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~kyle mentioned Star Wars as a prime example of what you're talking about and I have to agree, it's the first thing I thought of. I'm old enough to have seen the first run of it in the theater, and to remember freaking out with joy when I saw the first commercial for action figures and OMG an X-wing!

Part of my reaction now is I'm sure being older and interests changing, but I didn't see the last few movies until they were almost out of the theater, and the very last I waited for streaming and just caught it at home. Haven't seen any of The Mandalorian, even as good as I've heard it is. We've achieved Peak Star Wars and to me it's just oversaturated.

Same with gaming. The last gaming series I enjoyed was Half-Life. Single-player stories, well developed, very absorbing, and played alone. Most things now are designed around team play, online play, gaming headsets and a kind of shit-talking, low-level chest thumping about one's own skills vs. the other n00bs seems to always be in force. The nerds have their own locker room now. So that appeal for me is also gone.

I think I'm getting at the same thing you are, and it's clearly not an age thing given our age differences; I learned to enjoy my nerdiness in solitude, and at most with a very small number of other people. I never wanted it to be a 'culture' or a team sport. I just wanted time to go off into my own world with it, and not find it an overcrowded room. The only true nerd culture was probably the nerds at MIT, and they earned it, built it. They didn't just buy it.

I imagine it's a similar story for anyone attracted to the un-marketed corners of the Internet.

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~tskaalgard wrote (thread):

Your reply made me think of another aspect of it: the solitude of it is particularly jarring just because I came of age during the period when geek culture was becoming mainstream. As a child I was alone, but then as a teen suddenly there was an EXPLOSION of people who were into the same things and it was great. Moving away from the directions most of these people have taken has created a certain solitude, and it is particularly jarring after the explosion of geek culture in the 2000s and 2010s.