Why has a part of the sim racing community become so hostile?

It's supposed to be a serious question and I have no idea if I am perceiving it correctly. But I have a feeling in my gut, that could be described as being a bit dejected. The fun is missing lately and a familiar racing club could be the reason to get the ball rolling.

I don't want to give good or bad examples. But on the one hand there seem to be places where you can go around and exchange opinions liberally among the community of a racing website, where you can express your positive as well as criticize less positive experiences in a mannered way, even publically with admins, who would listen thankfully, while on the other hand you have those close knit communities which keep asking for new members, promoting themselves to be the best in sim-racing but boot anybody who is not part of the close knit without warning when a violation of their rules in the slightest way is done. I'm talking about denigration in a subtle way. A good example could be promoting other leagues (in this case indirectly which wasn't my intention in the first place). Well I take this example because I believe I got now blocked on a relative well known racing community, which by the way has its good share of promotion in our closed team forum, and question myself why they should do this? I've been a member on a long term there but it seems like they show no mercy. Unforgiving seems to be the acronym. Well in my honest opinion I do believe that the whole sim-racing community ain't that big and that any sim-racing club musn't be scared of loosing members due to poaching (which can be defined in many ways). There are only a handful of racing clubs and when one looks closely, he will find many familiar names among these clubs, with other words, sim-racers sharing their passion among different clubs. I don't understand the behavior of these merciless clubs. Is it a financial matter to keep the servers running, to even gain a little profit, a matter of splitting the community or maybe a pretence to keep everyone in one place, while in fact most of the online racers know about most of the different places to race at (haven't you done a online search before?), a form of being scared to lose racing club members? Don't the strict rules and their insistent enforcement cause the loss of possible long term members? Well, I'm not talking about racing rules here, I'm more over talking about community policies, or bureaucratic matters in the narrowest way possible which hurts the main focus of sim-racing. Why doesn't the racing community focus on racing instead of keeping their sheep in one place under strict policies?

I'm in a conflict of some sort and have no problem to let the public, well the few visitors, know.

Over the years I have engaged with many many forums. I got told off at raceconnect 3 years ago.

My feeling is that in lean times, times when grid numbers are falling. Driving standards also fall as people put in less practice.
Positive comments on forums dry up because drivers are less satisfied.

In these times league admins look around for who to blame for the leagues decline. Actually I think that less people are playing rfactor as they move to other sims

Oh and discussions on internet fotums are not places for reasoned argument. A bit like in a pub. Sadly.

I didn't mention names, but what do you mean by "got told off at raceconnect 3 years ago"? A warning?

It's true about forums being like pubs, everyone putting in their two cents, mostly unreflected. But maybe in the cases above it is even worse, maybe more like regulars' tables, only welcoming "outsiders" to increase the grid for their own good. Like when a companion of a regulars table is missing for a card game, so they nicely approach the person next table to join in until he is no longer needed. Reasons vs. Excuses are easy to be found.

This is, well, interesting: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

the forum thread above seems ok, the first post is different from yours because it seems to be talking about a Race connect team rather than an outside team with their own separate website. All following posts discuss the idea of a new race connect event. As forums go the discussion is quite a good one, held together by Ross.

I advertised the L2R 24 race on the race connect website and had the post removed and I may have been temporarily banned I cant remember.

Contact Ross Hawkey to ask whats happened and sort it out. He is very reasonable and I think he will explain whats happened.

Dont let forums get to you, arguably its only in academia where the strongest argument wins. There is no point in trying to debate with someone who is just going to resort to insults (like that discussion of CARS. At least the rfactor community manages to make discussions above the level of youtube. Youtube is truly shocking, maybe its different in German but its just abuse and total ignorance!

The topic in the link was just a find, not really related. About contacting admins. Well I did contact them at both race clubs but haven't got a single reply yet, maybe the the issue is over.