Comment by nkrisc
12 hours ago
Might be stretching the analogy too far, but look what happens to remote places that become easily accessible. They become commodified, crowded, and polluted.
There is something about a place requiring effort to visit that makes it special, and it loses that quality when it can be trivially accessed. The air isn’t quite as fresh when there’s a parking lot there.
yes, gatekeeping has much more merit than given credit for. ive seen many communities, ideas, companies, online and off that have been ruined by their growth past a certain point. ive wondered if it's a "when everyone's special no one is" thing but maybe it's just a primal human community thing. idk
I think it’s purely a community size issue. When a community is small, everyone’s an owner. Dealing with bad actors is straightforward. When it grows into the hundreds or thousands the scale means you can’t know everyone anymore, you need hall monitors, need to be more guarded and intentional about how you communicate.
It’s not bad or wrong, just different. When the changes forced by a group who didn’t build it, it’s frustrating.
“Hey, here’s this thing you love doing, but now a computer does it and you don’t have to any more. See, same!” Thanks for allowing me to not do the thing I like to do?
I think this is spot on. It's the journey, but its also the destination.