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What happened to nerds?

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Re: What happened to nerds?

#31

Post by avadodin »

negergreger wrote: post #6

Nerds used to have a internet to discuss tech in, you were allowed to make an argument based on logic and reasoning. Then the ideologues and political commissars showed up, giving zero shit about tech or logical reasoning, this pulled the discourse down to the lowest common denominator and the rest is history. Why should I take the moral high ground and listen to an argument I dislike if I'm not offered the same cour…

Too many words to say: Nerds don't voice their opinions on the Internet because Eternal September IRL.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#32

Post by zhivota »

Elon Musk happened. Zuckerberg happened (yes, before the current bro transformation, we had The Social Network showing us).

Elon probably most of all, he was the one who took fringe edge lord behavior and elevated to something to be admired.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#33

Post by louwrentius »

Nothing happened to the Nerds. They are all showing their true colours.

They may have shared a love for technology, what they also shared is a deep immaturity.

The immaturity of a person not wanting to acknowledge and cary any responsibility for other people, for the consequences of their work, for any kind of accountability. Just play with their toys without any concern for the external world.

'I'm just here playing with tech and code'. Sure! but that stuff you're building is being weaponised by other (the venn diagram unfortunately overlaps) tech bro's so men can film women with their glasses in public like the little sick creeps they are. Or steal all their data. You can't pretend you are not responsible and complicit.

They want "what's theirs" and anything in their way - including people - have to comply or be destroyed.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#34

Post by lukasm »

Once tech became glamorous, it started attracting people with narcissistic traits - much like Hollywood did. Expect to see more antisocial behavior as a result.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#35

Post by JuniperMesos »

TrackerFF wrote: post #14

Money happened. Wherever there's big money to be made, will also attract ambitious people hungry for money and power - it's that simple. Now that FAANG jobs aren't looking all that attractive, many such people have set their sights on AI research/dev and quant finance jobs. The latter one has exploded in popularity / virality the past years. Previously a niche profession within finance which, frankly, most had no clu…

> What's more, many nerds discovered that with enormous amounts of money, comes enormous amounts of power. You can now actually lobby for your sci-fi dream world, which is what some of the billionaire nerds are doing.

> The money and power corrupted them.

Actually accomplishing things in the world that constitute building a sci-fi dream world requires significant amounts of money and power, and any person or institution at all that could in principle have the capacity to do this would also have the capacity to become corrupt, at least by someone's judgement.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with many of the sci-fi things that tech billionaire nerds have made their money by bringing into existence. I rode across town in a self-driving Tesla the other day while giving orders to its AI system about how and where to go. That was a pretty sci-fi dream world experience. That's worth quite a bit of corruption.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#36

Post by spaqin »

jonnybgood wrote: post #24
negergreger wrote: post #6

Nerds used to have a internet to discuss tech in, you were allowed to make an argument based on logic and reasoning. Then the ideologues and political commissars showed up, giving zero shit about tech or logical reasoning, this pulled the discourse down to the lowest common denominator and the rest is history. Why should I take the moral high ground and listen to an argument I dislike if I'm not offered the same cour…

I have found those who I would consider nerds to be far from logical or rational. They are some of the most fervent people about the things they care about, which can make them very illogical and irrational.

True, but that's not really a bad thing. It feels like the passion has been watered down, with less and less space for being yourself, with the need to self-censor for the sake of advertisers', with hopes of monetization of every interaction ruining everything.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#37

Post by whstl »

simonh wrote: post #17
dolia wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that too many people are confusing arguments they agree with with logical arguments. Most of people, when they claim that something is rational or logical, actually mean that it's a position that they agree with. I have no reason to believe that back in the day when internet was only for nerds the situation was different.

It wasn't different.

Indeed.

I remember Usenet in the 90s being 50% interesting conversations mostly about niche topics and 50% randomly devolving into flame wars in larger communities.

Even "Eternal September" as a concept was something from around 1993/1994 right?

Same for the 2000s era online-bulletin-board. I often go to thegearpage.net and am appalled at the amount of shilling, dismissals and disrespect, but then I remember that in the 2000s the main guitar forum was Harmony Central, which was mostly kids calling other kids moms names.

EDIT: But coldtea makes a good point about some (IMO) more recent changes: tone-policing, excessive marketing. There's IMO also a different attitude towards curiosity today.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#38

Post by steelkilt »

dolia wrote: post #15
negergreger wrote: post #6

Nerds used to have a internet to discuss tech in, you were allowed to make an argument based on logic and reasoning. Then the ideologues and political commissars showed up, giving zero shit about tech or logical reasoning, this pulled the discourse down to the lowest common denominator and the rest is history. Why should I take the moral high ground and listen to an argument I dislike if I'm not offered the same cour…

I feel that too many people are confusing arguments they agree with with logical arguments. Most of people, when they claim that something is rational or logical, actually mean that it's a position that they agree with. I have no reason to believe that back in the day when internet was only for nerds the situation was different.

FWIW nerds pre-date the internet. We used to get together in user groups, like at public libraries, and talk tech, logic and reasoning.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#40

Post by coldtea »

dolia wrote: post #15
negergreger wrote: post #6

Nerds used to have a internet to discuss tech in, you were allowed to make an argument based on logic and reasoning. Then the ideologues and political commissars showed up, giving zero shit about tech or logical reasoning, this pulled the discourse down to the lowest common denominator and the rest is history. Why should I take the moral high ground and listen to an argument I dislike if I'm not offered the same cour…

I feel that too many people are confusing arguments they agree with with logical arguments. Most of people, when they claim that something is rational or logical, actually mean that it's a position that they agree with. I have no reason to believe that back in the day when internet was only for nerds the situation was different.

It was different in several ways, one was far fewer people enforcing norms or doing marketing in those forums, far less moderation and tone policing, and far more tolerance (even rejoicing) into getting into deep technical argumentation and "well, actually" debate. No "influencing" and mere marketable "content" creation either.

Not to mention for a good while, FOSS was a big nerd holy grail (informing many discussions and forums, away from corporate solutions shilling and careerism), and a big goal of every tech nerd (unlike after about 2010).

Also nerd culture was by nerds, for nerds, not dilluted and "championed" by every mainstream hipster.

Remember when even Comicon was something mostly nerds, the kind "normie" people used to point and laugh at, went, and sci-fi/superhero movies excited the same small demographic niche?

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