two separate spheres of their cultural engagement together, usually by inviting another person to engage with some subculture that the first is already part of, but sometimes by presenting potential new elements to the subculture at large. It is by this mechanism that subcultures merge and cross-pollinate.
Your friend with the new band is attempting that cross-pollination, and that coworker who's into marvel movies is engaging in the merging process, but unfortunately you don't get to judge them for it.
How do you reconcile the flattening of the internet with the echo chambers it has created for subcultures? Maybe that’s ideology classification v culture? I get the barriers to entry are low so maybe people leave their echo chamber ready for battle?
There used to be real world, physical separation of subcultures pre-internet. Literally you'd drink at different bars, see music in different venues, live in different neighborhoods sometimes, etc. Then in the earlier internet era, there was online separation. Different forums and sites were closer to a 'walled garden' model where things weren't really globally connected. You could go to those forums freely, but they weren't sharing culture with other forums or communities.
Now though, everything is in a global feed. TikTok virality is global, not local. Same for Twitter, and IG Reels, YouTube, etc. Separated spaces still exist, but in addition to those separated spaces there's also the Single Global Feed where all the subcultures are mashed together. And the Single Global algorithm promotes conflict because conflict = engagement, so you get a lot of fights.
What tied old-school physical subcultural spaces and online spaces together was, and where it still exists, really just culture. All the communication and interaction had a point. In the early 1990s, musicians in Seattle converged on a style of hard rock that mutated into grunge, and in Manchester it turned into a kind of dance-pop, but the whole point was making music. Even the internet was the same way - forums usually had off-topic pages but it was a case of everyone being where they were for a reason. You were on CivFanatics because you loved the Civilization games and wanted a place to find fandom or mods, or Beer Advocate because you wanted to get in touch with other homebrewers, or so on. Even the general-purpose discussion communities like Something Awful had a shared culture. Lowtax was a repugnant human being but a great moderator because he understood how important culture was to online communities.
The idea that fueled social media was that connection and communication could be catalysts for increased understanding, empathy, and innovation. The problem is that except for conflict = engagement = revenue, the big platforms never took an active role in fostering a culture that would lead to healthy communication. Obama-era liberal American norms were taken completely for granted, which makes total sense when you think about who designed Twitter and Facebook.
I would bet good American dollars that Trump will happily say he would never ban Tik Tok right up until the point he gets elected again, and then soon as he takes office he would flip-flop on it, because really, why not? It's not like he has some deeply held principle about not banning TT because free speech yada yada yada, he's literally just up there talking for clapping.
Separate comment for a separate topic, but I think sometimes what drives some of the gatekeeping in nerd culture, especially among the older fans, is how tough it was to be a fan when you were a kid if you are now over a certain age.
Like, I'm about to be 41. When I was in middle school in the mid '90s, to be an unabashed fan of nerdy shit was to suffer an actual social cost, and probably moreso for the folks ten years my senior. If you were reading the Star Wars EU books, or Star Trek Next Generation books, or hell, even Game of Thrones in 1996, you were almost certainly a giant dork and treated as such. Telling someone you went to an anime convention or a Comic Con was, like, a secret you kept to yourself.
I'm not advocating for this approach, fandom should be more than dorky white guys and should be accessible for more people, but I think that's where some of this sentiment comes from.
"This week in horrible AI enshittification: Googling “[female celebrity name] bikini” now returns AI-generated pictures of those women."
There is an even more horrifying version of this that I have seen an ad for on Twitter, where it is pushing some app by selling the idea that you can "see your crush" in, like bikinis, or whatever. I just assume this is some sort of AI nightmare where you input photos of real people you know and it spits out AI generated racy photos. Just gross.
"Based" originally meant "on coke" (as in basehead), but Lil B reinvented it to mean "self-assured".
I just said something similar about the plant discussions! Though I'm more cynical about it, I think there's more piggybacking that amplifies whatever is trending exponentially which then results in more frustration.
You're missing a mode of interaction here, and as usual it has profound explanatory power but significantly undermines an implicit value judgement in your claim: presentation mode. In presentation mode, a person brings two separate spheres of their cultural engagement together, usually by inviting another person to engage with some subculture that the first is already part of, but sometimes by presenting potential new elements to the subculture at large. It is by this mechanism that subcultures merge and cross-pollinate.
Your friend with the new band is attempting that cross-pollination, and that coworker who's into marvel movies is engaging in the merging process, but unfortunately you don't get to judge them for it.
How do you reconcile the flattening of the internet with the echo chambers it has created for subcultures? Maybe that’s ideology classification v culture? I get the barriers to entry are low so maybe people leave their echo chamber ready for battle?
There used to be real world, physical separation of subcultures pre-internet. Literally you'd drink at different bars, see music in different venues, live in different neighborhoods sometimes, etc. Then in the earlier internet era, there was online separation. Different forums and sites were closer to a 'walled garden' model where things weren't really globally connected. You could go to those forums freely, but they weren't sharing culture with other forums or communities.
Now though, everything is in a global feed. TikTok virality is global, not local. Same for Twitter, and IG Reels, YouTube, etc. Separated spaces still exist, but in addition to those separated spaces there's also the Single Global Feed where all the subcultures are mashed together. And the Single Global algorithm promotes conflict because conflict = engagement, so you get a lot of fights.
What tied old-school physical subcultural spaces and online spaces together was, and where it still exists, really just culture. All the communication and interaction had a point. In the early 1990s, musicians in Seattle converged on a style of hard rock that mutated into grunge, and in Manchester it turned into a kind of dance-pop, but the whole point was making music. Even the internet was the same way - forums usually had off-topic pages but it was a case of everyone being where they were for a reason. You were on CivFanatics because you loved the Civilization games and wanted a place to find fandom or mods, or Beer Advocate because you wanted to get in touch with other homebrewers, or so on. Even the general-purpose discussion communities like Something Awful had a shared culture. Lowtax was a repugnant human being but a great moderator because he understood how important culture was to online communities.
The idea that fueled social media was that connection and communication could be catalysts for increased understanding, empathy, and innovation. The problem is that except for conflict = engagement = revenue, the big platforms never took an active role in fostering a culture that would lead to healthy communication. Obama-era liberal American norms were taken completely for granted, which makes total sense when you think about who designed Twitter and Facebook.
I would bet good American dollars that Trump will happily say he would never ban Tik Tok right up until the point he gets elected again, and then soon as he takes office he would flip-flop on it, because really, why not? It's not like he has some deeply held principle about not banning TT because free speech yada yada yada, he's literally just up there talking for clapping.
I'm not sure. He was all for the ban until he got paid to switch positions, and it's not like the guy who paid him is out of money.