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> Where the Sea Monkeys see community, I see epistemic closure. All the shared references and common rhetorical tactics don’t feel supportive to me—they feel almost lazy, as if the triumph of the nerds means not having to meet the normals halfway.

This really is the main problem with nerd/geek/gamer/etc "culture", it's actually very exclusionary to people and if you don't possess the right amount of shared knowledge, you're ostracized. Nerd "culture" is also uncritical of the objects of worship, watch what happens if someone criticizes a sacred cow like Firefly or Game of Thrones.

Critical of individuals and uncritical of art is exactly the opposite of what we should strive to be.

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Yeah, for all the whole "haha look at all these normal people caring about their local sports teams"-type of memes in those circles, popular nerd culture is basically exactly the same sort of behavior.

There's extremely vile behavior in these circles, a sort of one-up-manship that ends up creating environments where things like Gamergate can prosper.

Exactly, it becomes a race to define the most narrow circle of who is "in" and who is "out" and since nerd identity is defined by consumption, it becomes a race to see who can consume the most obscure thing in an effort to keep people out. This is why gamergate is so threatened, it's diluting the only identity they have because they're so empty of meaningful personhood otherwise.

Gamergate isn't about competition, though - it's focused on...

ethics in video game journalism.

That's really insightful.

So perhaps the 'objects of worship' are in some sense for the worshippers no longer just a piece of art or entertainment, and so cannot be held criticically by them without creating a certain amount of cognitive dissonance.

To me (and I imagine many/most adults) rehashing and revisiting a film (e.g such as star wars) and its contents diminishes the film, regardless of how great the film is. There is clearly a different mode that some people enter into whereby it becomes something else, a touchstone for the communal experience, and a piece scripture for their worship. It takes all sorts!

>watch what happens if someone criticizes a sacred cow like Firefly or Game of Thrones.

I hate a bunch of nerd sacred cows and I criticize them all the time. People are surprised for a second and pantomime outrage and then everything goes back to normal. The trick is to signal personal preference, not signal out-group contempt, which is kind of a trigger for some people.

But that's the point, isn't it? Almost all of nerd identity is defined by consumption preferences so if you criticize their consumption preferences, you're criticizing them as a person. Defining yourself by what you consume is very mentally unhealthy.

Isn't that the nature of a group - it needs to have boundaries that define it both the positive and negative sense (eg. people in our group support X and don't support Y). Otherwise the group or culture has no boundary and therefore includes everyone and cannot be considered a subset.

Pretty much. Also, as a non white person I feel their echo chamber effects acutely. Casual racism and race "realism" is especially pronounced in nerd circles.

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