Gatekeepin' it real: On the natural condition of fandom

[Celebrim]

I honestly don't see the problem with that. Morrus literally owns the gate, after all.

Indubitably. Morrus absolutely has the right and authority to be the gatekeeper here.

How he chooses to police it is, in my mind, completely irrelevant to the discussion of "gatekeeping" in nerd culture or the adoption of a particular definition of that word.

I'm not really discussing how he chooses to police it. I'm perfectly fine with him slapping bans on people who taunt other people with argumentum ab auctoritate ("You aren't a real fan: [I am] therefore...") or who call other people "neckbeards" or are otherwise insulting. What I'm interested in here is what I've said I've been interested in all along, the attack on the ability to understand and process the word "gatekeeping" by using the word in all sorts of loosely defined and novel ways for the apparent purpose of finding new reasons to exclude people.

 

[Azzy]

This is drifting into the territory of "you are being intolerant of my intolerance" arguments I have seen (and laughed at, a lot).

Yep.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

edit: didn't read lul

 

[Xenonnonex]

I think I made that clear.

I would go so far to say your player in example fails to get their acceptance and validation and affirmation because they have began to get gatekeeped out of enjoyment of the game.

I don't recall saying anything about "not inviting". Where do you get that?

And in any event, I'm not categorically defending "not inviting" either, nor have I defended "actively belittling".

To some extent it might have been people wanting to feel superior to other people. But it also might be people who felt with some cause that his poor quality costume was harming their enjoyment and immersion in the shared imaginary space they'd worked so hard to construct. Have you ever had that friend, even someone you like, whom you sometimes excluded from certain social functions because their presence just made things a little less fun? Like you'd be happy to RP with them most times, but you'd not invite them on a double date?

This is called not inviting someone or multiple people to events and is not inherently malicious. In fact it can sometimes be quite a reasonable thing.
Gatekeeping as we have been discussing on these forums actively diminishes or even negates someone's enjoyment of a thing.

 

[Celebrim]

I would go so far to say your player in example fails to get their acceptance and validation and affirmation because they have began to get gatekeeped out of enjoyment of the game.

I would say that I agree. But I think the example shows that there are probably reasons why that player isn't receiving acceptance, validation, and affirmation that are valid and not discriminatory in the sense the word is usually used. I for one would not want to play magic using a bunch of cheaply made homemade cards that didn't have art or rules text (or trustworthy rules text). It would greatly diminish my enjoyment of the game. I suspect most people feel the same way, or we would all be running around with 3x5 note cards playing MtG without spending thousands of dollars on it.

Further, while I can sympathize with this player, because I ultimately dropped MtG as a hobby I couldn't really afford and I never was "in" the game as much as I wanted to be, and I can understand how he feels, I think there is also an element in the hypothetical players desperation that isn't healthy and likely comes from a place of envy. He's trying to force his way into a community. He's not really respecting it.

This is called not inviting someone or multiple people to events and is not inherently malicious. In fact it can sometimes be quite a reasonable thing. Gatekeeping as we have been discussing on these forums actively diminishes or even negates someone's enjoyment of a thing.

Yet another definition! This is awesome. So, "not inviting someone" is a big part of literal gatekeeping. It's a major way that people are excluded. You just leave them out of events, and it would I think be an example of the most serious sort of exclusionary behavior. If the basis of it was discriminatory, then I think that we'd all agree it was gatekeeping at its worst. "I'm sorry but, like, you weren't invited."

And yet, while you are willing to concede that that might sometimes be a quite reasonable thing, you introduce a completely new idea. We have literally been talking about gatekeeping as an act of exclusion or attempted exclusion for nearly 150 posts now, and now you introduce a new broader idea - gatekeeping as things that "actively diminish or negate someone's enjoyment of a thing." This is an immensely broad idea, and it's so broad that it could probably apply to really any sort of behavior. Sure, it applies to things that make anyone feel unwelcome, and to things that make people feel uncomfortable, and people playing Paladins and Gnomes. You might as well at this point just say that "gatekeeping" is a synonym for "bad", because its already so abstract in your newest definition that anyone that takes offense over anything could argue that they were the victim of "gatekeeping".

