The Big Picture: A Nerd By Any Other Name

copycatalyst

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I have a friend who only got into watching sports for the nerdish side (and he knows it). If he's not obsessing over stats and managing a fantasy team, he doesn't care.
 

Warachia

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The big picture kept skipping.

"nerds express their devotion of something by turning it into an equation - see role playing game."

I've almost never heard such a subjective personal statement from anybody. The reason role playing games use mathematics is because of several other factors unrelated to today's topic. It's stunning how little this statement looks at anything, and kind of gives us an insight into bob's life if you really wanted to look deeply.

They are instead called fanatics (not fans even though that is the short form), not nerds, it gives people up here the same reaction to see them walking around in a jersey. Also, a costume and cosplay is more than just a piece of clothing, by you're reaction if I wear a black hooded sweatshirt and pants, i'm cosplaying a mugger.

A quick answer as to why they don't come together: THEY DO, OR DON'T WANT TO. I am a "nerd" who watches sports. I don't have a compelling reason to do so, I do it because I'm bored and it kills time, but you get into the game and enjoy yourself. Those who don't, don't have any interest in the matter to begin with. I love video games, I've played sports games, although I've never once bought one, I know sports fans who buy the newest game only to trade it in next year when the new edition comes out, if they don't, they never wanted to play the game to begin with, only watch. You can never force a football fan to like an anime fan, they do or they don't as a person which you probably will only alienate if you try to talk about mixing groups as if they were two seperate species. Asking a person why they prefer A to B comes down to personal preference and grouping them only makes it harder for them to mix.
 

signingupforgames

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My idea of why they can't come together: People hate themselves. "Nerds" and their sports counter parts are just like each other enough for them to hate each other but JUST different enough for them to say they're nothing alike.
 

signingupforgames

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Also to everyone debating the reality of all of this: STOP.

Stop right now. Think. Each person described in Bob's little similarity montage actually does the same thing. Babe Ruth increased morale and distracted people from recognizing issues of America that people didn't feel they should focus on in order to feel patriotic. Superman increased morale and distracted people from recognizing issues of America that people didn't feel they should focus on in order to feel patriotic. Think of what every side does.

Our hobbies are really just distractions of real issues in our countries. That's what they are. That's what they've always been. That's what they'll always be. Morale boosters. Doesn't mean they can't be meaningful but that does mean that they are distracting you from the unsightly issues of your specific country.
 

snd_dsgnr

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It's an interesting point, but there's a problem with your football jersey analogy. You would not receive strange looks while wearing a football jersey around in public, that much is true. If, however, you were to wear the pants as well I'd bet you'd get some double takes. And that's without even getting into the pads, cleats, and helmet.

The notion of people dressing up or painting themselves when going to football games being the sports equivalent of cosplayers attending conventions on the other hand, that's a much harder thing to dismiss.
 

MowDownJoe

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If Yankee Fans are Twihards (I agree with that assessment, myself), what are Mets fans? Please don't say Sonic fans. I don't want to be associated with them.
 

Dangerious P. Cats

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I suspect that also part of nerd culture has to do with obessing over interlectual things. Sports are fundermentally physical activities, or least percieved that way. As much as there is a mental component to sports they are are seen as primarly physical activities, comparitivly most nerd activities are consisdered primarily mental actvities, and most are. The consumption of media is a mental activity, as is sci fi, fantasy fiction, as is gaming in both computer and pen & paper form.

The other dimention is that some activites are concidered nerdy. Roleplaying is a nerdy activity no matter how often you do it, as is anime outside of a few key titles (which are concidered arty). While a large component of nerd culture is about obsession (much of the hardcore vs casual war is gamer nerds fearing people who only play every so often and don't get 20+ years of gaming cultural refferences) there is also a component that is about escapism and interlectual pursuit.
 

Callate

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Parallel question: why is it that one person who plays video games or role-playing games going screwy and killing someone is big news and considered proof positive of the pernicious influence of that particular hobby, but sports fans rioting on a frequent basis during and after the games doesn't seem to draw a similar level of ire directed towards the pernicious influence of sports fandom?
 

Falseprophet

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Bravo, Bob! I've been saying the same thing for years. But it looks like The Onion [http://www.theonion.com/articles/walking-sports-database-scorns-walking-scifi-datab,1442/] beat everyone to the punch.

And at the 2009 Washington Correspondents' Dinner, John Hodgman suggested U.S. President Obama might be the one destined to unite jocks and nerds. Alas, Obama fails the nerd test:

 

Hulyen

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Kristoffer Mattila said:
In my language, (swe) sport nerds ARE called sport nerds. So is everyone else.

