The Culture: Towards A Hobby Without Commercialized Predation (Part Two)

Friction as a gatekeeping mechanism works, but it works better when it's the "one" of a one-two punch.

Making It Inconvenient

Friction is not just to be used without deliberation. As I said yesterday, it needs to be put into place such that it can only be overcome with demonstrations of skill, character, or both.

Why?

The Normie and those who exploit Normies as stalking horses presume that convenience is the norm. It is presumed that they can pay money, get someone else to do it for them, or get it changed to accomodate them. This is because Normies see the hobby as just another form of mass media entertainment.

Mass media entertainment, commercialized over a century ago (with all the effects mentioned yesterday and the day before), is something Normies show up for and consume passively as a passtime. It is not something actively engaged with, as a means of cultivating and refining useful skills and (more important) habits, which is the definition of a hobby.

It is the difference between watching a professional sports team play and being a player in a local hobby league.

You might think that this is an absurd comparison, but reality does not agree. The Normie (and those slipping in behind him) does not work for their entertainment and refuses to Git Gud because the Normie believes he is entitled to be entertained.

Asking them to put in work is introducing friction. Introducing friction prompts them to complain. Enforcing a policy of exclusion for those that won't do what is required to overcome the friction prompts the Normie (et. al.) to take those complaints public.

This is what we want.

We want the Normie to complain that the Hobbyists are not catering to their expectations. We want the Normie to be appalled at the implication that they suck at the Hobby, and as a freakout reaction go hard into Ego Defense mode and start making status attacks upon the Hobby in an attempt to shame the Hobbyists into compliance on pain of Loss of Social Status.

This is what we want.

A non-commercial hobby scene must deliberately cultivate a low-status image through deliberately introduced and enforced friction targeted specifically at the typical status-striving Normie because the serious bad actors that sneak in behind them will also be frozen out as a direct and desirable consequence.

A low-status social scene has no social clout to parasitize and turn into fuel for some political or religious cult activity. A non-commercial hobby scene has no financial or durable capital to parasitize for those same ends. Predators go where the prey is, and locusts go where the food is.

By making the hobby scene the social and financial equivalent of Arrakis, only without there being any Spice to make it at all attractive, that latticework of friction will cull most of the unserious and bad actors from the scene entirely. Only the serious and earnest--those willing to join the hobby and prove it by consistent behavior--will pass through the gates.

If this resembles an initiatory experience, you would not be wrong. I am in accord with the Shiba of Color on how to proceed: to go back underground, and stay there.

Making it more bothersome than it's worth by deliberate introduction of friction into the hobby and the cultivation of non-commercial avenues at the expense of commercial pursuits is the way to get there.

Accept that this hobby not is not for everyone, that is never was, and that it is good that it never shall be. Then the hobby will begin to right itself.