The other day I was at my local comic book store (back issues and dollar bin of course) and since I had nothing to do that day I went over to the table top gaming section and some people playing DnD were taking a break and since I've always wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons or something like it I talked to the Dungeon Master and he was very friendly and let me watch their next session. All this to say it really infuriates me how the whole "toxic nerd" or "toxic fandom" perception has become a reality.
Nerds (not meant as an insult of course since I'm one) have always been a pretty open group if you show an interest in the hobby. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten recommendations in this group, especially with Anime/Manga since I am pretty much a normie in those areas (working my way out of normie status with Anime). Also, there have been numerous times where I've talked someone's ear off because they asked me where to start reading comics of certain characters, what Star Wars EU books they should read, endless discussion about Skyrim lore, Science Fiction books, and the list goes on. Also we all remember online forums in the 90s and early 00's.
I just despise how nerdiness is seen as so horrible now simply because people who have been invested in a book, game, or hobby are demonized when some douchebag takes over the IP and makes unnecessary or pointless changes. Rings of Power being the latest example. Heaven forbid as well if you go into the comments section of a gaming site and have the weird idea that a gaming site is for gaming news/info and not for political diatribes of the journalists.
So, who do you blame most for this? Us nerds for being too friendly and not gate keeping properly? Shills in media? The rise of the fake geek and the trendiness of "nerd stuff" to people who then get jobs in things they don't really care about? People like Anita and Zoe?
I'm starting to believe that a lot of this negative association with the term Nerd was because they were naturally great at gatekeeping their hobbies as you needed to invest time in reading the books, buying the toys or learning to play to join in.
That used to keep out most if the toxic ones that wanted to change the hobbies to suit them. Then they started to notice that Nerds had a lot of money for their hobbies so slowly started to inch their way in saying nerds aren't bad just misunderstood, bypassed some of the gatekeeping and now we are at the current state of infiltration where anime has only held their line thanks to language barriers and competitive market.
I really hope anime doesn’t fall. Looking back the worst thing to happen to nerd hobbies was becoming trendy. Like when the MCU was really popular so many ppl would tell me they were into comic books when they simply watched MCU movies
I would go the other way, I think the only major gatekeeping tactic nerds had was that their activities had no social prestige whatsoever, so only people interested in the activity was join. There was no point for others.
Once nerdy activities started gaining social prestige, nerdom lost it's only defense mechanism.