Comments on: We Nerds Are Spoiled

By: Nothing Will Drive Them Away: The Fun of Hating “Heroes” << Monkey Goggles

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:55:51 +0000

[...] have no creative suggestions to make to Tim Kring because I don’t believe in wielding geek power on Hollywood — and anyway, NBC wouldn’t listen if I did. (Cough Leno cough.) However, I do have a [...]

By: etem

etem — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:04:33 +0000

While I can agree that nerds have been spoiled, I would say that almost everything you talk about in this article can be applied to everyone out there. The popularity of the net has made everything easy to watch and see and promote. No one has to wait for the things they love to come to TV sets anymore, if you want some obscure British sappy soap opera, you go online and download. The same thing applies to finding pictures and information about same show, you just look it up online, and is almost a guarantee that you will find something.

Sci fi is not the only genre to get fans out there campaigning to keep the shows on air, or keep them on the air.

In short, yah, nerds are more powerful than they used to be as consumers, but so is everyone else. Nerds have just grown a lot more in size, and why is that a bad thing, it just means better work is likely being done to attract more people.

By: Zzarchov

Zzarchov — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:38:55 +0000

This “new power” you talk about that is so confusing is known as being “the mainstream”. This is not a new or unusual power structure, this is normal, it is just new to nerd culture.

The rise of nerd culture becoming mainstream culture is of course tied to the internet. We are literally in the throws of an information revolution that is just as much of an upheaval as the industrial or agrarian revolutions before us. This makes nerd culture the backbone of mainstream culture, because nerds developed the internet. When one looks at the IT backbone (not just the internet) we notice that built into the very core if this new technological revolution (that is destroying everything from newspapers to needing to have an office in a span of under 20 years, think about that) is nerd culture.

There are countless technical aspects that require anyone at the heart of our new industry be familiar with nerd culture. You can’t wonder why commands involve NCC-1701 or why the number 42 is prevalent in programming, why things are named the way they are.

The nerds of today are spoiled compared to the nerds of yesteryear. But if you compare the mainstream of today to the mainstream of yesteryear, its just more of the same. Nerds just are the mainstream now.

As the Industrial revolution made the blue collar worker the mainstream, so too does the IT revolution make nerds the mainstream.

By: Why Nerds Are Spoiled

Why Nerds Are Spoiled — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:54:40 +0000

[...] nerds can be curmudgeons. David Wahl yearns for the good old days as he writes about how networking has changed science fiction fandom. Blame the convention, which allowed fans to get together and see just how many fans there were. [...]

By: Mark Morey

Mark Morey — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:06:36 +0000

Excellent article. I’ve been on about this general topic for years–as in, “It used to be an EVENT to have anything science fiction related on T.V., at least in prime time…now we’re saturated.” “Fan culture” produced Ray Bradbury, FAMOUS MONSTERS, half the underground cartoonists, etc., etc. Now it’s big news. As with “the Sixties,” you have to be careful what you want.