Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals • Hacker News Board

Re: Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

#71

Post by rustcleaner » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

dofm wrote: post #53

Not sure I would, in the 2026 culture, sling around the words "murdering intellectuals", even just for title clout.

Nothing irritates me more than the advertising industrial complex having financially and algorithmically coerced r*pe[d]/grape[d] for rape[d], k*ll[ed]/unalive[d] for killed/murdered, su*cide/self-unalived for suicide, etc.

To me, it is a strong indicator that advertisers need to be reeled in with advertisement control legislation: make advertisers liable for yanking ads or monetization on speech grounds. Huggies Diapers and Johnson & Johnson should not be able to pull [funding for] their ads from content which could be potentially undesirable without incurring legal risk of civil suit.

Also I want to see all people who are paid to shill a product (like testimonials) be forced to say "$COMPANY paid me $THOUSAND to tell you $MESSAGE," to alleviate the psychological vulnerability of social proofing. It should be a felony to be paid (even by quid pro quo) by someone else to say something which has a commercial or political impact, without disclosing that payment and its value. Things people say should be entirely their opinion shared for no monetary kickback or other kinds of favor (such as discounts, free extras, club memberships, etc). This does not apply for selling the opinion to those receiving it, so lawyers and consultants [and similar] are exempt.

The industry has to be brought to heel for what they have been doing to our language, and how they have spurred the online demonetization/censorship tyranny. No single platform can defect from the current norms due to financial reliance on advertisers, but if it were law then advertisers could not use revocation of their funds to punish protection of free speech.

Re: Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

#72

Post by dofm » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 8:22 PM UTC

rustcleaner wrote: post #71

dofm wrote: post #53

Not sure I would, in the 2026 culture, sling around the words "murdering intellectuals", even just for title clout.

Nothing irritates me more than the advertising industrial complex having financially and algorithmically coerced r*pe[d]/grape[d] for rape[d], k*ll[ed]/unalive[d] for killed/murdered, su*cide/self-unalived for suicide, etc. To me, it is a strong indicator that advertisers need to be reeled in with advertisement control legislation: make advertisers liable for yanking ads or monetization on speech grounds. Huggies Dia…

I am not saying they shouldn't because they'll be censored.

I'm saying they shouldn't because it is lazy, crass, distasteful and clickbaity.

Re: Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

#73

Post by eudamoniac » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

easyThrowaway wrote: post #44

The issue with current day "nerd culture" is that it's extremely self-referential. There's no space for anything outside of extremely codified artistic norms and genres. Techno-feudalistic art for a techno-feudalistic age. We had artists like Sun Ra, Antonioni or Joffè who when asked about their artistic inspirations they would tell you it came from a photograph, from the sound of a specific tree in a park, the way a…

"Pretentious" is an extremely damaging word and a post about the phenomenon you reference would be more astute than the OP is. People now denigrate nearly any reference to artistic ethos, sublimity, and idealism. It's as though they have become unable to feel those things at all.

The word "pretentious" doesn't even make sense in most usages. What does the person have pretentions of? How do you know they do, and aren't being genuine? This isn't even what the word means anymore; it just means either intellectual and/or philosophically idealist.

Re: Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

#74

Post by skew-aberration » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

gabriel666smith wrote: post #63

skew-aberration wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a more generous reading of the article. Let's say a nerd is an intelligent but introverted person who shies away from the world, focusing their energy on a narrow range of self-centered interests. At the office they work hard decreasing page load speed by 10%, then they go home and play videos games, watch MCU movies, etc. In the past, this kind of one-dimensional inward-looking person was widely ridiculed as s…

I was being a tad intentionally ungenerous for fun. Thanks for taking the time to clarify. Your "science made them men" point feels astute, compact, and one that feels familiar, as if I've come across it before in some form, relating to an older context, but I'm not sure where. If it's not an original take, I'd really like to read whoever you read it in. It's very sharp. More broadly, "getting MKULTRA'd is an epic pa…

I thought the same thing when I wrote it, but I can't place it either :) It's broadly similar to a lot of non-sci-fi tropes in children's literature too like 'adult for a day'.

Re: Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

#75

Post by skew-aberration » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

atmavatar wrote: post #68

skew-aberration wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a more generous reading of the article. Let's say a nerd is an intelligent but introverted person who shies away from the world, focusing their energy on a narrow range of self-centered interests. At the office they work hard decreasing page load speed by 10%, then they go home and play videos games, watch MCU movies, etc. In the past, this kind of one-dimensional inward-looking person was widely ridiculed as s…

> The point is that the heroes in the MCU stories didn't have to outgrow their nerd phase through virtues like courage, responsibility, duty - instead science made them into men. Peter Parker is bit by a spider, The Hulk got irradiated, Captain America got injected, Tony Stark's invention is a literal shell which superficially turns him into Iron Man and protects him from consequences/reality. Tell us you know nothin…

Point taken, they are real heroes. But they become heroes after getting a magical power - an unrealistic alternative to the risk, sacrifice, growth, etc required in real life.

Re: Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

#76

Post by nchmy » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 11:10 AM UTC

defrost wrote: post #11

nchmy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warms the heart to see it

The punchline is that it's version 2.0 after some years of turning over in the back of the authors head: Years ago I published a part of this text in an essay. I was never happy with the original (artistically speaking) so I cannibalised parts for this new essay and memory-holed the original.

They're evidently a terrible writer. But how sad is the state of affairs that Im now actually happy to see terrible human writing out there? At least they're doing it!

Re: Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

#77

Post by jfengel » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 4:27 PM UTC

tavavex wrote: post #64

I disagree with the way the author describes nerds. What makes something nerdy isn't inherent to the work. There's nothing about Star Wars that would always be 'weird'. Nerdiness in my opinion is the enjoyment of something niche that the surrounding society views as disproportionate obsession or an unusual interest that goes against the cultural norm. It's not that everyone has turned into nerds, it's that things tha…

Star Wars was in fact always mainstream. Everybody loved it, not just the nerds. It made epic sums of money. They had stormtroopers on freaking Donny and Marie.

The nerds responded by making their own niche of it, via action figures and books.

Everything got weird with the release of the prequels, which were not as popular with mainstream audiences. The nerds really bought into them, for reasons I admit I still don't fully understand. They had kept a flame for the franchise that mainstream audiences had largely dropped, but the nerds loved the new things to obsess about.