I came across this article relatively recently and found it kind of heartwarming, but not for the reasons you might expect. As a dyed-in-the-wool fantasy and sci-fi fan, I have no problem with fairycon or LARPing, or anything else that non-genre fiction fans might find a little weird. Because the world can be a rough and cruel place, so if you find solace in something like this, if it makes your life better and it doesn’t hurt anyone else, then by all means go for it.
What warmed my heart was how it changed the perception of the writer. I’m not quite sure if the last part was flippant or not, but I think it did have an effect on them. And if one person gets a bit more tolerant, a bit more understanding because they wrote a piece on medium about something they initially thought was weird, then it was worth doing.