Your thoughts on... Nerd/Geek culture of today.

[Dornedas]

I'll take the criticisms of nerd culture being particularly vitriolic more seriously when nerds burn down a theater or a game store like Association Football fans have burned down stadiums or when East Coast nerds shoot West Coast nerds in the street, or when Marvel fans turn DC fan's cars over in the parking lot at SDCC or when a mass brawl breaks out between Sony and Microsoft fans at E3.

I'll consider nerd culture a "dumpster fire" when they actually start a bunch of freakin' dumpster fires.

Breaking news: 20 confirmed dead and 40 injured after a knife fight broke out at gamescom.

" I ... I don't know what happened. I just heard someone say: "Yeah? Well your waifu is a pig!" And suddenly there were screams and blood everywhere." a disturbed witness told totes legit news-channel 7.5 .

 

[Gorrath]

I mentioned this in another thread but it bears repeating. Nerd culture is full of assholes because humanity is full of assholes. While we need to be cognizant of the fact that over reacting to shit like the Human Torch being black is ridiculous the people condemning geek culture for shit like that are just needlessly feeding the fire with an equally over the top response.

I'll take the criticisms of nerd culture being particularly vitriolic more seriously when nerds burn down a theater or a game store like Association Football fans have burned down stadiums or when East Coast nerds shoot West Coast nerds in the street, or when Marvel fans turn DC fan's cars over in the parking lot at SDCC or when a mass brawl breaks out between Sony and Microsoft fans at E3.

I'll consider nerd culture a "dumpster fire" when they actually start a bunch of freakin' dumpster fires.

Yes geek culture is reactionary, yes a significant proportion of nerds over react to shit not worth over reacting to, yes they are exclusionary (like a literal fuckton of other sub-cultures) but painting geek culture as particularly full of horrible shit is itself a ridiculous over reaction. This isn't an appeal to bigger problems either, it's just a call to have some perspective.

This may come as a shock to you, but it's possible to dislike people and want them to go the fuck away, without them being violent. It's possible for them to be scum, without being violent, and one sign that "Scum" might be accurate is having to point to people starting ACTUAL FIRES to defend your 'clan'.

So much for the calls to have some perspective, eh? People dislike people and want them to go away for all sorts of reasons; so what? That doesn't mean they have a particularly good reason for it. Pointing out the fact that nerd culture hardly rates on the "sub-cultures engaged in shitty behavior list" is exactly the opposite of a good reason to think they are scum since dehumanizing people over trivial shit like organized movie down-voting is itself an over the top reaction.

So I ask you this, if geek culture is particularly infested with "scum" what do you call the people who belong to sub-cultures who actually do burn shit down, engage in mass brawls, destroy property and riot? I'd love to get an idea of your scale here.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

ProWrestling fans, Smarks as they say, are still looked down upon somehow and haven't gotten that mainstream acceptance like say... Anime is really starting to get now, and video games have had for a while.

Maybe thats why, somewhat ironically, Wrestling and Wrestling fans have been incorporating and been way more rapidly progressive than the other subjects. Check out the Wreddit, not a nerd on there is questioning the rise in the quality and prominence of Women's Wrestling lately.

Here's an example I always like to use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eKdLMqlVmo&list=PLnUzD-I9acZeo_FHX6hHBhBIfnTyzloA3&index=4

I'v posted the link rather than embedded the video because it's the comments that are important. Talk about the state of women's wrestling or WWF/E's iffy relationship with ethnic representation in the past and the fan reaction is overwhelmingly positive. Even there. In a youtube comments section. YOUTUBE! So when geeks like to fucking excuse everything shitty that the culture does as "Well that's just the internet." That video and that comment section reminds me that "Nope, geeks are just shitty."

The only thing that makes perhaps the fandom different is that... shit was real bad about 16 years ago, like to the point that one can't really put a positive spin on things. Just watch WWE from September to December 1999 and look how they treated the ladies, you'll see them wrestling in swimming pools, mud, gravy.

We all look back on that time as probably the best in terms of story and entertainment, but the bad was unapologetically past offensive straight into supernova.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Hmmm, I wonder what the people of the Escapist, self-declared voice of the video-gaming generation and bastion of all things geeky have to say about nerd/geek culture!

