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Is Nerd Culture Dying?

samkriss.substack.com

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Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#11

Post by walthamstow »

HeckFeck wrote: post #9
foreveris wrote: post #2

I think that nerd culture has just gone mainstream. It's far from dying.

I think 'geek chic' (i.e poseurs) went mainstream a while ago, but actual nerds will never be popular by definition. I've tried in vain to find people at parties who care about my favourite arcane programming languages and obscure political doctrine, it's impossible :(

Other nerds don't have to care about the same stuff as you, they just have to be interested.

I am still tight with my group of 7 guys from school and we are all nerds but hardly share a single interest. We are interested in hearing about each other's niche shit and that's what keeps us together.

Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#13

Post by capableweb »

HeckFeck wrote: post #9
foreveris wrote: post #2

I think that nerd culture has just gone mainstream. It's far from dying.

I think 'geek chic' (i.e poseurs) went mainstream a while ago, but actual nerds will never be popular by definition. I've tried in vain to find people at parties who care about my favourite arcane programming languages and obscure political doctrine, it's impossible :(

Some sub-groups of people are more frequent visitors of some type of events than others. Depending exactly what you mean with "parties", it could be that those types of events are not the right one to find the sub-group you're out after.

If you wanna find people to talk about finance, you wouldn't attend a football match, for example. So if you wanna find programmers, you're gonna have to attend programming related events, or some related area like hardware hacking, or just generally "makers" meetup.

For political groups, there tend to be groups of those all over the world, for every affiliation, but depending on the ideology and the overall political temperature, sometimes people try to avoid letting those opinions bleed over to other areas of interest.

Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#14

Post by madeofpalk »

goodpoint wrote: post #8
foreveris wrote: post #2

I think that nerd culture has just gone mainstream. It's far from dying.

> has just gone mainstream Care to provide some examples? Most "nerd" interests like SciFi have been neutered if not completely bent out of shape while going mainstream.

The term "MCU" being in the common cultral lexicon.

Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#15

Post by capableweb »

walthamstow wrote: post #11
HeckFeck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 'geek chic' (i.e poseurs) went mainstream a while ago, but actual nerds will never be popular by definition. I've tried in vain to find people at parties who care about my favourite arcane programming languages and obscure political doctrine, it's impossible :(

Other nerds don't have to care about the same stuff as you, they just have to be interested. I am still tight with my group of 7 guys from school and we are all nerds but hardly share a single interest. We are interested in hearing about each other's niche shit and that's what keeps us together.

> I am still tight with my group of 7 guys from school

While that's nice and all, it's not super helpful advice for people who are trying to make new friends, as we cannot go back in time and repeat school from younger days...

Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#16

Post by capableweb »

PaulHoule wrote: post #4
foreveris wrote: post #2

I think that nerd culture has just gone mainstream. It's far from dying.

Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded”

(Warning: quote attribution nerdary ahead)

> In conclusion, the earliest instances of this remark were anonymous. The comedians Rags Ragland and Ukie Sherin employed the quip, as did the writer John McNulty. In addition, there is some evidence that Yogi Berra employed the joke, but in all cases the jest was already in circulation.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/

Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#17

Post by froidpink »

> If there is any one person who still tries to consider things by some measure of quality, it’s like a needle sticking sharp in their side

While Sam's articles are quite enjoyable to read, I'm not sure this argument holds. If nerds don't care about quality they wouldn't spend hours complaining about how bad the new Star Wars films are

Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#18

Post by walthamstow »

capableweb wrote: post #15
walthamstow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other nerds don't have to care about the same stuff as you, they just have to be interested. I am still tight with my group of 7 guys from school and we are all nerds but hardly share a single interest. We are interested in hearing about each other's niche shit and that's what keeps us together.

> I am still tight with my group of 7 guys from school While that's nice and all, it's not super helpful advice for people who are trying to make new friends, as we cannot go back in time and repeat school from younger days...

You appear to have missed my point. My second para is simply an example, not the point I'm making.

The point is: your friends don't have to be interested in exactly the same stuff as you, they just need to be interested in you.

Re: Is Nerd Culture Dying?

#20

Post by capableweb »

froidpink wrote: post #17

> If there is any one person who still tries to consider things by some measure of quality, it’s like a needle sticking sharp in their side While Sam's articles are quite enjoyable to read, I'm not sure this argument holds. If nerds don't care about quality they wouldn't spend hours complaining about how bad the new Star Wars films are

Many nerds don't really care about the outcome of the complaining/arguing, but merely uses their position as an excuse to connect with people, to have discussions with fellow human beings. Not wrong or right, just trying to fulfill a human need.
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