Very few people enjoy being yelled at, reminds them too much of their job.
Among many other things. I mentioned this in another thread, but until joining here it was two years since being a part of an RPG forum, thanks to two months on The Gaming Den. It took that fucking long to wash the stink away. Also, before people start screaming that I'm just some tumblr loser, I enjoy the OOB manager in Hearts of Iron 3. Even Rifts isn't as clunky as the HOI 3 OOB manager.
Besides the being yelled at part, getting people into RPGs or tabletop games, that aren't the target market (let's be honest middle aged white guys that started playing in the 80s), is pretty hard. I'm 24 and also an avid tabletop wargamer (love me some Malifaux). My girlfriend showed some interest in getting into Malifaux, and it was damn near dead on arrival the second she saw how most women were depicted. Stripper chic turns off a lot of women (and guys like me) from a setting. Thank God I remembered Toni Ironsides (badass, reasonably clothed, factory worker/brawler chick with iron fists), whose crew she now uses. I'm just glad I play malifaux, warhammer doesn't even have black characters (besides the Salamanders, who went from African to literally pitch black because GW are idiots.)
She's also a huge early Anne Rice fan, so I thought that she'd love VTM Bloodlines and the RPG itself. First thing we really talked about after she played through the game and read some of the books, "where are the gay/bisexual love interests?" You go from Anne Rice's vampire, almost all of whom have romantic relations with both genders, to Bloodlines, which was pretty clearly written for a straight male audience (see outfits, Malkavian). Seduction is almost entirely Female to Male, you can basically either play as a lesbian or straight dude. She got past it, but it's hard to get into something that has clearly not been written for you. This is made worse by the fact that when the hobby tries to innovate, people get screamed at for invading the clubhouse. Explaining that Washington Post article over Gencon was damn awkward, and I won't even start about the Sad Puppies fiasco with Science Fiction. I get that people feel ownership over the things they have been enjoying since they were kids, but everything develops over time.
I also think older gamers underestimate how different of a world younger people grew up in. To people like Yosemite it may be "box checking" but for younger players we kind of expect our media to reflect what our country looks like. The Flash is a perfect example of this, it doesn't address gender or race, yet the show has an incredibly diverse cast and presents it as just a normal thing in modern America. You can't just assume white as the default anymore, with other ethnicities only coming in for specialized roles. It really does have an impact on people to be able to open a book, or turn on a tv set, and see people who look like them in leading roles. I grew up in a majority black neighborhood, and one of the reasons why wrestling was so popular was because it was the one show my friends could turn on and see people who looked like them in leading roles.
To see this in action, compared to RPGs, getting my GF into Pro Wrestling was actually a breeze. For one, everyone's dressed sexy, so you don't have the plate armor vs chainmail bikini effect. Secondly, there's just a lot more diversity and respect for female characters, especially by the audience. What Female RPG NPC would you use to introduce someone to TTRPGs? For wrestling, it was easy: "This is Ivelisse. A guy was creeping on her. She kicked him in the face and now they're on a team because he realized she isn't to be messed with. She goes toe to toe with men on a regular basis and is often the most popular character." (Lucha Underground is the shit and would actually make a perfect TTRPG setting. I mean, time traveling astronaut and a reincarnated dragon having nunchuck fights in dingy warehouse bathrooms. Just pure awesome). Or, "This is Bayley. She's a huge wrestling fan who finally has achieved her dream. She's pure hearted, kind and kids love her. Also, the crowd chants "Bayley's gonna hug you" at her opponents because she's strong as shit and can effortlessly suplex just about anyone."
I understand that the Tumblr side of the storygamer community is toxic. But responding in kind just makes everything worse. Not the least of which, it plays perfectly into the outside media's narrative of the closed off nerd clubhouse and the zealous gatekeepers protecting their childhood hobbies. Is it unfair? Yeah, it is. But the fact is, it's 2016, and the side that's pushing for a greater mix of people at the table is going to have a lot more sympathy than the side which is seemingly resisting. When you call the first majority women panel at Gencon douchebags, you're setting back the work of everyone else who's been trying to get new people into the hobby or defending it from outside criticism.
On a sidenote, re: Alpha Blue. There are a lot of ways to do sex well in a game. Wick's Galaxy XXX has a fantastic design philosophy. The cover has two attractive people of both genders dressed equally sexy. Sex itself is presented with mechanical benefits from mutual pleasure and skill. While I didn't support at all the censoring of Alpha Blue, that doesn't mean I didn't groan when I found out about it at first either. It's a throwback to 1980s nerd culture, and not in a good way, in my view. Seriously, Rape Machine? In 2016?