Music nerds
History nerds
You name it

with the exception of maybe cooking nerds. Never heard that one
Hopefully I'm not echoing someone else, but there are. They go by the (awful) label of 'Foodies.'
 

Blackdrawn

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I see a lot of your points here Bob, but you are missing one LARGE point here.

As explained in the Futurama episode "I Dated a Robot" everything humans due is in hopes of impressing the opposite sex (or sometime the same sex). Most girls are impressed by men doing or liking manly things because they feel safe and blah blah blah so on and so forth, "jocks" see this and they like it more. "Nerds" feel that if they are nice to girls they will attract someone, which is why "nerds" go nuts for seeing a hot girl in a cos-play, because is shows them that they are out there! "Jocks" pick on nerds because they feel the need to reject something they don't understand out of fear, and in this case that fear is that they might like what the "nerds" are into.

So just like with almost everything in life, we are just thinking with the wrong head.
 

Redd the Sock

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Yeah, you're not saying anything most of us haven't figured out on some level. Most people are nerds for something, it's just that comics, sci-fi, video games, anime and whatnot get replaced with sports, clothes, clebrity gossip, reality television, and the dreaded soap opera. That when I first realized this paradox: I'm a nerd for knowing years of comic history, but no one looked twice at that co-worker that could run off 20 years of Coronation Street. Hearing that buying all those books was a waste of money from the person that had shoe they've never worn. Ot that midnight showing of Star Wars movies was somehow wrong from someone that camped oernight for Britney Spears tickets. Anime? Aren't the Simpsons, South Park and Pixar movies also cartoons? And should I point out you've logged more WoW and facebook time than I have?

I'm not sure why this is beyond the fact that as a culture we generally not smart enough to question cultural norms and are too afraid of the negetive sigma of nerdom not to rationalize the more nerdy behaviour as acceptable (sports are real so it's not as bad). Some of it I think is nerd culture itself can be a barrier while things like sports are more, shall we say, noob and casual friendly. They seem to take anyone regardless of knowledge level or effort put in, while in most nerd hobbies, you are expected to maintain a level of knowledge and skill, and effort to attain more knowledge and skill.
 

Adventurer2626

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Yay! I have a new phrase: "Sports nerd!"

I think the problem is a combo of tradition and team association (tribalism?). "Sports nerds" have been so dedicated and popular for so long that they ceased to be anything worthy of special labeling. Oh that's a butcher, oh that's a postman, oh that's a sportsfan in his jersey...hey! wtf!?!!? that dude looks so weird in his Star Trek costume! I can't help staring. I agree with your tentative definition of a nerd as a die-hard fan with a math addiction. Said person's activities become in-depth and arduous which creates a huge accessibility barrier. Oddly enough, most people aren't looking for more complexity in their life. In essence, nerdiness is something unpopular that people still do and enjoy. So give it a bit more time and two things will happen: the genres we identify as nerdy now will become rote and humdrum while something new comes up to supplant them in nerdiness.
 

LazyAza

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Yeah I've been making this point for years but I still have sports obsessed friends who say 'whatever man its not the same' haha. Obsessing over anything is nerdy no matter what it is.
 

rddj623

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Sep 28, 2009
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Thank you for being the voice of reason on this topic! I have thought this way for some time. Nice to know I'm not the only one.
 

laxduck

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I didn't read the whole thread, but I read the first and last pages and let me just make one point that seems to elude the lot of you.

Sports are real. The stadiums are real. The teams are real.

Star Trek is fiction. The ship is fictional. The crew is fictional.

So when someone throws on a Brady jersey, call it a costume if you want, they're still dressing up as a real person. When someone throws on a Star Trek costume they are establishing themselves as being invested in a fictional universe. Captain Picard doesn't exist, Patrick Stewart does.

How the hell that escaped everyone else I can't explain except that they don't want to recognize it.

And to all the people who get off on yelling that sports fans that refer to their team as "us" or "we", most sports organizations like to encourage that kind of attitude and thought. Not, none of those fans are ever going to play for the team, but their attitude towards the team affects what the team does. A team with an involved and enthusiastic fan base will tend to have higher attendance, which leads to higher revenues, which leads to the organization spending more money on talent, which leads to a better team and better results. Because of this chain organizations want fans to feel like a part of the organization and refer to the team as a whole as "theirs".