 

[Hussar]

I think in some cases yes it is. But I've just given all sorts of different examples of gatekeeping, and I don't think that in all cases you can say it's about feeling superior over other people.

Take the example of the person who really wants to be into Magic:The Gathering, but can't afford it, so he just cuts out some 3x5 note cards and labels them, "Island", "Mox Pearl", "Ancestral Recall", and what not and then goes to the local fantasy gaming store looking for acceptance, validation, and affirmation. Suppose, as is likely, he doesn't get it. It is likely that some of the players present take a certain pride in their collection and feel a certain since of superiority over other people on account of their possessions. Greed is a thing. But feelings of greed aside, the player may have a deck that isn't legal, or isn't legal for the format being played. It may be that it's a sanctioned event which requires real cards. The player may not yet be very conversant in the rules and be annoying to play against. He certainly isn't conversant in the culture of the game and clearly isn't aware just how much of a cultural faux pas he's committing. Most of all, he's just annoying to play against because the art on a card is a functional part of the card. It allows someone to see the game space and understand it from across the table in a way hand written cards don't. Even someone with the best of intentions is going to be acting out of pity and not enjoying the game the way he normally does.

So this player fails to get his acceptance,validation, and affirmation. He is at the least likely to be subject to some gentle joshing, which likely won't feel so gentle to him. He's not going to be "part of the group". He's going to be still an outsider.

This is a complicated story that could go down in many ways. The player being a white male is not going to make him more likely to be accepted. There is no "white privilege" card that lets you use index cards in an MtG social setting with strangers. In settings I played in across multiple cities, in some cases you could use a fake, but it had to be a good fake and you had to be able to demonstrate that you owned the card and the only reason you weren't using the real one was to avoid play wear. Is it fair to have acceptance in the group be based on how much money you can spend on a trivial game? Maybe not. But that's a whole different sort of gatekeeping than the simplistic definitions being offered here, and it's one I've seen far more often than the simplistic notions of sexism or racism that are being offered up here.

While we are on that, I don't in the slightest deny that there have been many examples of people who were made to not feel welcome on account of race or gender. But history is a lot like a stained glass window that is shattered. It has many pieces. You cannot pick up a single piece of it, hold it up as an example, and say that this is what the whole window looked like. One of the evils of racism or sexism is that when you encounter scorn, the presence of racism or sexism tends to lead you to conclude that the basis of that scorn is always race or gender. And often you may be right. But one advantage of being a nerd is that you learn that there are plenty of instances of scorn that have nothing at all to with that.

Again, this is not gatekeeping in the sense that it is meant. Please stop trying to play silly buggers semantic games and expanding gatekeeping to mean all sorts of discrimination. You are not giving "different examples" of gatekeeping, you are trying to control the definition in some sort of bizarre attempt to prove yourself right.

 

[Gradine]

Gatekeeping, as we are using the term here, is deliberate and targeted, most often against people who belong to (or appear to belong to) one or more out groups. It is a form of discrimination, but one that is specific and endemic to "fan" culture, which in this day and age is essentially synonymous with "nerd" culture.

Any attempt to steer the conversation away from this topic, and towards, say, semantics, is a distraction from the issue, and there are certain posters here who are too intelligent to not be doing that deliberately.

 

[Celebrim]

@Hussar: This is the second time that you've bizarrely accused me of doing and arguing the opposite of what I'm arguing.

The first time you wrote:

You're insisting that all discrimination is gatekeeping, when that's obviously not the case at all.

No I didn't. I've been insisting that not all gatekeeping is discrimination! (At least if you mean discrimination it's more modern meaning of "unjust or prejudicial treatment".)

