Sadly, I'm quite inclined to agree with you, Rod. I'm 55 as well, and I'm a lifelong anime/manga maniac (aka Otaku), comic book collector, Godzilla movie geek, proud *Trekkie*, etc., etc., etc.

With half a century spent delving into various fandoms, I'm well-versed on the bigoty observed in the multiple spheres of geekdom. This first became glaringly apparent thirty years ago (1994) when Internet access exploded thanks to AOL. Yeah, this was back when the overwhelming majority of people on the web were [ahem] the "smart" people, i.e. 1st, and 2nd gen computer users.

Star Trek fandom was part of that wake-up call. Although Lt. Worf was introduced on ST: The Next Generation a few years before that, it didn't become widely known that the existence of dark-skinned Klingons was just too much for so many White sci-fi geeks to fathom until a few years later. ^_^

Sheesh, the amount of conversations I had to have, explaining to white friends, acquaintances, and strangers on the internet how biological science works. And making them aware, too, of how limited their understanding of the population distribution of non-white peoples on Earth was––in stark contrast to what this culture's skewed Eurocentric focus had conditioned them to believe.

Fun times... LOL

Anywho, the bigotry on display in numerous geek chatrooms and message boards was what laid bare for me how easy it was for so many who were basically "othered" within their demographic group––due to their geekish interests––to still go out of their way to discriminate against folks who had the same interests but not the same racial ancestry.

Sadly, there's a clear through line from 1994 to 2024. And even if those so easily expressing bigotry online were only a "vocal minority," it illustrates what's been taught, and thus condoned, by that group's silent majority.

Thanks for writing this piece, LGWare.