Organic gatekeeping

Gatekeeping is bad. Coming from a geek fandom background I've seen my share of gatekeeping. Comics, Video Games and CCG's all have their gatekeeping and gatekeepers. None of them have ever been any better for it. In the comic book realm I've seen fans bend over backwards to bring non-readers through the door then complain when they track newbie all over the rarely vacuumed carpet.

gatekeeping - the act of trying to control who gets particular resources, power, or opportunities, and who does not:

There was a time owning a computer didn't automatically mean you were online.

You needed to buy a Modem and invest the time to end up on your local BBS or IRC like chat systems. If you got there it was enough. Your people were waiting. Odds are you intersected on at least one interest. (computers, scf-fi, comic books, Star Wars/Trek, LOTR, etc)

Not gatekeeping, but a barrier for entry. If you wanted to you could, and no obstacles were purposely placed to stand in your way.

Of course now it's much different. Not everyone online is cut from the same cloth. Anyone who knows me knows that I'll bang the "subculture is dead" drum until my fingers bleed. But I'll tell you a secret. It's not dead. Just elusive, much harder to find than it used to be. Just getting there is no longer enough now that we have Wikipedia to use as a skeleton key.

I've often speculated that the bulletin board system was going to make a comeback. That people would get sick of having everything out in the open all the time and just want more of an enclosed place where they can control the variables. This prediction came true with mastodon.

it's all cyclical. The edge cases will always edge case. Embrace the journey, for the search is as meaningful as the discovery.