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Is “nerd” such a negative thing anymore? Seems like its been watered down to mean “I play at least one video game”.
I use the term “classic nerd” for what was once “nerd” because I havent found another word that covers it.
Forty years later, people figured out that the nerds were making more money than God. Then nerd wasn’t such a bad thing.
This is so confusing. Are you saying “classic nerd” is negative then? Your wording is kind of ambiguous. I don’t think “nerd” has been watered down, just isn’t very negative in the mainstream. I’d say it just means you’re very enthusiastic about a certain topic. I don’t think folks would call someone who just plays one video game a nerd, unless it’s only one video game and they are super into it, like a “WoW nerd” maybe.
I don’t think there’s any need to gatekeep “nerd” though and require any additional qualifiers on it like “classic”. Just seems like you’re trying to say “actual” without sounding elitist about it.
I don’t think they mean it to be negative. I assumed they mean its used more loosely now and has lost some of the meaning it used to have as a result. They can’t find a more fitting word for what they want to say, so they just specify they mean the stricter definition of the word nerd.
I find the “stricter” meaning more ambiguous though. Nerd still applies to many subclasses of people back in the day. If you read too many books, nerd. Played video games? Nerd. Did math for fun? Nerd. Chess? Nerd. So saying “classic nerd” doesn’t say much.
And in regards to being negative or not, it was more the ambiguity of their opening. They said the word “nerd” isn’t negative anymore because it’s watered down. So when they made a non-watered down version, it just seemed questionable in regards to the reason given for not being negative anymore.
Based on their response, yeah, I think it was just poor wording.
I interpreted the “stricter” definition as just being more intense. Like its only used to describe someone who reads constantly, and knows nearly everything about literature. Or someone who is almost obsessively studying math, or chess theory. Or someone who is very interested in numerous “nerdy” things.
Maybe that’s not what they meant, I’m not sure. You’re right, their wording is kind of ambiguous.
Perhaps it’s because in the past people would never call themselves “nerds”. Nerd and freak was an insult people would throw at you. So I think it did kind of change in meaning.
Even today I think nerd still involves some kind of obsession though.
Anyone could be into LOTR, especially after the movies came out. But it’s kinda nerdy to have heated discussions whether or not leaving out Tom Bombadil was the right call (it wasn’t!).
…it was tho.
Definitely. Thanks for being the one taking the bait. ;)
I’ve seen someone on a dating app describe herself as a “gym nerd”. It hurt my soul a bit
Best case scenario is that she’s really into the science behind physical training. In reality she probably just owns a pelaton.
really into the science behind physical training
Yes! Thats a nerd. We nerds used to joke that those soccer fans who knew every team and player, and their strengths, those were still nerds even if they wouldnt admit it.
Nerd is a compliment as far as I’m concerned.
It wasnt when and where I grew up. The stereotype was still the “Revenge of the nerds” or “Steve Urkel”. But I kinda took the label as a shield when people used it on me and I learned what it meant. Why should I be ashamed of enjoying digging into computers and programming? Why would enjoying books or non-mainstream comics be such a negative thing? Why would playing more advanced video games be sad? Or finding math fun? And why was I the only one who would admit to enjoying it at school? I know a few people had some shared interest, but they never spoke of it at school. Also why yell out loudly that whatever I was lost in was utterly boring to them? And when reaching the next level of education and meeting people LIKE ME, the nerd label hardened. They were nerds, I was nerd. I learned about roleplaying games, MTG, even more advanced video games, that stuff that seemed was the domain of most nerds.
The nerd label meant someone who had multiple interests into stuff that average people called “boring”. Finding people who called themselves nerds meant that they very likely shared some interests with me, or could teach me something new I would find interesting. So I am still a bit sore that people who bullied me for being a nerd later proudly declare themselves nerds for ONLY playing such a simple game as World of Warcraft when that was popular. It is about using a word for what seemed like it had its own meaning back then, who now have become a synonym for “gamer”.
/u/pjhenry1216@kbin.social I dont consider that gate-keeping. I would welcome all and any to enjoy the things nerds enjoy. I just want to have a name for the subculture I joined and found belonging in. Words like goth have meaning still, and it isnt gatekeeping to assume it means people who enjoys dressing in all-black.
My gatekeeping was referencing a need for “classic nerd” vs “nerd”. I find no need to differentiate between what it “used” to mean and what it means today. It makes more sense to categorize the type of nerd to be honest. I don’t think anyone is “just” a nerd. They’re a nerd in a certain topic or subject.
Nerd means the same thing, just expanded to include different topics. Nerd back in the day could mean various things. You could be a nerd for liking dinosaurs “too much” but didn’t mean you knew about computers. So it’s just that saying “classic nerd” doesn’t really clarify who yorue talking about.
Nerd back in the day (at least where I lived) did mean something else though. It was a label people used for people they did not want in their group/community/neighborhood.
Idk but I now react like they said the N word and I gaslight them into feeling bad for using a slur.
