I feel like when they say it they basically mean, "someone out there thinks they're better than me," which, true or not, is not the same thing at all.
and they get mad when it isnt homogenized for them already, like the things they control
entitlement to comfort in media (this thing made me feel bad, so it is bad) is another common form of trying to fit the world in your mouth and choking on it
I'm in quantum computing, a research discipline / industry with an extreme level of discrimination against minoritized groups. Part of that comes in the form of intentionally obtuse educational materials that have more to do with making "educators" feel smart than actually educating, leaving most of the folks entering the field as those with enough unearned confidence to overcome confidence checks1 artifically put in their path.
I've often referred to that as a form of gatekeeping, because it 100% and totally is. Lately, though, I feel like the term has been so poisoned by techbros that I must abandon it. Just like right-wingers have taken over every term they can from "fake news" to "cancel," techbros have repurposed "gatekeeping" to mean "has boundaries," engaging in a bit of rhetorical flourish that lets them paint any meaningful form of consent or agency as a bad thing that needs to be bypassed by technical measures; it's even to the point that refusing to use Facebook is now described as a form of "gatekeeping."
Largely, I think it comes down to that consent, agency, boundaries, and privacy are incompatible with VC-driven metrics, and so any rhetoric that techbros can appropriate to erode boundaries is of immense value to them.
I'd prefer to live in a world in which "gatekeeping" meant what it used to, but I'm quickly getting the sense that they've successfully stolen that word as well. I hate it.
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Here, I mean "check" in the MMO sense of the word. E.g.: a "DPS check" meaning a challenge that primarily requires DPS roles to quickly bring down a target, or a "heals check" meaning a challenge consisting of unblockable damage that must be healed quickly. In that sense, I mean "confidence check" to refer to hazing rituals and obtuse educational practices that require students to have an unusual or even extreme level of self-confidence to get through.