Yes, sports nerds are nerds. As someone who loves sports I know, I call people sports nerds and have been called one on more than one occasion. But don't act like sports nerds are so similar to sci-fi/video game nerds. Real world vs. fiction world(s) makes a big difference. By your moronic logic anyone who is involved with anything is just like sci-fi/video game nerds. Political activists, people who are ridiculously into music, art fanatics, etc. The difference, once again, is that all those things are real. And I just talked to my roommate about this and he said "Well comic books are real" to which I reply that the subject matter of the comic books is not real. If you want to stick by your guns that having a real medium for a fictional world is comparable to having something in the real world then that's your right but to me that doesn't add up.




TL;DR The difference between sci-fi/video game nerds and other kinds of nerds are that other kinds of nerds focus on things that are real, sci-fi/video game nerds focus on fictional universes.

EDIT: In going back and reading more responses I am simply astounded that no one thought like me and just jumped on board with this guy. What's more they go on to bash "jocks" as acting only in the interest of impressing the other sex or shunning people out of fear. Most jocks I know just don't understand why someone would invest time, money and energy into a world composed of things that do not exist. Sports are a culmination of the efforts of many coaches, players, trainers, executives, even fans. Many fictional universes are the thoughts of one or a small group of writers. To some people it doesn't make sense to spends money and get wrapped up in a world composed entirely of someone else's thoughts and stories.
 

Hairetos

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laxduck said:
I didn't read the whole thread, but I read the first and last pages and let me just make one point that seems to elude the lot of you.

Sports are real. The stadiums are real. The teams are real.

Star Trek is fiction. The ship is fictional. The crew is fictional.

So when someone throws on a Brady jersey, call it a costume if you want, they're still dressing up as a real person. When someone throws on a Star Trek costume they are establishing themselves as being invested in a fictional universe. Captain Picard doesn't exist, Patrick Stewart does.

How the hell that escaped everyone else I can't explain except that they don't want to recognize it.

And to all the people who get off on yelling that sports fans that refer to their team as "us" or "we", most sports organizations like to encourage that kind of attitude and thought. Not, none of those fans are ever going to play for the team, but their attitude towards the team affects what the team does. A team with an involved and enthusiastic fan base will tend to have higher attendance, which leads to higher revenues, which leads to the organization spending more money on talent, which leads to a better team and better results. Because of this chain organizations want fans to feel like a part of the organization and refer to the team as a whole as "theirs".

Yes, sports nerds are nerds. As someone who loves sports I know, I call people sports nerds and have been called one on more than one occasion. But don't act like sports nerds are so similar to sci-fi/video game nerds. Real world vs. fiction world(s) makes a big difference. By your moronic logic anyone who is involved with anything is just like sci-fi/video game nerds. Political activists, people who are ridiculously into music, art fanatics, etc. The difference, once again, is that all those things are real. And I just talked to my roommate about this and he said "Well comic books are real" to which I reply that the subject matter of the comic books is not real. If you want to stick by your guns that having a real medium for a fictional world is comparable to having something in the real world then that's your right but to me that doesn't add up.




TL;DR The difference between sci-fi/video game nerds and other kinds of nerds are that other kinds of nerds focus on things that are real, sci-fi/video game nerds focus on fictional universes.
And what's so significant about that? One takes imagination and one requires you to sit on your ass and watch games? Either way, you're not really doing anything except following something, so it's not like revering something real is particularly better.
 

laxduck

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Hairetos said:
And what's so significant about that? One takes imagination and one requires you to sit on your ass and watch games? Either way, you're not really doing anything except following something, so it's not like revering something real is particularly better.
To me there is a difference in something being real. The fact that it actually exists means something. The fact that a fictional universe is not real means something. To you that does not mean anything. You have the right to that opinion. But the fact of the matter is that it is still a difference. The fact one is real and one is not is a difference between the two. I can place value in that difference, thereby explaining my belief in the difference between the two.

That being said I think one factor is that comic fans get events dictated to them by a creator who control things at his whim. Sports results come from conflict between multiple players and coaches competing. The uncertainty is real and the victor is determined on an even field of play as opposed to fictional universes in which the victor is determined by a creator in his mind, which holds whatever biases and preference he or she has.
 

00m

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To answer the question: human nature is petty and pathetic, so when one group is persecuted (like sports fans are), the take it out by picking on somebody physically and or mentally weaker than they are (like so called nerds tend to be in former as compared to sports fans and jocks). The problem is that this is a vicious cycle where only a few elites (not sports fans and nerds) win everything.

I should also say thanks Bob, this video has inspired me to treat clearly defined fandome roles (like their being such thing as a nerd, geek, sports fan, jock, ect.) the same way I treat the idea of clearly defined gender roles: as something ugly and evil allowed to come into existence before we could know better and a crime to perpetuate.

I run cross country and like to play/talk lot about video games and watch/talk a lot about some anime; what of it?