> from people like you

What constitutes someone like me?

I absolutely mostly want to hear from people with similar attributes to me, similar fundamental guiding principles about what makes someone good or bad, and so on, but I'd also like to hear from people with very different experiences to me. I don't think these are especially incompatible ideas

A lot of time, yes. If I’m looking for movies recommendation, I would try to find people who are most similar to me.

Also, no one is using Gemini exclusively, the web still exists

In a manner of speaking, yes.

It is possible to have a community where people disagree, voice their disagreements in a civil manner, and try to understand the other side.

Likewise, it is possible to have a community with a plurality of interests where people explore interests outside of their own.

I suspect the size of the community, rather than exclusivity, is the driving factor. I have lived in small isolated towns a couple of times. These were by no means social utopias, yet I did find that people were more interested in the ideas of other people within their community. This is in stark contrast to the Internet where you look around for communities that reflect yourself, and that are more trigger happy when it comes to dissenters.

Community, even diverse community, requires commonality of some sort. Everyone has a few people they relate to a bit more than others, and that's valuable. Subcultures and esotericism are one way to find those people. And none of this means that everyone who fits must fall into whatever boring conformity you're imagining.

Most people are nothing like me and i've definitely suffered for it. If you don't have that problem maybe you don't need to go looking for people like you.

We can belong to many communities, and indeed we have many different facets or identities. That's what it's like to be human. Attending a chess club doesn't mean you cannot also hang out with tennis players.

So yes, the small internet movement seems to be about esoteric technologies and only people interested in them will join. But I don't see that as exclusionary on a personal level. It's just a weird hobby.