My first google result on nerd vs. geek was this: https://bigthink.com/laurie-vazquez/are-you-a-geek-or-a-nerd
Which, I think, indicates, that op is actually talking geeks rather than nerds, no?
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I hate nerds. I hate nerd culture.
- Thread starter Bronx-Man
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Which, I think, indicates, that op is actually talking geeks rather than nerds, no?
I think, in this kind of circle, we get off on hating things. Getting mad about stuff feels good in our brains. Like it gives us purpose. You feel like you aren't alone because the majority will agree with you. It feels good to shit on the new Star Wars movie. It feels good to shit on The Game Awards. We all want to feel "right". That's a big reason why people argue on the internet. And when a group of alt-right YouTubers make videos that get hundreds of thousands of views because they said TLJ was a bad movie, someone would get two sources of validation. One being them being told "they are right". The other is a sense of community over being "right".
People have discovered that hating something online is more entertaining than anything else. I think there is some kind of hate group-think happening today getting amplified by social media.
People were getting ready to hate the new Star Wars for MONTHS. That is a lot more entertainment value than the 2.5 hr movie.
People were getting ready to hate the new Star Wars for MONTHS. That is a lot more entertainment value than the 2.5 hr movie.
This. But it's still annoying that I have to ignore 10 Star Wars threads a day. And they are often bullshit poll squabbles that make me sigh audibly.
Feel like Midsommer is a bad one to name drop in the OP given how horribly it handles male rape.
I don't know. I'm kind of of the mind that Third Worldism adequately describes our current and imo pressing political challenges with say even the white working class in the west effectively reproducing and reenacting colonial oppression, which I feel is a relatively easy case to make when pointing to how we distract or satisfy ourselves with trivial materialism and our general political apathy while our governments massively and industrially perpetuate these power structures over the Global South. Geek culture has come to represent a certain strong tendency or stereotypical attitude towards the kind of unreflective consumerism which kind of recasts our lower and middle classes as a kind of global bourgeoisie, and that forms a part of my contempt or at least my ideological justification for my contempt.
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Look. who in their right mind would go on a forum and write paragraphs after paragraphs bitching about video games and movies? you are a nerd. im a nerd. we are all nerds or we wouldnt be here.
i dont know anyone, anyone who goes on forums. no one in my college went on forums. no one in my family. ive seen some folks on reddit. but no one has heard of gaf or gamespot or era. so just be happy you have some place where you can come and talk about the shit you care about. rant about shit that bugs you. and learn to coexist. people are different. thats true for nerds on the internet and people in the real world. its just that in the real world we keep our opinions to ourselves.
most people dont have this. they are alone. they binge watch netflix and have no one to talk to. maybe a friend or two. maybe a text. omg that was awesome. or that was so bad. maybe a conversation during some dinner with friends or family. Nerds have each other 24/7. you can come here and shit on BvS, Man Of Steel, TLJ literally any day of the week. You can be best friends with a guy for your entire life but you arent calling him at midnight just to rant about #ReleaseThe SnyderCut fans.
to be honest, i also dislike the negativity, the silly overreactions, and how we allowed ourselves to be overtaken by white supremacists and incels. but they are just a small fraction of what nerds have to offer. you complain about the Snyder Cut movement but i have never seen a more positive movement. its just fans of a director wanting a director cut and have mobilized themselves without harrassing anyone. they have the blessing of the director. the actors. if anything, they get harassed by people like you who simply cant stand to see other nerds happy.
Just live and let live. internet is bigger than anything we have experienced. high school and college dont even come close. we are now talking globally with nerds from every nation, religion and culture. embrace it. embrace the chaos. it's OK to be upset, thats what makes it interesting. if we were like everyone else, we would be drones with no sense of humor, no wit, no real passion about anything. i mean there is a reason why forums are full of nerds, because no one else gives a shit to be on here.
i dont know anyone, anyone who goes on forums. no one in my college went on forums. no one in my family. ive seen some folks on reddit. but no one has heard of gaf or gamespot or era. so just be happy you have some place where you can come and talk about the shit you care about. rant about shit that bugs you. and learn to coexist. people are different. thats true for nerds on the internet and people in the real world. its just that in the real world we keep our opinions to ourselves.
most people dont have this. they are alone. they binge watch netflix and have no one to talk to. maybe a friend or two. maybe a text. omg that was awesome. or that was so bad. maybe a conversation during some dinner with friends or family. Nerds have each other 24/7. you can come here and shit on BvS, Man Of Steel, TLJ literally any day of the week. You can be best friends with a guy for your entire life but you arent calling him at midnight just to rant about #ReleaseThe SnyderCut fans.
to be honest, i also dislike the negativity, the silly overreactions, and how we allowed ourselves to be overtaken by white supremacists and incels. but they are just a small fraction of what nerds have to offer. you complain about the Snyder Cut movement but i have never seen a more positive movement. its just fans of a director wanting a director cut and have mobilized themselves without harrassing anyone. they have the blessing of the director. the actors. if anything, they get harassed by people like you who simply cant stand to see other nerds happy.