*Sees majority of comments deploring what a rancid, filth-encrusted hellhole of disgusting subhuman scum nerd/geek culture is, desperately in need of destruction*

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Huh.

*Looks at sports culture, where people are physically beaten to death for having the wrong coloured shirt*

You know, if "At least we don't kill people" is a defense, then you're setting the bar pretty low. Yes, geek culture doesn't result in people being killed. And the WBC doesn't kill people either, so I guess they're not as bad as the Ku-Klux-Klan. Like I said. Setting the bar pretty low.

No, but it does rather put things in perspective: one at its worst has questionable ideas about women and ethnic/sexual minorities, the other at its worst cave in skulls with bricks, set fire to public transport and riot in the street, to the point of requiring suppression by armed police.

Now, don't get me wrong - there *are* twats in geekdom. Loud, angry, ignorant twats, completely deserving of scorn and stigmatization. We should confront them on their bullshit, and make it plainly clear that it is not acceptable. But to wander into a gaming thread, on a gaming website, populated by people, who are by their love of video-games defined as nerds (not that I'm saying anyone here is demanding to be recoginized as a gamer above all else), and see them in agreement with a freaking moderator of the site saying that nerd culture is full of "emotionally volatile, socially retarded, self-loathing, bullying waifs, pathetically lacking in empathy" - well, that's just a little too much, don't you think? I mean, is everyone here vomiting in revulsion every time they glance at a gaming console, unable to stomach even the mere thought of association with humanity's rejects?

 

[Dragonlayer]

Hmmm, I wonder what the people of the Escapist, self-declared voice of the video-gaming generation and bastion of all things geeky have to say about nerd/geek culture!

*Sees majority of comments deploring what a rancid, filth-encrusted hellhole of disgusting subhuman scum nerd/geek culture is, desperately in need of destruction*

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Huh.

*Looks at sports culture, where people are physically beaten to death for having the wrong coloured shirt*

Mostly this, but also this:

I don't think a "nerd/geek culture" exists, the idea seems to be based around the stereotypical American high school with it's distinct social groups you see in film/TV/etc.

I've played videogames, played card games and pen-and-paper RPGs, read/watched fantasy/sci-fi novels/films/shows my entire life because I enjoy them. I'm entirely unsold on the notion that I belong to some sort of "culture" because of it.

If this thread is any indication, I'm going to have to put everyone I play online with on suicide watch, or just ask them if they got into gaming because being flayed alive just wasn't masochistic enough for them, and they wanted to experience true agony.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

The internet is forever and everybody has a voice. That's what kinda amplifies the effect of any negativity that comes from it.

If you're a band and somebody shouts "SCREW YOU" during one of your concerts that's it, even if they throw a bottle at you it only happens once and then its gone. Chances are they can't afford to come into the concert the next day to throw another bottle or shout at you again.

On the other side of things if somebody makes a youtube video about you, writes you tweets etc. it's practically there forever. AND it doesn't cost them anything to do it again or even for the first time. They don't even have to be particularly bad people to do it the first time, it could be a bad day for them, their local radio might play your song every single day and they just snap.

So with the exposure and permanence of the internet you can see how that sort of thing could build up over time to where what used to be one person drowned out in a crowd turns into one person shouting at you on Twitter all the time. As a natural consequence some really angry people can start to introduce other people to you in a bad way. For example I've only recently seen anything from the Jojo fandom that isn't either hate at somebody for getting something wrong, or very vague statements about "part *blank*" that frankly could be applied to literally anything. Funnily enough it was on this forum that I actually learned anything about the show at all.

On top of that reputation takes a massive effort to build up and practically nothing to break down. Nobody cares if you did something good in the past if you're even so much as rumored to have done something bad recently.


I don't think these things are a problem on the internet, I think most of these are caused by people who aren't thinking straight for one reason or another. You know heat of the moment stuff, because its so easy to just fart something out into the comments section or Twitter a lot of people will just go with what their anger tells them. If comments had a timer, like a 3 minute "think about this" timer with some sort of soothing music I think the internet could be improved at least slightly.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

Nerd culture is doing just fine, I love that I can have a conversation with some rando on the street just because we were both wearing Captain America shirts

It's like it used to be with sports teams, just a nice little thing that brings strangers together to talk about something other than the weather

The only problem I run into with nerd culture now is that Marvel is completely crushing it when it comes to movies and TV. Probably the most heated discussion I had on Marvel in a while is wether Ant-man was good or just prety good

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

It's alright. Hasn't really evolved or anything, it's been about the same as it always has. A lot of 'geek' culture was pulled into politics quite recently, for the worse in my opinion, but it's otherwise alright.

