FireAza said:
Nerds have become hipsters. Their identity was based so heavily on unpopular niche things (the internet, video games, comic books) but now these things have become popular. And even worse! Popular with NORMAL people! The kind of people who teased them back in high school! In response, nerds have become hipsters, mocking people who aren't as "hardcore" as they are.
Nah, nerds are still nerds. Hipsters skim the surface of something that goes rather deep.
Hipsters watch Game of Thrones. Nerds read A Song of Ice and Fire before it was on TV and nitpick at the changes done to make it more palatable for a non-literary audience. I read it a few years before the TV show was announced. A friend had recommended it to me back in like... 2000. I had never gotten around to it.
Hipsters play board games, usually under an hour playtime, 2 hours max. Nerds will play Axis & Allies, a tabletop RPG or something that takes at least four hours for a satisfying session.
These aren't necessarily hard and fast rules, but the hipsters lack the bit that powers the likes of PCMR, the LARPers of White Wolf Games, the Boffers, the Warhammer players and the game completionists.
The real clash with hipsters and nerds comes from the fact that yes, hipsters in their attempts to seem niche, will latch onto the surface of nerd culture. The conflict comes from this new audience influencing or changing existing media to suit their own tastes, which kind of flies in the face of the nerd culture that it survived on before becoming mainstream.
And we've seen that in history. The bright, colorful superhero genre basically murdered the more adult, pulp comics. D&D's seen a lot of changes in response to the rise of MMOs (I haven't played 6e yet, but 5e was an attempt to streamline the game so it was like an MMO).
You see it right now with things like the animation production of The Killing Joke, where people who probably never read the original work (whether because they couldn't be bothered or because 'muh trigger warning') want to remove the part where Barbara is shot and then victimized, which was all meant home both the viciousness of the Joker and how far he was willing to push James Gordon, who was his real target.
Frankly, a lot of fans are excited for this production because despite saying he was done, Mark Hamill is returning to voice the Joker for it and Kevin Conroy (Batman: TAS, New Adventures of Batman & Robin, Justice League, etc) has expressed interest in doing it.
That the work may be altered to satisfy an audience that doesn't care about the source material is galling to the fans who supported the original work and made it an iconic, memorable piece of the Batman mythos. And yes, that does matter, because otherwise "I'm the Goddamned Batman" All Star Batman & Robin would also be considered iconic, as opposed to just sad.