Hilarious
Geek is the non-pejorative form of nerd, I believe.
To me, geek means someone that is obsessed over something non-harmful.
Movies, books, boardgames, video games, cosplay, anime, math, computers, applications, …
A nerd is a geek who made the obsession their job. Like a professional geek.
Problem is for a long time the heaviest trekkies, the really visible ones, were usually not about the idealism at all.
For every quiet idealist who dreams of a better future there’s a loud closet fascist who only sees the uniforms, a rigid militarized society with clear chains of authority, a Vulcan philosophy where cold logic overrides empathy, and where the advanced humans swashbuckle about the universe showing the natives their place.
It’s getting better now but back in the day Trek fandom was rough and it’s taking a lot to shake the image.
Dude, what? I’ve never heard, and I’m guessing most people haven’t heard, of the Trek fandom being seen as fascist or zealous. Especially not the ‘heaviest Trekkies’. Are there some who are like that? Absolutely. I’ve met a fair few through Elite Dangerous, as sad as that is, but it’s certainly not the majority. Definitely not enough to have colored the entire movement that way. ESPECIALLY when the major Trek cast constantly push the idealism.
The rest of us are hearing this for the first time.
Not me, I grew up with one of those people and he was awful. And because he was the only Trekkie in the whole town, pretty much everyone I grew up with has a terrible opinion of star trek and its fans. I bet a lot of the negative perception of the show comes from people like that. People like that are not that common, but neither are outspoken star trek fans in general, so most people probably have a pretty equal chance of meeting either type of fan.
So you had a bad experience with one man and then decided to paint everyone who liked the show with the same brush. You and your entire generation. From one dude?
That says everything about you and nothing about the fandom. There are assholes everywhere but one man is not representative of the fandom and if you believe that he is then that’s on you for judging entire groups of people based off of their actions.
Dude was an asshole but I’m honestly not sure if a douchebag fan is worse or someone who is so willing to color their opinions of entire groups of people/media because of their interactions with a single person.
If you know only one person who watches a specific show and they are awful human beings, then it is kind of natural to assume the show is awful as well and attracts awful people.
I never said it was the majority, I said the heaviest most vocal ones.
These people made Star Trek the original toxic fandom, it’s not a new observation.
Your characterization is simply untrue. Your personal experience may have led you to believe that but I take great offense at you coloring an entire fandom with a crayon that isn’t even in their box. Also heaviest and most vocal also is clearly untrue considering the heaviest and most vocal trekkies push the inspiring aspects of the world. You also don’t get to say that a fandom is toxic when openly admitting that the majority were not part of what you claim.
Your personal experiences are not universal. It is a new observation. Frankly I’m not a huge fan of you using such enormously wide brush strokes to paint an entire fandom as toxic that you know nothing about.
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I’ve always been pathologically unwilling to be part of a community. I miss out on a lot, I’m sure. It’s not a healthy way to be, and I’m not saying it’s a good thing.
It’s just that I’m into things like anime and video games and all that nerd shit. Every community has Those People that I don’t want to be associated with. They aren’t even the majority, but when a person who doesn’t know much about anime hears “anime lover” they think of a dude doing a Naruto run in public. When they hear “Star Trek” they think of the comic book guy from Simpsons. Etc.
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve always wanted to know why our hobbies have the worst people in it.
All hobbies have the worst people in it. I realized one day, that they are everywhere, not just in our hobbies.
It’s rare to find a community that doesn’t corrupt the original itent it was built around. Look at organized religion. Doesn’t speak well to humanity in general I’m afraid.
The bigger the community, the more attractive it gets for the kind of people who just want to see the world burn.
Not even so much that, I just think at a certain critical mass the law of averages kicks in and you just kind of get… the status quo. Like, a good share of people are decent, another good share are so-so, another good share are kind of nasty. So, put all that together and you get something that looks a lot like humanity in general: always just slightly disappointing.
but how can one enjoy Star Trek without those? I mean, that’s the meat and potatoes of it
Same way they watch The Boys thinking Homelander is the hero
Do these people actually exist? I’ve read it before but I can’t believe that the character Homelander has fans. The actor is amazing, though.
Oh they totally exist. There was a big kerfuffle on social media about it when Stormfront was introduced and a legion of fanboys started boycotting the show and sending hate mail because Homelander was outed as a Nazi (like it hadn’t been apparent already – they suddenly figured it out and thought the writers had done a 180 on his character). He was supposed to be the perfect American hero and the woke writers ruined him.
They were serious and angry about it. It was amusing to watch, really. They went on a cancel crusade over it.
This is really scary. I found Homelander to be so obviously sadistic and cruel and broken. That’s why I think the actor did such a great job, he gives off major psychopath vibes. Long before the Nazi backstory. How can people miss that?? It’s concerning…
Usually because they see themselves in it.
I mean, they obviously don’t know all of that. Haters think Star Trek is just people in bad costumes jerking each other off.
Hey it can be about many things
There’s definitely at least a couple of episodes about that.