I mean, we are discussing a culture that is based around buying entertainment at the end of the day. There's no ethos or laws or anything, and there are so many niches between types of entertainment that even basic in-jokes that correspond to the entirety of said culture are groaned upon.

 

[Christopher Probert]

Do I think the majority of geeks and nerds are dicks to each other? Majority? Not sure, no solid numbers. Enough to make the culture heavily dominated by assholes? Damn straight.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the culture is heavily dominated by assholes, more so the vocal minority just happens to draw the most attention and focus of everyone else. And to the rest of the community's credit they will often dismiss them or denounce them, but then we go back to the whole echo chamber thing.

I'd agree if it was just outsiders judging the culture. But it's getting to the point where people like myself who would have considered themselves part of the culture for most of their lives are even going "Yep, fuck all of that." It's not just a tiny vocal minority anymore. I'm not saying it's a majority, but it's certainly a substantial amount of shitty people.

If you'll forgive the slight derail (back on point soon I assure you) it bears a comparison to the Northern Ireland brain drain in the 1990s. Significant social and economic unrest during the period led a great many of the younger generation (graduates imparticular) to emmigrate to pasturues new and simply not enage in the political factions on either side. Reasonable and intelligent people oftentimes simply can't be bothered engaging with the shouting matches and violent outbursts of the fringes.

Back OT: there are rabid, vocal and sometimes violent minorites on both (or all) sides and the people who actually NEED to be in the debate simply decide "fuck that" I cant be bothered anymore. I consider myself (big fucking surprise right?) to be one of these reasonable people and I won't even try anymore to compete with the cacophony of vomit-filled anger that spews from the mouths of those who are, supposedly, akin to me.

To be honest Im finding this more and more in internet "discussions". So few people seem to care about such trivial things as "fact", "reason" or "reality" and it renders actual discussion pointless - because you can't have one.

I consider myself a nerd and have done for many years - but the knowledge that proclaiming myself as such saddles me with the weight of the various witless, loud morons expressing fringe opinions makes me want to hide it.

I don't think "nerd culture" (whatever the fuck that is) is alone here though. I've a great many feminist opinions as well - but these days to say you have feminist opinions is to say (as with above witless morons) that you want to chop the cock off every man within a 500 mile vicinity.

 

[Zenja]

Eh, geek culture is a fuckin' dumpster fire in my opinion.

Too many people have defined themselves by how exclusionary it is. They feel constantly like underdogs, despite the fact that geek culture has never been more mainstream. They talk about how they suffered for being nerds while labelling people who get death threats from nerds as professional victims. There's always someone ready to tell you that the thing you enjoy is wrong, or you enjoy it in the wrong way, or you're not the right kind of person to be enjoying it in the first place.

There's a pushback against representing the world as it actually is, and it's framed as people encroaching on a space that never truly belonged to one demographic. And the problem with that is you will never convince those people they're anything but victims.

I remember being 14 and wondering how long it would be before using my microphone in a video game wouldn't be a big deal. I am nearly 26 now.

It may not be any consolation but Danika knows what you are talking about.

As you say there will always be someone there ready to tell you that the thing you enjoy is wrong, or you enjoy it in the wrong way, or you're not the right kind of person to be enjoying it in the first place. You have to get past that, and even when you know this - it still can be hard because of how annoying it is. I am the type that got picked on for 10+ years for liking comics and animation past the age of 12. My teenage years were tough and I felt a bit of a sting when this whole geek culture thing started to become mainstream.

Today I like to see it as the geeks of yesterday won something, rather than lost something. Not that we did anything but that generation grew up to create this awesome stuff we see today. Jos Whedon probably got picked on for liking this stuff too so kudos to him. I didnt grow up to contribute to the market but I always defended my right to like it despite its social reprecussions. We all held out long enough to see Marvel do their movie thing making it cool to like heroes even into adulthood. Dreamworks helped push animation into adult acceptance with Shrek and many future works too.

