Any internet community dedicated to a particular topic inevitably ends up rewarding those users who take the most extreme position possible in relation to that topic. You can see the incredible rise of artistic populism in the past two decades for a great example. Once upon a time, there was a communal sense that being too invested in children’s media as an adult was a mark of arrested development and something to be embarrassed about; the world’s nerds spent many years developing a persecution complex because of this belief. But it turns out that such social conditioning plays an important role. Once the internet became a mass phenomenon, the nerds all found each other and rebelled against any sense of obligation that they should ever engage with art on any level more sophisticated than “Is this badass???”