I don't know, Linus Torvalds was kind of notorious before 2010 for gatekeeping in not-so-constructive ways.

I'm pretty sure this would also render the dot-com bubble the nerds fault?

Let's not go back to how nerd culture used to be regarding diversity... or lack thereof.

I remember when Bill Gates was on magazine covers, viewed as a genius, a wonderful philanthropist, even spoofed in Animaniacs as "Bill Greats."

I guess my point is, "It used to be hard and a liability to be a nerd" was never true, and is nothing but industry cope. The good old days were just smaller, more homogenous, had more mutually-shared good old toxicity and misogyny (to levels that would probably get permabans here within minutes; there's been a lot of collective memory-holing on that), combined with greater idolization of tech billionaires.

Everybody jumped into technology for fat paychecks long before 2010