I dont doubt there is a day close at hand where using your mic will be taken for granted by you. However assholes will always exist and you have to understand that I hesitate to use my mic because of the same stuff. I am not much of a competitive person so much of online mic speak annoys me more and more with each passing year.

With the negative out of the way. I enjoy that more people are creating more things. Games are better, movies about nerd things are better. There is definitely a way to engage with nerd culture without dragging yourself through shit, you just have to not care about what others think very much. And don't define yourself by the things you enjoy, then you won't feel personally attacked if they receive criticism.

And as for what defines a nerd or geek? Nothing, except the things they enjoy, which is why a lot of people are mad.

(gets off soapbox)

I agree totally here. I went and seen the live action Jungle Book movie last night and am going to see Civil War today. We get a Doctor Strange movie this year too. A Doctor Strange movie. Seriously, I would have bet money Aquaman would get a movie long before Strange even at the height of my comic book days as a Marvel fanboy. My best friend collected Silver Surfer and I never thought that Marvel would make a movie that left planet Earth considering they were fighting for years to get a Spiderman movie made. Now comic book movies are coming out 3-5 per year with high budgets and topping the sales charts.

This is what the 15 year old kid in me looks like right now:

 

[Zenja]

Nerd culture is doing just fine, I love that I can have a conversation with some rando on the street just because we were both wearing Captain America shirts

It's like it used to be with sports teams, just a nice little thing that brings strangers together to talk about something other than the weather

The only problem I run into with nerd culture now is that Marvel is completely crushing it when it comes to movies and TV. Probably the most heated discussion I had on Marvel in a while is wether Ant-man was good or just prety good

I love that too. I don't feel weird at all wearing superhero shirts in public like I used to. The fact that I can talk about comics and maybe even get into a discussion of Marvel vs. DC with some random person I meet is pretty cool. Those discussion used to only happen with friends or the guy behind the counter at the comic book store.

 

[Gorrath]

This is what the 15 year old kid in me looks like right now:

Count me in with you there. While waiting to watch a clip from a awesome movie about Captain America, I watched a trailer for an awesome movie about Dr. Strange. Then, the very next video I went to watch, which was an action scene from an awesome movie about freaking Ant Man of all things, I watched a trailer for an awesome movie about the X-Men. There has never been a better time in my lifetime to be a geek-nerd.

If you told me ten years ago that there would be a fantastic action scene in a high budget movie that featured Ant Man fighting Falcon, I'd have called you a damned liar.

 

[Zenja]

I live in a city with a pretty strong 'geek' culture full of fan events, trivia nights, parties and all sorts of other things with the words 'geek' and 'nerd' in the name. I haven't really found any other kind of person that's more boring to talk to. They all have their small wheelhouse of franchises they're obsessive about and steer the conversation in that direction whenever they can.

Ever talk to a gearhead? Every opportunity they can, they shift the conversation to cars. Something about a 4 barrel carb. Or a car I have never heard of because it was only made for 2 years. You know how many times I have listened to wrestling crap due to WWE fans? It is fun to talk about the things you enjoy. The problem you may be encountering is probably psychological, not cultural. They may not have good enough people skills to know when someone is indulging them to be polite. Like when I talk about my game of Civilization I have going to my buddy. I try to be quick and to the point because I know he doesn't care but he is letting me tell him because "ZOMG! I just defeated England with a desperate gambit when they had me outnumbered 5 to one and had 4 times my power."

It also happened all week this week where I kept bringing up the MCU to a bunch of friends that dont watch marvel movies. It boggles my mind that they haven't seen any of them.

 

[Zenja]

If you told me ten years ago that there would be a fantastic action scene in a high budget movie that featured Ant Man fighting Falcon, I'd have called you a damned liar.

LOL, yep. Who would have guessed that Marvel would have used those two characters to get everyone's attention on the big screen?

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

It used to be a bit of a haven for me. I've always had geeky interests, and I was never in with the really popular crowds when I was a kid. It's nice to be able to have a group of people who in general share you interests in your passions.