Thank you, Lieutenant Broccoli
I wonder, is Broccoli meant to represent all of the fans? Because he certainly seems to.
Rule 34 before it was invented
Sounds hot, where is that?
The holodecks.
Mmmmmmm
Can that run starfield though
Enterprise was basically softcore porn.
Two years ago during the big /r/NNN protest I met major resistence from other reddit mods in regards to taking our subreddits private. I knew someone had to stick their neck out first if we were going to get the Reddit admins to care about our protest. Many mods were worried about upsetting their users by making waves.
I slept on the decision and woke up early thinking to myself “Wait a minute, these are Trekkies I’m dealing with, the most rambunctious group of policically nerdy fans I can think of. Trekkies stand up to bullies and they do it together. Of course they’ll stand by us if we do this.”
I reached out to the Daystrom mods asking if they’d join us in going private and they were immediatley in. Same for Risa and the Discovery mods and many other mods of many small Trek subs.
While the protest didn’t achieve the goals I wanted and I ultimatley quit the site altogether, we definitley made some big waves, and it was all because Trekkies weren’t afraid to do what’s right, it really stuck with me the power fans of a “silly 60 year old TV show” can have.
Love Star Trek and a lot of Sci-Fi for this reason. Just finished binge watching Strange New Worlds where standing up for what is right is a core tenant of the crew. In contrast, one of the recent Ashoka episodes really hit me with the quote “sometimes even the right reasons have the wrong consequences”. It really sums up my experience in the world we live in and where we could be.
WWSTD?
What Would Star Trek Do?Picard on one shoulder, Garak on the other shoulder
Riker on the bed with his pants off
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone judge me for my love of Star Trek. Sci-fi and nerddom is a lot more mainstream than it used to be.
However… If someone were to flip to BBC America and watch one episode of TNG, and that episode was The Royale, I wouldn’t even mind if they judged me for all eternity.
Fine I’ll watch it already!
One of us!
Don’t worry we have bloodwine and cookies.
I got myself a career where nerd is a prerequisite, and a nerdophilic gf. Nerd and proud!
For someone that has never watched any star trek what should I start off watching?
TNG, start with the second season. If that’s a too preachy and perfect for you try DS9.
Millions inspired to be better? A phenomena?
The same can be said for Naruto fans, or Bleach fans, or any fandom with a long-lasting history.
People roll their eyes because they watch an episode or two and think “this is basic level convoluted drama”, and they’re completely right. But they haven’t seen the history, the implied context to which these dramas came to be, and what these characters have overcome to get to where they are now.Shonen series are for children, it’s literally in the name.
Ok but Naruto is pretty trashy compared to Star Trek.
Not a bad thing, it’s just a kids/teenagers show mostly.
Seriously, they think I turned off Naruto because of the basic drama? No, I turned it off because hearing the orange jumpsuit ninja(???) Talk for 5 seconds made my ears crave chopsticks.
To me it was the constant flashbacks and slow pace story telling.
Seriously, the first battle in Naruto against that mist ninja took literally 9 episodes.
In Dragonball Z there was an entire episode about drawing names for the upcoming tournament.
Mine too. But I stayed as I watched him compete and fail with his peers, reach their level through sheer force of will, and then come into his own.
I stayed because that world has fought 4 world wars in a very short amount of time, mostly with child soldiers and the wounds of the last war are still fresh.
I stayed because of the coup d’etat that threatened the destruction of the whole village was subverted in the worst way possible, and the redemption arc that led up to its revelation bore out throughout the entire series.
I stayed because even the worst of the worst were still redeemable in the eyes of this single child who grew up ostracized from the community he was raised in. They say that the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth, and it’s a path he could have chosen, but didn’t.
No parents picked him up from school, other kids were encouraged to stay away from him, and instead of feeding the monster inside of him by giving in to the despair and loneliness, as many of us would, he chose unwavering love and camaraderie in face of adversity.
Naruto breaks my damn heart, and I’m inspired by his example every day. Yes I know it’s a child’s cartoon.
The real hero of Naruto rock lee and Guy Sensei as some random YouTube video I watched years ago explained it 100% correctly.
To sum it up, basically Naruto says he’s going to be the best through hard work and being the best ninja and the only person who actually does that is rock lee and eventually guy sensei. Naruto cheats with his free power-ups and sacrificing his allies throughout the series and Guy is the ultimate ninja for obvious reasons for those who finish the series- I could not get past the point where they split the stories and started doing giant animal battles, but did get a summary video that explained as much as I needed
Guy is genuinely amazing, agreed.
Still nerdy if one also enjoy other anime stuff more than the average person. I consider anime nerds as nerds.
Not really… Especially for most of the points that it made.
Exactly what social issues did bleach or Naruto cover like real social issues. Not (NARUTO SPOILERS)
it’s hard being a kid with a demonfox soul inside you, or “my brother killed my family but didn’t really. He was actually trying to make me super strong so that I could avenge my family and the only way he thought that would happen was if he wanted a revenge on me”…
