The Big Picture: A Nerd By Any Other Name
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
I watched this and immediately thought of me. I have no less than 6 football jerseys of different teams and players hanging up in my closet. I have about 5 fantasy football teams a year. I've been to a Super Bowl, a baseball game at Wrigley Field, and a Game 3 of the NBA Finals. But I also read webcomics, play Nintendo games, argue on forums like these on why Sonic the Hedgehog needs to either stop sucking or stop being in games, etc. In other words, I'm a sports nerd. Been saying it for years, actually.
so true like i hate it when some one trolls me or greifs me and calls me a furfag because im part of the fandomMelasZepheos said:
(Just got into watching Escape to the Movies and The Big Picture, so I'm a little late to the party.)
This always bugged me, and I've used this in an argument- sports fans are sports nerds, but the negative connotation of the word nerd makes them reject the concept.
Anyway, I just wanted to say my dad is like the best example of that perfect world of bonding between sports fans and nerds. He's a hardcore fan of all sports, but can tell you the plot of any Star Trek episode. He plays fantasy football, but he also loves Pokemon. He takes part in a site that lets you make football players to take part in leagues and play games (which is closer to D&D than fantasy football) but models them after Linus Van Pelt or Snorlax or Seven of Nine. He is the potential of sports fans admitting that they're nerds.
This always bugged me, and I've used this in an argument- sports fans are sports nerds, but the negative connotation of the word nerd makes them reject the concept.
Anyway, I just wanted to say my dad is like the best example of that perfect world of bonding between sports fans and nerds. He's a hardcore fan of all sports, but can tell you the plot of any Star Trek episode. He plays fantasy football, but he also loves Pokemon. He takes part in a site that lets you make football players to take part in leagues and play games (which is closer to D&D than fantasy football) but models them after Linus Van Pelt or Snorlax or Seven of Nine. He is the potential of sports fans admitting that they're nerds.
Well, while it is kinda true that sport nerds has been around for a very long time, so has nerds. I mean, science has always been apart of humanity and there surely was some guys who preferred the mind, rather than the body. Just take a look at the philosopher Thales who lived around the late 7th or early 6th century BCE. He is credited with attempts to expand the Greeks' knowledge in several fields: mathematics, astronomy, navigation, and the investigation of the fundamental nature of what exists. I would call that a nerd... and he probably wasn't the first nerd ever... And no, you are right Japanotards are not nerdsHubert South said:
the answer is simple, sex. sports is manly while dungeons and dragons and world of warcraft are not.
In almost 400 posts, has anyone mentioned Cheap Seats? The Sklar brothers self-identify as "sports geeks" I believe. Of course, they make fun of the sports that I -- as a nerd/geek -- love, such as Ultimate and Scrabble (okay, not a sport), but I won't deny that people who take those games too seriously could be ridiculed at least a bit!
Listening to this, I realized I'd managed to cross over between nerd-doms. Not knowing a single thing about pro golfers (I'd just started playing the game myself) I joined a fantasy golf league last year with a group of veteran fanatics who knew the PGA inside and out. Using the same minutiae-obsessed min-maxing strategies that served me well in D&D, I made my weekly golf picks, and 16 weeks later I was accepting a new $300 club as first prize.
Bob, I don't know if you realize how close this concept is to reality. Like you've said, you're a sports fan. Now had you been as old as you are now in say the 70's or 80's, are you sure you'd be a sports fan then? Was that kind of culture really as accessible to nerds as it is nowadays?
I am a statistical wizard for both the Boston Bruins and the Boston Red Sox, but for the majority of my childhood, I resented sports for being the shrine of bullies within the American culture. Bullies running around, doing what they do best, being mean and being good looking and/or inspiring while they do it. But, nine years into my relationship with the Internet, I'm borderline psychotically devoted to hockey and baseball. I nearly gave myself an aneurism last night when the Bruins gave up Game 6 to Tampa Bay of the conference finals. I USED TO DESPISE THE IDEA THAT SPORTS EXISTED ON AN ENTIRELY PHILOSOPHICAL/MORAL LEVEL.