Lately however, not at all feeling that. I'm not sure if it's because I'm just getting to see the other sides of it, or if it was always that case and I didn't notice. It's exclusive, it's angry and full of people with hair trigger emotions over the smallest of things. I used to think that was just the internet, but I'll look elsewhere and be shocked by how civil other groups will be about the same discussions that just about always erupt into personal attacks and rage here.

At their best, I think that people in this community are fantastic. A lot of people with social issues get accepted in this community where they'd have a harder time otherwise. The whole outcast culture can give rise to a lot of good and acceptance of people's differences. At it's worst, I find it's miserable to be around. Oftentimes I'll feel a sense of dread when I see a message in my inbox. Where some people will take the whole outcast thing and interpret it as "Well we should be better than that", other people take it in more of a direction of "Let's make our own exclusive culture of people just like us".

Makes me think of how when a child has an abusive parent, they can either look at the parent and vow never to be like them, or they'll find someone that they can abuse so they don't have to be the victim.

 

[Objectable]

It's horrible, toxic, especially on this website, and I half believe that hte bullies of our childhood were trying to prevent it from happening, and should thus be hailed as heroes

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

The second the echo chamber is broken, geeks and nerds get very hostile towards each other. PC vs console, liking a game vs not liking a game, the general toxicity of online multiplayer that has come to utterly dominate chat, to the point where you pretty much never hear someone talking that isn't an asshole, especially in MOBA games, the hostility to someone who can't keep up with your skill level, the snobishness of people who win at hard games (I love Dark Souls but the Git Gud people need to fuck off. Put in a pause button and an easy mode. Mainly because it's a good idea but their reactions would be hilarious. The Darkest Dungeon forums for a long time were filled with people bitching about options to make the game more manageable too) the fact that casual is still considered an insult, the hostility towards mobile gamers, and all of this is without bringing politics into the discussion, which is where things get really freaking nasty.

Do I think the majority of geeks and nerds are dicks to each other? Majority? Not sure, no solid numbers. Enough to make the culture heavily dominated by assholes? Damn straight.

Give me some sort of numbers please and examples, especially as it seems you say there's disagreements therefore there's toxicity. Vocal minority is vocal after all.

Didn't I just flat out say that there weren't any solid numbers? I just said that there's enough for them to dominate. And now I'm not saying there's toxicity because there's disagreements, I'm saying there's toxicity due to elitism, tribalism, politics, AND disagreement

Doesn't help your argument that you aren't really denying anything I've said about what gamers do.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

...And? The USA doesn't have widespread honor killings and doesn't force women to wear certain kinds of clothing, but bringing that up doesn't make all the problems the USA does have with sexism any less relevant. It's the Children Starving in Africa argument. There are always worse problems somewhere else, and pointing that out doesn't prove anything.

No. No not really. Gaming culture, which seems to exist primarily online, is something that turns hostile and vapid the second the echo chamber is breached.

 

[MishaK]

It's less violent as others have pointed out, yet more reactionary and obnoxious, as yet others have pointed out. Besides, I find that most people involved in "nerd culture" or "geek culture" are not particularly bright, educated, or interested in STEM fields or anything. I don't think that being awkward and watching a cartoon makes you much of anything.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I dunno. I mean, I know some fantastic people I've met through gaming, yet "mute all" is an automatic reaction playing multiplayer games.

Mostly, I get annoyed most by the extremism. Like, PS 4 is the best selling console, therefore all other consoles are shit boxes made of shit.. GTA 5 is good? It's the best game ever, and we'll send a reviewer death threats and demand they be fired for making small criticisms of it!

Then you get "The Defenders". I mean sure, soccer riots and stuff happens and is bad. And it is, really. You don't get anybody defending deaths during a riot or burning down a stadium as "a normal part of sports culture" though. Hell, we can't even manage to universally condem SWATTing, much less shit like the Cross Assault thing or that player getting a life ban"[footnote]6 months, I think.[/footnote] from MtG for threatening to rape someone. "Sports" tends to try and solve problems like fan violence and whatnot, from sanctioning teams who's fans are out of control (to give the fans a reason to change) to countries like Brazil banning alcohol from stadiums to tamp down on drunk brawls.

We, nerds, tend to shrug our shoulders and say "thus is the way of the gaming culture/Internet. It can never change."