Just live and let live. internet is bigger than anything we have experienced. high school and college dont even come close. we are now talking globally with nerds from every nation, religion and culture. embrace it. embrace the chaos. it's OK to be upset, thats what makes it interesting. if we were like everyone else, we would be drones with no sense of humor, no wit, no real passion about anything. i mean there is a reason why forums are full of nerds, because no one else gives a shit to be on here.
All the more reason that dismissal as simply non-transformative, ignorant consumerism gives a big pass to what technology is actually doing.
Or maybe we're just getting different reads from the comic.
Either way I'm not really buying the idea of wanting a brighter, higher resolution TV or a faster CPU/GPU from the customer's standpoint with it's clear advantages for a their use case as being the issue here. Yeah, there's wasteful consumption but the condemnation is pretty broad.
On thread topic: Are these negative aspects pointed to in the op what we've fundamentally distilled nerd culture to?
I love digging into media and debating and creating and consuming, but the second it becomes an 'us vs them' I lose all enjoyment.
Let people enjoy things even if they don't enjoy them the way you do.
Let people create things even if it's not the way you'd have done it.
Just chill out and enjoy what you can.
Let people enjoy things even if they don't enjoy them the way you do.
Let people create things even if it's not the way you'd have done it.
Just chill out and enjoy what you can.
Yeah that's why I described it as being more rhetorical than literal, it's painting a picture of the emptiness of naive consumerism. The same attitude behind that emphatic and naive consumerism tends to express itself in a lot of other ways, such as a naive corporatism (observed in how often people here stan for Disney), or arguably a naive chauvinism when the main limbs of media and consumer tech don't cater specifically to them, etc. I'm sure it's a broader problem with our intellectual culture taking its world for granted and not being adequately critical or self-reflective, but geek culture strikes me as having a fairly strong degree of overlap in these areas, but people are right that things like sports culture are bad too and probably worse in equivalent ways, I'd just have a much harder time characterizing or relating how that is so because I'm not really familiar with that world.
You need a dose of positivity OP. Probably best to get that off the internet.
Your post is good, yet problematic. Probably cause you seem to be burnt out on dealing with need culture, and the negativity has gotten to you.
Some of the other posts in the thread do illustrate being a nerd is fun, in that it's fun to analyze, to embrace something and they do hit home how some of the responses veer into "your shit for embracing it".
The only thing you can do is be positive, remember context, and do your best to respect the person.
Your post is good, yet problematic. Probably cause you seem to be burnt out on dealing with need culture, and the negativity has gotten to you.
Some of the other posts in the thread do illustrate being a nerd is fun, in that it's fun to analyze, to embrace something and they do hit home how some of the responses veer into "your shit for embracing it".
The only thing you can do is be positive, remember context, and do your best to respect the person.
i bring grave tidings from the world outside (The Meatspace as it is officially known) to inform the netizens that jocks are not all the harmless himbos we've been led to believe!!
joking aside, i mean i agree with your analysis but think the idea of classifying people into nerd versus non-nerd is a waste of everyone's time
are people who hurl racist harassment at stars of the most popular contemporary movies still "nerds" even now that their favorite media is popular? or does insisting that they are not, because you yourself identify as a "nerd" and you want to distance yourself, just not matter? and similarly does insisting they are "nerds", so therefore you as a non-nerd would naturally never engage in such behavior, not matter either?
damn, maybe fighting bigotry might be harder than separating people into The Good and The Bad piles on any criteria besides "is engaged in and will continue engaging in harmful behavior"
classifying people in general is a waste of time, and if you care about doing it then you're a nerd AND a geek
joking aside, i mean i agree with your analysis but think the idea of classifying people into nerd versus non-nerd is a waste of everyone's time
are people who hurl racist harassment at stars of the most popular contemporary movies still "nerds" even now that their favorite media is popular? or does insisting that they are not, because you yourself identify as a "nerd" and you want to distance yourself, just not matter? and similarly does insisting they are "nerds", so therefore you as a non-nerd would naturally never engage in such behavior, not matter either?
damn, maybe fighting bigotry might be harder than separating people into The Good and The Bad piles on any criteria besides "is engaged in and will continue engaging in harmful behavior"
classifying people in general is a waste of time, and if you care about doing it then you're a nerd AND a geek
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It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes
It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes
Guillotine
Perfect first post.
We see this on this very forum with Star Wars threads. A nerd on here wrote a six page diatribe that ended by saying anyone who liked the new movie deserves "farts in their eyes." It was liked and echoed by a ton of other posters.
Fuck off, nerds. š
Fuck off, nerds. š
At this point I just roll my eyes at people who take things too seriously and demand that their opinion be known as the One True Thought.
With hobbies, it's much better to just ingratiate yourself with like-minded people and not pay too much thought to other opinions to the extent it exhausts you or riles you up. Some may say that's putting up an echo chamber, but when it's something as trivial as "I like/dislike this piece of media" it really isn't a big deal.