Please stop trying to play silly buggers semantic games and expanding gatekeeping to mean all sorts of discrimination.

But I'm not. I'm doing almost the exact opposite. I'm insisting that gatekeeping isn't always discrimination.

You are not giving "different examples" of gatekeeping, you are trying to control the definition in some sort of bizarre attempt to prove yourself right.

And I'm not trying to control the definition. I'm using the dictionary definition. The people trying to control the definition are the ones that are trying to introduce alternative personal vague definitions contrary to the normal meaning of the word. And even as a term of art, they aren't using it consistently between passages and posts.

 

[Hussar]

Gatekeeping, as we are using the term here, is deliberate and targeted, most often against people who belong to (or appear to belong to) one or more out groups. It is a form of discrimination, but one that is specific and endemic to "fan" culture, which in this day and age is essentially synonymous with "nerd" culture.

Any attempt to steer the conversation away from this topic, and towards, say, semantics, is a distraction from the issue, and there are certain posters here who are too intelligent to not be doing that deliberately.

Pretty much this.

It's funny how the evolution of trolling has occured. Once upon a time, we'd just see multiple sock puppet accounts coming in to drive by thread crap and start the thread down the path to flaming glory. Now it's all about controlling the dictionary and wide eyed innocently proclaiming, "Well, I'm just trying to achieve clarity" when no one else seems to have the slightest problem understanding the point.

And, so, just like any other discussion about bad actors in the hobby, it will inevitably be derailed into oblivion by semantic trolling.

 

[Xenonnonex]

I would say that I agree. But I think the example shows that there are probably reasons why that player isn't receiving acceptance, validation, and affirmation that are valid and not discriminatory in the sense the word is usually used. I for one would not want to play magic using a bunch of cheaply made homemade cards that didn't have art or rules text (or trustworthy rules text). It would greatly diminish my enjoyment of the game. I suspect most people feel the same way, or we would all be running around with 3x5 note cards playing MtG without spending thousands of dollars on it.

Further, while I can sympathize with this player, because I ultimately dropped MtG as a hobby I couldn't really afford and I never was "in" the game as much as I wanted to be, and I can understand how he feels, I think there is also an element in the hypothetical players desperation that isn't healthy and likely comes from a place of envy. He's trying to force his way into a community. He's not really respecting it.

"Oh look he is not a real fan because he does not have all of those fancy cards"
"Oh look he is not a real fan because he still does not get all of the rules of Magic"
"Oh look he is not a real fan because he does not have all of the Magic merchandise"
"Oh look he is not a real fan because he does not go to Friday night meets"
"Oh look he is not a real fan because he does not go to conventions"
Etc

Yet another definition! This is awesome. So, "not inviting someone" is a big part of literal gatekeeping. It's a major way that people are excluded. You just leave them out of events, and it would I think be an example of the most serious sort of exclusionary behavior. If the basis of it was discriminatory, then I think that we'd all agree it was gatekeeping at its worst. "I'm sorry but, like, you weren't invited."

And yet, while you are willing to concede that that might sometimes be a quite reasonable thing, you introduce a completely new idea. We have literally been talking about gatekeeping as an act of exclusion or attempted exclusion for nearly 150 posts now, and now you introduce a new broader idea - gatekeeping as things that "actively diminish or negate someone's enjoyment of a thing." This is an immensely broad idea, and it's so broad that it could probably apply to really any sort of behavior. Sure, it applies to things that make anyone feel unwelcome, and to things that make people feel uncomfortable, and people playing Paladins and Gnomes. You might as well at this point just say that "gatekeeping" is a synonym for "bad", because its already so abstract in your newest definition that anyone that takes offense over anything could argue that they were the victim of "gatekeeping".

The biggest difference between the two which you are ignoring is one is purposefully discriminatory and the other is not.
If you want to invite someone to something they do not like would you still invite them?
Contrast this to saying someone does not belong because you say so.
Can you see the difference?