"Gatekeeping": keeping your good find to yourself, or sharing it?

"Gatekeeping" literally means keeping the gate — holding a good find to yourself instead of sharing it. The shop where you dig up pieces nobody else has, the band you play on repeat and never name, the quiet spot you go and hang out at on weekends: things you deliberately keep in the shade. Online the word is often used with a half-smile — "sorry, I'm gatekeeping" — but it raises a real question: who do the things we love actually belong to?

Why we keep some things to ourselves

The first reason is often very concrete: the fear that the place will change. A quiet café where you always had a table, a walk where you never met anyone, a small shop where you could chat in peace — sudden popularity sometimes transforms the very thing you loved precisely because it was discreet. The second reason is more intimate: owning a taste that belongs to you alone. Finding something before everyone else, feeling slightly apart, matters when you're still working out what resembles you. Keeping a secret is also a way of telling yourself you have an identity of your own.

When the gate closes on other people

The trouble starts when keeping something to yourself becomes a way of making others feel they arrived too late. The "you don't even know that?", the little contempt for people who discover it afterwards, the pride of having been there first: at that point you're not protecting much, you're just wearing your tastes as a badge. It's all the more of a shame because nothing we love truly belongs to us. A track, a style, an address: all of it was found thanks to someone who, one day, was willing to talk about it. A culture that stops circulating mostly ends up going round in circles.

Sharing, but with a bit of care

Between hoarding everything and putting everything on display, there's a calmer path: sharing with a bit of care. Crediting the person who introduced you to it rather than claiming it as your own, sending a good address to a friend rather than shouting it to the whole world, respecting fragile places and small businesses when you talk about them. Sharing isn't throwing what you love to the wolves — it's passing it on. And the pleasure of watching someone fall for a track or a place because of you is often worth far more than keeping it secret.