In fact I've probably never seen such a wide moat.
The more closed the circle, the more difficult it is for 'outsiders' to break in. Their very difficulty in entering may be taken as a sign of incompetence, a sign that the insiders were right to close their ranks.
I can't get through the gate. The gate is narrow.
You want it to be hard. If it's hard, then that means others can't do it easily and you can charge for that value.
Social media being used to discover new artists is great. There's not a barrier to enter the industry. People can just post music and share it. And if it's good enough, and people like it, it will grow.
I think the term 'Twitter comedian' can seem like a pejorative because it's not a job, really, and there's such a low barrier for entry to get started.
The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!
It just makes it even harder for people to even approach the (open source) side, when they then end up having to worry about public humiliation.
Because there's no structural barrier to joining 4chan, the community is really dynamic; for every five people that leave, five new people join, bringing their perspective and culture. A lot of other communities get set in their ways.
