This happens to most things I like. I really liked JoJo's Bizarre adventure when the anime was first coming out and I read all the manga and then when part 3 got super popular the fandom became completely insufferable to the point where I was stopped recommending the show or keeping up with any updates. I have also been really into AI/language models/machine image generation for years before ChatGPT exploded and now "being into AI" usually means "Exporting rational thought to a chatbot." I also feel like reddit is like this.
My ex wife and I used to take a chess board everywhere, play in cafes, parks, restaurants, pubs. It was something to do when we had run out of stuff to say to each other. It was a conversation starter, people would come up and have a sticky, or ask us who's winning. Some people would occasionally ask if they can play. It was nice. Until Queens Gambit was all the rage. Then people seemed to assume we were just following that trend, and there was a noticeable increase in people saying "Queens Gambit eh?" And we stopped taking the board out so much.
I stayed up to date on ai and machine learning, including language models. I remember hearing that one learned math from language and wondering where things will go. I watched ai safety videos before they felt relevant. Then I heard Openai, which had a good rep at the time, is releasing their new model online, called ChatGPT. Having played with DungeonAI and NovelAI before I was gonna fiddle with this as well.
Then headlines broke, it became a phenomenon. Even then I figured this would be this week's Thing before getting bored, as was common with these ai.
Down the line I remembered hearing ChatGPT on a gas station ad for some travel app. That was when I realized this is permanent. People who aren't even online are likely hearing about this. Suddenly my niche hobby and hopeful dreams of the future became an actual enshittified crisis.
I don't think I need to explain how everyone using language models now is just god awful for everyone. And the attention hasn't gotten us closer to answering long standing questions of ethics, economic change, what is intelligence or consciousness. We've just got a bunch of the lowest common denominator shouting their answers now.
Goddamnit yes. Itâs why Iâm very pro-gatekeeping. Because people who are new to a hobby because it got popular tend to ruin every-fucking-thing.
For example: flight simulator. That used to be an exclusively nerd domain up until the FS2020 version, which was released on Xbox. The result: a massive influx of new garbage payware and a decline in quality of established brands. While also making the sim worse in order to chase broader appeal. Itâs gotten a bit better after covid went away and the normies dropped the hobby, thankfully.
Also: film photography. The popularity of instagram and YouTube âinfluencersâ got a lot of people into our hobby the past decade. Itâs lead to increased gear prices, film being more difficult to get and the forums flooding with the dumbest possible questions, since these newcomers are allergic as fuck to reading manuals or watching any tutorial longer than thirty seconds. Itâs also lead camera manufacturers to chase this new demographic by making their cameras shittier and more âinstagram-friendlyâ. Hereâs looking at you, Fujifilm and your shitty X-half.
Take it from someone whoâs been around a bit: if you like a thing, keep newcomers away from it. Gatekeep it like the Berlin Fucking Wall, lest they completely fuck up your hobby.
I was a nerdy teen in the 90/00s. There's plenty I could be gatekeeping but the thing is.. I'm not special. Nobody is. All this shit is meaningless. You don't own any of it. Sorry it just all comes off so territorial and greedy in a way. Grosses me out.
I am an avid collector and drinker of Chinese teas, particularly oolongs and puerh. I had been drinking them for years when suddenly the absolute asshole Dr. Oz went on TV claiming that puerh tea was some magical cure for anything and everything that you might have.
Normally, I get excited for new people to share tea with, but this fad caused prices to rise across the board and caused the market to get flooded with awful quality tea. These people were drinking some of the worst quality (fishy, shou/cooked puerh) teas and were more obsessed with how to mask the flavors with milk and sugar than actually slowing down and enjoying the tea.
The fad faded and people went back to putting matcha in their morning milkshakes. Even so, I still run into people that reflexively associate incredible tea with Dr. Oz and the disgusting teas he foisted upon his audience. Sad.
I'm in the same boat with a few others here when it comes to some games like Halo and Fallout. But I feel like I'm on the brink with 2 new ones:
- Doom: I played the original when I was a kid and got bullied for it (or probably being a general nerd). 2016 and Eternal were really popular and the franchise took off; but Dark Ages feels off. I played Dark Ages for a bit, put it down, and haven't picked it up since. I think Doom is going down the shitter, especially what they did to Mick Gordon.
- Mother Mother (a band): My SO and I love their music for how unique and interesting it is; and we went to one of their first concerts at a small venue when they came into town ~10 years ago ish? Must have been <500 people. Generally no one else liked their music we shared it with, so we kept it to ourselves. Now? We went to another one a few months ago and it was at a HUGE stadium; absolutely packed. I think one of their songs went viral on TikTok - My Daddy's got a gun. We're proud of what they've accomplished, but really hope they don't lose their identity in trying to become even more popular.
