My experience has been the complete opposite over on the watch subreddit. I never saw any gatekeeping and if you posted a picture of your new $10 watch there absolutely were plenty of comments on how awesome it is and how happy everyone is for you to get something you like. Also a lot of talk about the history and inner workings of watches not just circlejerking over brand names. Overall a pretty positive and encouraging group in my experience.
I can only remember one girl in middle school who said she was a cat and would scratch and hiss at people.
Writing by hand definitely helps me a lot with learning and remembering things. When taking exams in school I would picture my actual notes in my notebook to remember things. That's just how it works for me I guess. However now if i need to jot down quick notes like a grocery list or something I'll just do it on my phone. Personally I enjoy pens and pencils and I wish I had more reasons to write things but I'm definitely no writer and I'm not into journaling so really the only writing I do now is for language learning.