Of course that isn't to say people shouldn't address toxic issues in their fandom - those are always worth addressing regardless of it exhausts you. But minor things, like sequels, remakes, certain character traits, etc.? It really don't matter.
With hobbies, it's much better to just ingratiate yourself with like-minded people and not pay too much thought to other opinions to the extent it exhausts you or riles you up. Some may say that's putting up an echo chamber, but when it's something as trivial as "I like/dislike this piece of media" it really isn't a big deal.
Of course that isn't to say people shouldn't address toxic issues in their fandom - those are always worth addressing regardless of it exhausts you. But minor things, like sequels, remakes, certain character traits, etc.? It really don't matter.
Other people like the media I enjoy in a wrong way. This needs to stop.
Okay now that's just heresy!
we've had twenty years of good jokes about that ludonarrative malfunction, and I will be damned if we don't allow another generation to discover that videogames are BULLSHIT. Making up shit out of nowhere.
Suck it, Necron.
I do love very particular in-jokes though.
Stabbed by a Tonberry if old.
Stabbed by a Tonberry if old.
Oh, people can enjoy what they want, how they want to. Doesn't mean I want to be around them or hear what they have to say.
the other side to the utterly banal nerd versus non-nerd dichotomy is that nerds are convinced that non-nerds have no interior life because they aren't writing thinkpieces about whatever it is they're into
similarly, people who feel the need to categorize everything probably think those who don't have never made a comparison in their life
(the fact that i'm saying non-nerd instead of "normie" means that i am Cool and would never make an Online Post like a nerd would)
similarly, people who feel the need to categorize everything probably think those who don't have never made a comparison in their life
(the fact that i'm saying non-nerd instead of "normie" means that i am Cool and would never make an Online Post like a nerd would)
I find typical expressions of online fandom mentally exhausting now. Being frothingly hyped for stuff years in advance, the entitlement towards creators on the basis that one's fandom entitles people to the art they want, the bullshit attitudes regarding inclusion of minorities, the constant insistence on correcting people even over matters of opinion, the team-oriented idoltry towards corporations. It's a dick-waving shitshow.
I'm old now. I'm 30. I just want to make fanart and stories, and be happy over the art that actually make me happy. You can't really do that in online nerd circles unless they're basically small, private chats.
I'm old now. I'm 30. I just want to make fanart and stories, and be happy over the art that actually make me happy. You can't really do that in online nerd circles unless they're basically small, private chats.
This is what happens when you create a product that attracts millions of people. A certain percentage of them will have a negative attitude, which tends to go viral more often than positive takes/videos.
I don't know if there's an easy fix for this besides social platforms becoming stricter with direct harassment and spam attacks. There's only so much regular fans can do.
I don't know if there's an easy fix for this besides social platforms becoming stricter with direct harassment and spam attacks. There's only so much regular fans can do.
Yup. You're on a video game forum.
Every single one of you is a nerd.
I think the toxicity is a fundamental aspect of it, since there's a large victimization element to it. If you're bullied for being different, or liking different things, or outcast from the mainstream because of awkward social skills, then there's a very strong impulse to take those things that you're being rejected for and turn them into something that makes you believe that you're better than everyone else.
If you're lucky enough to find others in the same predicament, then you can band together and bond over your mutual appreciation of something, as well as your outcast status. You get your own little tribe. And for many, that anger and resentment over being rejected and bullied never goes away. They hold on to it like a hot coal.
Many of them take that feeling of superiority and bully others who don't pass their particular litmus test, or belong to some other non-mainstream sect that they can look down on, or look & act like the people who bullied them. They feel like the online world is the great equalizer. It's their arena. It's where their supposed cleverness and ability to spit invective allows them to do to others what was once done to them, without any real consequence. No one's going to punch them in the face. They can't be "shunned" or shoved out of the way. And since tech and online tools were one of their escapes, they can use and manipulate the tools they have to make sure they're heard, and in many cases feared. It where they get to feel the empowerment that they never feel in real life, and where they can humiliate and dehumanize others in the same way that they felt was done to them.
And obviously this doesn't apply to everyone, and yeah, there's assholes everywhere, but nerd/geek culture has a toxic element baked into it in a way that a lot of other things don't, and many of those who identify as such never learn the lesson that just because you were treated like shit doesn't give you an excuse to treat others like shit.
i agree with this wholeheartedly!
unfortunately, this has also been my experiences with queer spaces as well - if i have to hear one more buffoon try to stir up pointless infighting for clout or one more high school debate club argument on who isn't valid i'm going to make an angry post online
i think there are a lot of people these days who insist they aren't a nerd but will turn around and do exactly this nerdy behavior - and they think what they're doing is fine because well it's the "nerds" who are bad, and they aren't a "nerd", so checkmate
OP
OP
It's been the most visible aspect of nerd culture for a decade now, that's what upsets me.
I feel like this is a big problem here. Fans of one franchise/hobby shitting on fans of the exact same franchise/hobby for being crusty, inept, obsessed neckbeard losers, and back and forth we go.
No one thinks they're part of the problem but they sure can sniff it out in everyone else.
