No, this post isn't about gatekeeping Hive from the potential toxic mobs - although some people have argued that the Hive Blogging side of the Blockchain should be gatekept - and I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, I'm not in the mood and I actually am 100% against gatekeeping the blog universe that holds Hive and allows many people to access crypto and it is actually their first contact with the cryptoverse - even if they are never going to buy our token or contribute to the price increment, there is always different ways of contributing.
So no, this post is not about that. It is about gatekeeping in general and how it affects hobbies and niche communities.
It seems that gatekeeping is almost impossible in these modern times where inclusivity is the main flag of what appears to be every major corporation, politically aligned company, a big chunk of political affiliations, and pretty much every sport, hobby community, and even your little sister is being inclusive for the sake of being inclusive.
But I was wondering a few hours ago, what is the point of being inclusive if you end up alienating your userbase?
I'm not talking about inclusivity in terms of homosexuality, race, religion and bla bla, I'm actually pro-inclusion when it comes to that matter, but I what I can't understand, is why does everything has to cater to everyone, everywhere, all the time?
Take for example Chess. Chess is inclusive, if you are able to play it, you can play it, nobody anywhere will tell you otherwise. But should Chess be made more simple or the rules changed to cater to every single person?
The Process of making something exaggeratedly inclusive
You have a Hobby you enjoy: Let's use the most mainstream example I can think of, and that most of you will at least know what I am talking about: Comic Books.
Comic Book characters become mainstream because of the latest Marvel and DC movies, which cater to a broader audience than the Comic Book series. In turn, Marvel, DC and Comic books in general become mainstream.
More and more people are attracted to this new hobby (Comic Books) because they are trendy, being nerd is the new cool - as long as you are a hot, superficially nerd kind of person.
These people are now part of the Comic Book community, at least by name, not by heart and definitely not because they like the hobby, they just like being part of what is trending.
The new members of the community, who most likely dwarf the pre-existent members at least in numbers, and most likely in being vocal, start pushing the hobby towards a new direction - whatever that may be, let's not get political here.
The OG members of the community don't like where the hobby is going, and decide to jump ship. ((Note: If there is any complain coming from these OG members towards the direction the hobby is taking, there will always be the argument that “Having more people in your hobby is better”. Which might prove to be true, but in most cases, niche communities are destined to always be niche communities.))
If the hobby requires interaction with other members, these interactions will most likely turn into horrible experiences for the OG members because new members most likely won't want to adhere to said rules, unspoken social rules, and many more aspects that make the community be as magical as it is. These rules will in turn change to cater the newly joined members creating new rules / new best practices / new meta.
The OG members will end up quitting the hobby and will find something else to be religious followers.
The Fade and trend of the hobby dies out, and all the newish members that were there just because to be part of IT leave, and the hobby ends up being a shadow of what it used to be, with no users and no community.
The trend will go somewhere else, bringing a whole new set of temporary, disruptive members.
Rinse and repeat
Take Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! or even God's Unchained. Having more people in any hobby inevitably changes said hobby's rules, practices, meta, and in order to be more mainstream and inclusive, ends up striping everything interesting to it so it appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Can gatekeeping prevent these interactions and these results?
Gatekeeping could prove to be the only thing that stops the dying out of so many hobbies and communities that have been irreparably damaged in the past decade. The grow of any community can be positive as long as it is kept in check and it has a little bit of gatekeeping, whether it be in the form of entrance fee - or buying cards, paying a membership -, a complex enough hobby to scare off the trend-seekers, a strict set of rules that can in now way be broken, or in the worst case scenario, toxic members that are xenophobic to the bones but friendly towards the inside.
A counterargument could be made against my first numbered postulates: New people who don't like the mainstream form of the hobby will stick to the old rules, the OG form of the hobby and wait until the trend fades and the false members leave, but the community will be damaged already and the meta - perhaps even the hobby creators - will be stained.
But then I tell myself: When I see a sport/game I don't like, I don't look for alternate versions of the same thing that I might like, I look for things I actually like. I don't go and try to change the game/hobby/community that has just a part that I like and then try to modify everything else to my wants and needs.
One could argue that a revenue-drive hobby will always strive to become mainstream, because then it means that the user influx will never stop, the hobby will never disappear. If a hobby appeals to the most people possible, there will always be someone practicing or doing it, even if the way they do it goes completely against what it used to be at the beginning. Take video games such as Call of Duty or Halo: The original players most likely hate what it has become and despise what it is at the moment and their userbase, but the games are still going strong and are arguably better than ever, because they appeal to a broader audience that doesn't care about how the game is not what it used to be or the community is trash now.
But why Gatekeeping?
The main idea of Gatekeeping is to preserve something that the community enjoys as is, and to prevent that more people who will most likely trash that original hobby idea find out about it, and to prevent at all costs that it becomes mainstream, even at the cost of the creators going broke (if it is a profit driven hobby created)
If a Hobby is good enough, you can't stop it from becoming mainstream, especially if the creators are doing everything in their hands to push it to the mainstream. What happens most of the time is that by the time the hobby became mainstream, those that were there at the genesis and actually contributed to make it popular are already gone long ago.
And on the plus side, a significant chunk of new members of the hobby who never would have heard about the original hobby when it was niche, will also be dissatisfied with newer and more mainstream versions of it. Those people will likely move onto that new hobby that the old guard started, and the resulting combined base of non-complacent, proactive people will be the driving force that makes said new hobby better.
And then eventually the increasing complacency and lack of vision for the original interest will kill its mainstream success, so the people who are really passionate about it can return to it if they want to.
Gatekeeping helps in the short term, but eventually...
Any hobby that is good enough to become mainstream, will do so. This cycle happens all the time despite gatekeepers, and in some cases the gatekeeping even accelerates it because people want to do what they're told they can't.
I hope you don't have anything niche that you love be destroyed as you watch and say "It was inevitable anyway". Why fucking try to do anything then?
Before you start asking me "Oh, who pinched your balloon? U mad your hobby is not only yours anymore? and crap like that, remember that...
...We are all blogging and consuming content on an obscure, digital money-generating, anti-establishment fighting, pseudo-anarchy supporting, deep-web-money-laundering relating, taxation-is-theft promulgating, inflation-kills-economies believing, conspiracy-theories accepting, self-definition living, off-grid-mentality acquiring, revolutionary-mindset thinking, North Korean crotchet weaving, Latvian-Origami making, Norwegian Guerilla training, Peruvian Salt Water drinking, ecosystem.
An we should act like it.