Tabletop RPG. It used to be a niche of the internet in the early days, with people posting here and there their scenarios, campaign, ideas etc. It was hard to find and so pleasurable when you found something.
Nowadays it's trusted by ... Wizard if the coast ? Online only platforms and what have you.
I loved #scenariotheque, but now it's almost a ghost website (pardon the french).
I know if sounds like old man yell at clouds, but damn do I miss the early days.
While not to the same degree as a lot of folks, Fallout got into it some time around New Vegas because it was featured on game fly. Anyways delved headfirst into it and fell in love with the classic games. The post Fallout 4 boom gives me a headache sometimes I just want to talk with old bastards and my fellow autists about Fallout without some profligate butting in cause they watch the TV show.
Nazi ideology, OP OP. There was a nice little thing we had once, until you cunts took it up like a hoard of malignant nihilist pussies đNow we can't even bring up the Third Reich's many incredible qualities in conversation without someone rolling their eyes! n-chan numpties ruin every fandom.
/ss
Minecraft. Started playing in 2011 and have played off and on every year since then. It's now really popular again, but I distinctly remember around 2017-18 it became suddenly uncool to play. When I would be in a VC with friends while playing it, they would ride my ass for it. The ~10 year nostalgia/hype cycle is coming full circle lol
Serial Experiments Lain. I managed to acquire a bootleg Japanese VHS of the show (sans subtitles) in '99 or '00 and fell in love. I bought the English dub as soon as I could find it. I was totally obsessed, even going as far as carrying a messenger bag like Lain had, and making a custom Windows XP theme based on Navi. I even bought a Palm Pocket to mimic the smartphones shown in the show.
Lain shaped my passion for IT, and I feel it changed my life in profound ways.
I'm confused by the sudden popularity. It went under the radar for so long. Now all of the merch goes for insane amounts of money.
Roblox. I played it as a kid around 2007 when it was just a small Lego-like building game with your friends. It's been really weird seeing it become some predatory, monetized app game that kids play on their iPad now.
For reference, I'm almost 30 and haven't played it since I was like 14. My friend's kid was playing Roblox on his tablet and asked if I "heard of this new app game called Roblox" and it hurt my soul.
I have several things that interested me and became popular, but I didn't hate on the new fans. At most I sometimes missed the feeling of having this thing that was a bit obscure and in case of channels on youtube, the intimacy of interacting with the creator and other subscribers was nice. But I can't hate on something I like becoming popular.
As for concrete examples, I do remember subbing to this small gaming channel with 9000 subs called Markiplier back in the day.
I subbed to OKI Weird Stories when he had like 600ish subs.
I subbed to Creepcast before it had any videos on it, but that one is cheating since both meatcanyon and wendigoon were already very popular. Still, it's been a bit nuts seeing the podcast explode in popularity. I even know people irl who listen to it.
Currently I follow a small channel, also podcast format, called The Daydream Arcade that focuses on reading reddit stories, but the hosts are two friends, who bring some warmth and personality to the format which is nice. For me, I stick around becuase I really like their friendship and their personalities. I'm also a older than the both of them and feel a bit big-sister-protective of them. I want them to grow and I believe they will because they already have 4500 subs compared to the 900 they had when I found them, but also don't like the thought of them reaching a point of popularity where the mean assholes come crawling to tear them down.
Steampunk aesthetic ( 1990's ), generative art ( early 2000s )
Ratatat. I got into them through an Albino Blacksheep video, and they were my secret favourite band for a bit.
Then they got popular, and people that I didn't really jell with started casually raving about them, and I found it difficult to enjoy the music because of those people.
Years later, I grew up. Music is for everyone, and everyone forms their own relationship with it that shouldnt impact the enjoyment of the music itself.
Yes, they were sold on the band through mass advertizing channels. Yes, I discovered them through a more organic means. But that's how fans are born, and yes some of them aren't there for the music, but they are there to have a good time and maybe those songs hold special memories for them later in life when they were hanging around with friends.
did people even read the last 3 green lines?
Anon thinks it's 1939
Plot twist, all those fanbases were already kinda garbage before they got flooded with normies and most of the toxicity didn't come from the casuals.
Deadpool.
I was really into punk music when I was a kid since the late 80s/early 90s, then the big boom happened in the mid-late 90s, which eventually yielded to pop punk and emo music from the early 2000s. I kid you not, I was bullied as a kid for liking punk music, before it became mainstream.
I still listen to it and I've even seen a resurgence coming as it coinciding with the 20 year nostalgia cycle, which is great in my opinion. But being a punk fan before it achieved mainstream success and after it went into decline by 2010s made me feel exactly as this post describes.
I hereby name mine Mr. Law Yawnson, it's a total bore
