51–60 of 117 posts
I believe there is no counter culture in the west anymore. It is mainstream to be subversive, and so there is little to no subversiveness left
I recently removed Reddit, Imgur, Twitter from my life and realized there is so much more interesting and edgier content out there.
I also removed those things from my life but it has just made more time for active participation in some of the things I do. I found I had essentially replaced actively nerding out on stuff with passively viewing streams of nerd"ish" stuff.
On the other hand, the niche has become significantly more niche after a messy de facto divorce from the 'poppy' parts of rap/nerd culture. The barrier to entry to these subcultures in a way are higher than ever, because the monoculture bits capture and hold the vast majority of people with a more casual interest.
This natural schism and reification that develops is something I think David Chapman's "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths"[1] fails to identify, but we have the advantage of over a decade of evolution and hindsight since it was written.
Nerds of the 90s grew up and became a nice (more often than not) affluent market. Industry shifted to accomodate for that. I for one, enjoy it while it lasts. Because of this, a lot of cultural products made sure that the "nerds" felt the heroes of their own stories, making them cool in pop culture. That being said, I always considered a crucial characteristic of a nerd the inability to interact fluently with the soc…
I think the shift is that we don't have a monoculture anymore (thanks to the Internet and especially social media) so what seems like we're losing nerd culture and these niche interests in "bad" things really just means that everyone can find them now and likewise folks who are into these niche interests can find each other. This change is creating the (for lack of a better term?) "illusion" of mainstreaming. The people who would be interested were always there. It was just the means of mass cultural communication and spread to reach them with whatever interest weren't. The main "stream" is now the main "lake" and everyone's jumped in. Things you think are "bad" can now reach enough "nerds" who think they're good to reach a modicum of popularity. I view this as maybe a good thing?
Of course, the other edge of this sword is that it allows folks who have unhealthy interests and ideas to find each other as well. That's why we've seen an uptick in radical ideologies of all sorts and things like the incel movement take such deep root. Those weren't part of the normalized zeitgeist before, but now that everything's in the pool and given equal cultural footing, it again creates a bubble of popularity that sometimes has an outsized impact.
We have decided that algorithms are the answer to this problem, and maybe that's a good answer. But I think we've also decided that commercial driven, ad laden algorithms are not the answer. So I'm not sure we have a good solution currently. Maybe if we spread some AI on it (and throw some ML and heck a few blockchains in for good measure) we can generate something useful.
wha? so nerds are enthusiastic detail oriented people, but for bad stuff, but the same attitude toward good stuff is not nerdy? or something. 'dreck' indeed.
> But imagine a person who collects the boxes from every McDonald’s order he’s ever made, who’s yapping with excitement about the new McDonald’s partially hydrogenated soybean-canola oil blend, who can’t wait for them to release the McBento in Japan so he can watch video reviews all day, and who acts incredibly smug every time McDonald’s posts its quarterly earnings and they’re growing faster than Burger King’s. You know exactly what this person looks like. A total failure of an adult human being.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. And "real" nerd culture has just became deeper, and more specialized. Back in the day, a lot of the nerds were into the same type of things, while now there are sub-groups. Some nerds are anime-nerds, others are programming-nerds, and not every programming-nerd is an anime-nerd, and vice-versa. And the amount of nerd-sub groups is huge, every quarter or so I encounter a nerdy topic and sub-group I had no idea…
Being from a small rural Australian town, it was amazing when I found my nerds in the big city. You do end up a bit pigeonholed when everything gets too specific. I think that is why I like makerspaces and things like that. You get all sorts.
I see overlong thinkpieces are not dying off and that humble-braggadocio is alive and kicking
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The term "MCU" being in the common cultral lexicon.
except since phase 4 MCU is now definitely a synonym for "boring, neutered, ill-concived, weak, pale shadow of former self, stuff° Kudos to Disney that was able to completely ruin it in just a decade.