I believe that not only does the Internet, if it is allowed to progress properly, have the potential to alleviate the perpetual conflicts with American culture, but the conflict between cultures themselves. The evidence is already beginning to rise to the surface.
I am a statistical wizard for both the Boston Bruins and the Boston Red Sox, but for the majority of my childhood, I resented sports for being the shrine of bullies within the American culture. Bullies running around, doing what they do best, being mean and being good looking and/or inspiring while they do it. But, nine years into my relationship with the Internet, I'm borderline psychotically devoted to hockey and baseball. I nearly gave myself an aneurism last night when the Bruins gave up Game 6 to Tampa Bay of the conference finals. I USED TO DESPISE THE IDEA THAT SPORTS EXISTED ON AN ENTIRELY PHILOSOPHICAL/MORAL LEVEL.
I believe that not only does the Internet, if it is allowed to progress properly, have the potential to alleviate the perpetual conflicts with American culture, but the conflict between cultures themselves. The evidence is already beginning to rise to the surface.
I have a simple answer to your question: one needs a lot of time ALONE to learn nerd culture, while in sports culture, one learns through friends and the media.
One cannot read a comic book with someone else, nor can one play a single player campaign with a friend. So, to engage in this culture, one must sacrifice time that could be used for socializing, hence the socially awkward stereotype.
Watching sports games, live or on TV, is different since people can watch them with friends. People can bond with them right at the spot. In learning this culture, social interactions are actually encouraged.
This should also explain why movies and casual multiplayer games are not considered nerd material, unless they are watched/played a lot alone. Also, think about this situation: if a person uses Wikipedia to learn everything about a sport and all its celebrities, will he/she not seem more like the stereotypical nerd?
One cannot read a comic book with someone else, nor can one play a single player campaign with a friend. So, to engage in this culture, one must sacrifice time that could be used for socializing, hence the socially awkward stereotype.
Watching sports games, live or on TV, is different since people can watch them with friends. People can bond with them right at the spot. In learning this culture, social interactions are actually encouraged.
This should also explain why movies and casual multiplayer games are not considered nerd material, unless they are watched/played a lot alone. Also, think about this situation: if a person uses Wikipedia to learn everything about a sport and all its celebrities, will he/she not seem more like the stereotypical nerd?
For the record if nerd-dom does combine i expect sports nerds who try to dictate what is or is not sports to back me up, the type of people who say boxing is a sport but MMA isn't to back up the people who say Silent Hill is survival horror but Dead Space isn't. Speaking not as a boxing fan but a martial artist trained in Krav Maga, if an MMA nut ever tries to justify that maiming of martial arts as nothing more than flair and no culture or philosophy, i will feel no remorse in breaking their motherfucking necks. Speaking as a boxing fan and not a Krav Maga practitioner, if anyone tries to claim a "Sport" that amounts to little more than one-hold barred human cockfighting is superior to a sport with strict regulations on what you can and cannot do and requires more element of strategy and evolved into it's own culture, i will feel no remorse in breaking their motherfucking necks.
Speaking as a fan of boxing because at it's peak it evolves almost into it's own form of martial arts with a philosophy and rules instead of some twat beating up another twat and as a practitioner of Krav Maga who feels there is a clearly defined difference between self-defense, martial arts, and play-fighting, i hate MMA. So maybe that already makes me a sports nerd since one major mark of nerds is refusing to accept an outsider into his medium for reasons many people would find arbitrary. Of course for that matter his railing against golf made George Carlin a sports nerd as well. Maybe that realization will help recruitment.
Speaking as a fan of boxing because at it's peak it evolves almost into it's own form of martial arts with a philosophy and rules instead of some twat beating up another twat and as a practitioner of Krav Maga who feels there is a clearly defined difference between self-defense, martial arts, and play-fighting, i hate MMA. So maybe that already makes me a sports nerd since one major mark of nerds is refusing to accept an outsider into his medium for reasons many people would find arbitrary. Of course for that matter his railing against golf made George Carlin a sports nerd as well. Maybe that realization will help recruitment.