Gatekeepers are a foul lot. They are incapable of just moving on when anyone in any group or category that they don’t like does anything in a way that is not the way they’d do it. Often they invent new reasons for dislike, especially when any form of fun is not the way they’d do it. If their parents ever told them to keep their mouth shut if they didn’t have something nice to say, they ignored it.

In my mind’s eye, I see gatekeepers as two guys guarding a “gate” across a path. These gatekeepers are under a delusion that there are walls around fun and that they are imposing and powerful creatures who guard a massive door in the only entrance.

In reality, it is two rotten posts of wood with a frayed, decaying rope across a path. Their only power is the ability to convince others in the reality of their delusion.

They are most outraged when others ignore their delusion and walk around their gate and “through” the walls to fun. Their only recourse is to spew vile words of mockery and belittlement. They would be clowns if what they said was actually funny. Unfortunately, they pile their manure to the sky, and impose themselves on conversations.

An ability to drive people off in tears and outrage, or enflame the embers of past kerfuffles keeps their efforts and their names alive. It’s like their afraid if they are silent and let people have what they call “bad, wrong fun” that they will cease to exist.

Sadly, they have two effects. First, they convince others who are new to the fun that they don’t belong, and they leave with the belief that all who participate in that fun are just like those rude, foulmouthed “gatekeepers.” Second, others with similar ideas join their cause and make the shouting louder.

Unfortunately, those who stand in opposition to the “gatekeepers” are just as loud and actively seek out those who support the “gatekeepers” even if it is just a follow on Twitter or Facebook. Maybe they follow them because they followed them before they were so nasty, and their stuff doesn’t show up in their feeds.

I follow over 600 on Twitter and hundreds on Facebook, and only a fraction, or those I’ve flagged to see their posts show up prominently in my social media feeds.

I’ve blocked the most vile and outspoken of those in the realm of RPGs. I’ve seen anti-gatekeeper forces bully a friend into unfollowing someone on Twitter. They don’t think it’s bullying. However, online text communication has no nuance of face to face communication. Context, tone of voice, etc. are not well conveyed in the limited words of a tweet. Also, just like sexual harassment is in the eyes of the harassed, so bullying is in the eyes of the bulled.

There has to be a better way to alert a person with tens of thousands of followers and who follows number in the thousands than to assume they know all about one person’s actions amongst thousands. I live in a town of about 2,000 I don’t know what everyone in town is doing. I can’t see them all at the same time. Even if they were all in the same place, I couldn’t keep tabs on all of them.

Put things in perspective. If there is a group dedicated to getting people to unfollow someone, get better organized and if no one in the group is personally acquainted with the person who follows a known bad actor, then appoint ONE person to make ONE contact. Bombarding a person with dozens or hundreds of tweets and direct messages is not the way to convince them you are acting for the good of all.

A scorched earth, annihilate all who stand in our path against the “gatekeepers” is the kind of behavior one would expect of the “gatekeepers.” What happened to “Don’t be a dick?” Or my version, “Don’t be a sphincter?”

Not everyone is on your level of information. There are better ways to cure ignorance than with anger, vitriol, and shame. Those are the tactics of the worst version of Christianity. I’ve fought that version of Christianity my whole live. I get lots of gasps and anger when I would say, “It’s better to love the Hell out of people than to scare the Hell out of them.”

Very few people will change their minds or their way of behaving with direct full frontal assault. They tend to dig in their heels and cling to the way they’ve always done things.

There are two different things going on here. The “gatekeepers” and their minions deserve to have someone stand up to them and call them on their bullshit. Stand up and call evil what it is. Their fringe followers need to be shown there is a different way than spewing hate.

Secondly, those who are bystanders who have innocently followed a bad actor don’t need a full frontal assault on their day or week. Just think, how would you like it if you received multiple tweets about someone you followed who is a colleague and friend. You just stepped into a personal relationship and asked it to be ended. That is very presumptuous.

There has to be a way to do that that doesn’t make someone feel like the “gatekeepers” make their victims feel. Consider the human element. Some people more easily experience strong emotions than others. Some have had trauma in their life that makes confrontation difficult. One can’t assume that everyone will react to the same presentation of a message the same way.

Yes, the truth hurts, and bullshit kills, but there has to be a way to speak truth without blasting a person’s good day to oblivion.

I’m angry and fed up with the petty nonsense that people spew online. I can’t shut them up.

I have two choices, block, ignore, and warn others of my experience, or pull the plug on the internet. I’ve got too many friends I only interact with online, so I’m not pulling the plug.

I’ll just stand here in my little corner of the net shouting into the raging winds. Those who stand near to listen will hear.