It seems to me the biggest challenges in any community are its points of polarity and diversity, because those are also points of conflict and creativity. They are a pressure-cooker where either one side dies and the other takes over, or there is fusion resulting in innovation. They are the wild heat as opposed the mundane and routine stability.
I remember when it was difficult to find any other nerds at all, to play D&D with. A couple of kids regularly united by game sessions. Occasionally some travel and connection with other kids from beyond the border of practicality, discussing the game and characters before seldom seeing them again.
Then, the internet. Then, the popularity of RPGs in general expanded to the point where two things happened.
Reinvention:
Suddenly it was cool to play it, but only to play it the new way. The old-schoolers were not often embraced as its pioneers and teachers so much as ignored. The next generation are not as entrenched in issues they prefer not to take on board.
Polarisation:
For the first time, there were so many people involved in the hobby, we no longer had a rare handful of nerds trying to find each other. Suddenly we had factions and division within an expanding community. Generational differences. Ethical differences. All of the differences are contained within the concept of 'us verses them'. There was a phase of 'inclusivity' being the virtue-signal of the day, except it didn't include most people.
The original generations who grew up on RPGs through the 70s 80s 90s had a unity, they did not care about political differences or socio-economic differences. They set all that aside and connected through the shared passion of the game, an unspoken understanding. Nobody charged money to DM. That was the culture, the tradition, as much as the rolling of dice or checking on tables, moving 28mm miniatures around a map drawn with a biro on maths paper.
So did the nerds win?
No. The original Nerds were bulk-dumped by the new kids who think the old boys racist because they are heterosexual males and kill imaginary green-skins. The rebranded products now published by an industry which cares more about profit and image than it does about the people who fund it. The OSR movement evolved as a response to that; ageing, independent role-players standing their ground that indie-rpg is the core of the hobby, not the sideline.
The new-wave of Nerds are hipster-gamers, "I want the D&D experience because it will make me cool" are happily being financially extorted by commercial DMs who first picked up a rulebook five minutes ago, with push-button solutions instead of imagination and any sense of authenticity.
In UK the Warhammer movement is huge amongst gamers. Unlike D&D communities, the Warhammer gamers still continue to set aside all differences to game together. That is something beautiful to be aware of. The online D&D people though, omg where to begin? There are fractures which are destroying the community and damaging the industry. As with all fractures it is because hate is bigger than forgiveness. That toxicity is putting people off becoming involved in gaming because non-D&D people who show any interest and do a little research are coming across hate mobs and being encouraged to choose a side before they have even experienced their first game session.
We are all doing this because we are dysfunctional as a collective.