So many groups & long-standing board game communities don't moderate or moderate enough, thinking that "everyone loving board games" is enough and that inclusion and empathy takes care of itself

And it never does take care of itself, and it gets too big and unwieldy, and before you know it the community is toxic and monolithic and monochromatic with the same bad actors and gatekeepers that are in *all* the spaces (real time and virtual)

And if you host one of these spaces it's like if your cool bar became a Nazi hangout. You can't change it back. You either have to move or nuke it into orbit

And "community" is a multiverse of definitions and this is where checked-out/insulated creators (say Mr. Runs Thru) got caught off guard. Not just
Reddit
BG twitter
FB groups
Board Games Geek dot com
Any site with forums/message boards

But ALSO any site with *comments enabled* so Twitch, YouTube, aka all the places he gabs excitedly about games

Like, you don't need to have a message board with a list of members or subscribers or commenters to count it as a community.

It can also be comprised of anyone that wanders in and has access to your hosted content, like, whenever

So klout-ier content creators with bigger platforms like RRT or DT etc *are* default curators and moderators, even if they fail to see or address or accept that

This isn't endemic to board game communities. This is how it works in *any* community, especially one that brings together total strangers that share a collective characteristic

If you don't nuke the bad actors and the toxic waste early and often, they will show up and occupy every space they can inhabit, and attack any space they aren't welcome

It's like the Nothing in Neverending Story. These toxic members of your community have a lack of imagination and curiosity about the world. They ostensibly like games but what they like more is keeping these spaces centered for folks like them aka toxic and exclusive non-Other

That means keeping these spaces largely white, male, cis, het. It's a phalanx they create to kettle anyone not like them and attack and expel them from these spaces

That's the *default* setting in yr community if there's zero moderation or boundaries. It's the sublevel to which it always sinks.

It's a full-time job to moderate & curate & beat back this toxic sludge, which is what none of these (largely white) platforms ever want to do

That's why Mr. Runs Thru is gobsmacked. He's not Snidely Whiplash twirling his mustache saying "how to make my space more radioactively toxic?" Instead he did zilch so it spread like an invasive weed such that the casual shrugging indifference of him/his base = toxic gatekeeping

He may have started w/an iPhone & passion for board games but 10 yrs in it's a job w/a jillion followers so he can't pretend that there isn't racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia in an insulated white space he spawned.

The monster he created is 100% pure cause & effect

Another day, another example of "if you don't kick out the toxic followers, your entire following becomes toxic" https://mobile.twitter.com/tiffanyleigh/status/1359219176414527491