I think tech has never been as open and welcoming as it has liked to believe. There was a lot of high-minded talk about the way technology removes barriers and makes differences invisible, but much of that came at a time when tech was almost exclusively the domain of white men. We didn't see racism, sexism, etc. because there weren't many black people, women, etc. to be subjected to it.

The more that are present, the more opportunities arise for that previously latent trait to become visible. It's not everybody -- far from it -- but it's more than we thought or hoped.

I suspect that your D&D group was mostly white and male, like mine. And if there were women in it, you might try asking them now about the things that they tolerated but didn't like: misogynist jokes, subjected to comments about their appearance, maybe even being assumed that they'd clean up.

I don't intend that as an accusation. It's an admission: I'm certain that this went on in my group, and I'm pretty sure I was part of it. Not that it was intolerable; they would have left if it was that bad. But it's part of my overall suggestion that it's probably not as rosy as we remember it being.

I point that out because I think the change was less about Google shifting from nerds to preps, but that the nerds are finding more opportunities to act like the preps. Not all of them, and not all the time, but enough to be a small but constant trickle.