It feels a little like we're entering a new "edition war" (for those who remember that), with people taking firmly entrenched 'sides'; only this time the battle lines aren't drawn along the 3rd and 4th editions of D&D - the subject-matter is live-streaming. On the one side there are people claiming that livestream viewers "don't play D&D" or "aren't real fans" (an ugly practice known as 'gatekeeping'); on the other side, somebody randomly tweeted at me just yesterday about the opinions of "middle aged neckbeards, like anybody gives a ****".
While this is far more rife on social media than here, I want to emphasize in advance that gatekeeping (on either side of the debate, though I'd rather there were no sides to it) is not tolerated here on EN World. Whether that's on the basis of editions, live-streaming, age, gender, or anything else, if somebody says they're a D&D fan, then they're a D&D fan; it's not your place to tell them they're having badwrongfun. If we find anybody gatekeeping others in the hobby here, the moderators will be having a word. And, to be clear, this goes both ways -- there are bad actors on both sides of the current topic.
While this is far more rife on social media than here, I want to emphasize in advance that gatekeeping (on either side of the debate, though I'd rather there were no sides to it) is not tolerated here on EN World. Whether that's on the basis of editions, live-streaming, age, gender, or anything else, if somebody says they're a D&D fan, then they're a D&D fan; it's not your place to tell them they're having badwrongfun. If we find anybody gatekeeping others in the hobby here, the moderators will be having a word. And, to be clear, this goes both ways -- there are bad actors on both sides of the current topic.