On the one hand, I kinda wanna say Rosenberg is being mildly unfair by ascribing "Geek Culture" to what are essentially just a group of overprotective assholes, but then again, I kinda think that's maybe the perfect reassignment of that title.
When people first started largely using the term, it was a means to better define Comic-Con attendees, fan-fic writers, avid gamers (the term gamer is also growing more and more outdated, too), the sorts of people doing the sorts of activities that were pretty fucking prevalent all over the internet, just not talked about.
But now as people understand that the internet isn't really this magical place where reality "doesn't count" but is in fact the main form of communication for millions upon millions of people, the phrase "Geek Culture" doesn't apply as well as it did, because the definition of "Geek" has become so diluted and mainstreamed that it's almost a meaningless title.
EXCEPT for when it's being used to describe the sort of ignorant, angry, excluding snob that Rosenberg is writing about, the kind of people who have decided to appoint themselves gatekeepers to a subsect of pop-culture when nobody asked, and they don't do a great job anyway.
Geek was a negative turn of phrase, and then it was reclaimed - and maybe now it's just heading back towards being a derogatory again, thanks to the counterproductive efforts of people who essentially had their pastime validated and mainstreamed by that reclamation. The only real change will have been that the people now standing outside that bubble are just as into Spider-Man and The Last of Us as the people trying to wall up the windows and doors to their little geek enclave.
So instead of being happy that they have more people to share their interests with, they get upset and try to shrink things back down so they can feel special for having consumed things more than other people.
