content: It's yet another example of cultural blanding. Take a look at every interesting, innovative, or cool subculture in the history of the 20th century. They all start with a small group of people or users who don't quite fit in with the mainstream. Look at blues, jazz, indie film, comic books, video games, etc. Then some other people say "Oooh. That's interesting I'd like to participate". The movement grows. Goods and services flux upward around them in consumption. For a while it's good. Then the dilletantes arrive. The Neu metals and the major label representations of what punk ought to be, the celebrities seeking notice and association with fringes, the Monkees and the fakers who spend more time taking pictures of themselves adorned with the trappings of geekery than doing the actions of geekery. And those people start getting offended because others smell their bullshit and their hucksterism. So they push for the blanding. With each new wave, the movement, the thing, loses more of it's flavor until those who actually gave a damn are left with nothing but the taste of creamed corn and suffering. So they leave to find something new while the pretenders and the dilletantes combe about the shores holding up fistfulls of rotting seaweed and fish carcasses as if they'd just caught the biggest sea bass anyone's ever hooked. I've seen this cycle before. I'll ridicule it again.   It's yet another example of cultural blanding. Take a look at every interesting, innovative, or cool subculture in the history of the 20th century.  They all start with a small group of people or users who don't quite fit in with the mainstream. Look at blues, jazz, indie film, comic books, video games, etc.  Then some other people say "Oooh. That's interesting I'd like to participate".  The movement grows. Goods and services flux upward around them in consumption. For a while it's good.  Then the dilletantes arrive. The Neu metals and the major label representations of what punk ought to be, the celebrities seeking notice and association with fringes, the Monkees and the fakers who spend more time taking pictures of themselves adorned with the trappings of geekery than doing the actions of geekery.  And those people start getting offended because others smell their bullshit and their hucksterism. So they push for the blanding. With each new wave, the movement, the thing, loses more of it's flavor until those who actually gave a damn are left with nothing but the taste of creamed corn and suffering.  So they leave to find something new while the pretenders and the dilletantes combe about the shores holding up fistfulls of rotting seaweed and fish carcasses as if they'd just caught the biggest sea bass anyone's ever hooked.  I've seen this cycle before. I'll ridicule it again.   link   parent