#which is just as weird and gatekeepy and elitist

[aspoopalypse]

its weird to me that cEDH has the image of being gatekeepy and elitist when all i see is the opposite and people actively encouraging others to play in the ways they can because holy shit cardboard is not worth 5k, like people being assholes about owning cards get shut down so fast. there is a bit of an element of ‘just play 4-5 colors 8head’ in the community but thats really a consequence of how commander works, its like if someone tells you that playing 3c in modern isnt worth it because 4c is free thats not gatekeeping its just deck advice, though sometimes people are a bit blunt about which commanders are good or not which is additionally daunting to new players for arguably one of the more complex (sub)formats (and even when ppl come with less than optimal brews/commanders they still get a decent chunk of deck advice!!). but on the whole i really dont get why its called gatekeepy or elitist

#mtg #sorry for cringeedhposting #this is mostly what i see on discord reddit and twitter are probably different #also all the cedh players i know are super chill for the most part

[soulvomit]

I feel really fucking othered as a non-gentry who doesn't love mass media

I don't love geek culture. I loved the mixed geek/nerd/academic culture I used to be part of. THAT was what made me feel seen, a space where one crowd could encompass working class intellectuals who wrote sci fi, artists, freaks, goths, rich kids who did videography, game designers obsessed with Egypt. Rich and middle class and poor people in one single weird and wonderful space.

I'm left with the mass media fandom cult. The things I love don't exist in the suburbs, and have gotten more and more elitist and I can't stand it.

And self-betterment has become a cult buzzword.

The meandering, speculative "what if" conversations are gone and it's become this gatekeepy nightmare where everyone has to make a point and everyone is on the attack.

Some of the What-Iffers who may have been more imaginative, whose contributions to the group What-Iffing session were as valued as any other contributions, stopped seeking cross-pollination as well and in the absence of our diverse speculative round robins, became radicalized conspiracy theorists.

And the nerds who were "higher class" began to distance themselves from the now mainstream consumer fan culture that we used to share and in the past ten years became obsessed with social capital in ways that they never used to be.

My whole social world is disintegrating and at the end of the day I found myself sorted into a category that my ex friends now see as the "rabble" (us people who obviously just aren't ambitious and smart enough to leap over the social barriers on sheer willpower alone) so I am supposed to be content with being narcotized by consumer fandom, which has become so everpresent that it feels like massive cultural indoctrination. People in the mainstream are the people who used to bully me, they just encompass a broader range of people now.

And both the young left and right argue about what is being indoctrinated while still very much being just as indoctrinated themselves. At the end of the day you are all obsessed with video games and television.

Nerd culture has become elitist intellectual culture, and us "rabble" I guess are just all supposed to be narcotized by consumer fandom. We think we've been given a gift by consumer fandom being mainstream when in reality we are being thrown scraps.

A few of us sometimes criticize the social justice credentials of things we watch, or we criticize the things we watch for being "too" progressive. And I guess we will need to keep talking back to media about representation for a long time because as long as media exists then we will need to talk back to it.

But when I can't get away from these discussions anywhere I go, the yelling on both sides blurs together and I see that if you are not part of the discussion you are in many ways othered. (Which is why we have to fight to be part of the discussion.)

But I'm sure that as long as we actually keep swallowing the crap the culture is trying to force feed us, we will be too busy to burn buildings to the ground.

Thanks for the opium, Walt Disney.