Do you miss the days when nerds were outcasts?

[RockyBanks]

Bullshit. That's like saying that before chainsaws nobody ever chopped down a tree or that without KFC chickens wouldn't have ever been considered food.

Comics or entertainment or leisure material can and always have been making itself available to people. Plus people can enthuse themselves even regardless of geeks or internet or DVRs and regardless of whatever "social detriments".

Adolescent stereotype notions like geek/jock/dweeb/nerd are just highschool lingo from back in the 1970 or 1980s, which large entertainment companies have been buying into for the sake of making themselves money.

Whereas as you say "the traditional geek" would exist way broader and more initially than merely comics or television considerably (Wikipedia):


It's one thing to try and classify everything in the big bad world into tropes and stereotypes (like geek/nerd etcetera) when you'd be a little kid, but beyond that there's just gonna fit a whole lot more into it, making it not useful to be regarding things in such narrow terms, for anyone, whatever their social detriments.

Consumer tech in the 21st century has made it easier than ever for the average individual to delve into the deep, dark corners of their hobby or fandom. Every episode of your favorite TV series, the latest breaking news about your obscure hobby, and discussion forums about your every interest are at your fingertips 24/7. Pop culture is leading the way in the decentralization of our social consciousness, as individuals drift away from a homogenous "mainstream" and toward 1000 different specialized echo chambers. Even something as basic as your primary news source is often tailored to your specific political beliefs. (See: FOX News vs MSNBC, Drudge Report vs Huffington Post, etc.)

Delving so deep into any particular interest took far more effort 40 years ago, so "geekdom" was a much smaller crowd made up of individuals with a particular drive and focus.

My perception--take it with a grain of salt--is that individuals increasingly see the seeds of geekdom within themselves.

[MyriVerse]

Adolescent stereotype notions like geek/jock/dweeb/nerd are just highschool lingo from back in the 1970 or 1980s, which large entertainment companies have been buying into for the sake of making themselves money.

The concepts go back a lot further than that (to at least the wartime years). While they are predominately adolescent things, they is a tendency for them to be carried over to lesser degrees into adulthood.

[Kees_L]

My perception--take it with a grain of salt--is that individuals increasingly see the seeds of geekdom within themselves.

Personally I'll prefer to regard *enthusiasm* as just that, more rather than shallow simplification as what any tropes or stereotypification would constitute to.

The concepts go back a lot further than that (to at least the wartime years). While they are predominately adolescent things, they is a tendency for them to be carried over to lesser degrees into adulthood.

As amounting to but shallow and by definition but negative presumptuousness they'll be concepts, but even as a kid I've only been taught or prone to not believe in or go by it, at all.

Every person may like or enjoy such things as leisure or sports or entertainment, every and any person, without neededly fitting anything as dumb and phoney as whatever marketing typification. As persons or personalities and their preferences would go, they won't be as superficial as constructed consumer labelments, by definition.

[Mormel]

Every person may like or enjoy such things as leisure or sports or entertainment, every and any person, without neededly fitting anything as dumb and phoney as whatever marketing typification. As persons or personalities and their preferences would go, they won't be as superficial as constructed consumer labelments, by definition.

Thing is, it's not just marketing.
When I was in secondary school (middelbare), the kids that ended up at the 'unpopular table' during the lunch breaks [including me] and were considered the geeky kids, didn't choose that label. We were sort of the spit-outs of our respective classes. The rejects, the unwanted. All for very different reasons; we just sort of coagulated into a 'geek group' in part because our interests matched or overlapped, and in part because we shared a feeling of being the rejected kids, the weirdos. It was a label I ended up embracing and owning.

[Kees_L]

Thing is, it's not just marketing.
When I was in secondary school (middelbare), the kids that ended up at the 'unpopular table' during the lunch breaks [including me] and were considered the geeky kids, didn't choose that label. We were sort of the spit-outs of our respective classes. The rejects, the unwanted. All for very different reasons; we just sort of coagulated into a 'geek group' in part because our interests matched or overlapped, and in part because we shared a feeling of being the rejected kids, the weirdos. It was a label I ended up embracing and owning.

Oh sure thing Morm, I will believe that or anybody their personal or sincerest outlooks or experiences. I will believe them and respect them and not mean to take anything away from them.

But I will NOT base any belief of my own on such things as stereotypes and tropes as any leading thing. Stereotypes or tropes are by their own definition not meant to be taken for granted or prove leading as otherwise they wouldn't be called stereotypes but just real things instead.

When kids pick on one another or any singling out amid large groups for anyone happens without reason or rhyme to it, it just follows from uneasyness or stress due to groups proving hard to be in under certain circumstances as being to arise.

I don't believe in detriments bearing strict correlation towards such stuff as *reading* or *enthusiasm*, as any stuff could and would be to vary for people. The varying is what art appreciation or reading or creativity would be evolving around as much as any personalities could and would be making persons be to differ.

A geek or nerd isn't by any means a different species from whatever other people. Neither would any trope or stereotype be fact or it wouldn't be a trope to begin with.

I believe that only persons - all or any persons could decide or find out how they'd be liking anything or not, as by actually experiencing it. Not by marketing strategies or those summized product descriptions like on the back of a book. Those things are not meant to be taken as law, I'd believe.

That's how I find notions as geek- or nerd- bullshit myself.

[Charles RB]

Do you miss the days when nerds were outcasts?

I miss that as much as much as I miss the days before vaccines. Being an outcast because of the fictional media you like is balls, it's miles better to not have that. I don't know why there are nerds who hate that (but it makes more sense than hearing the odd person moaning London Pride - or whatever city's gay-rights march - is "too mainstream", like you miss the days when your sexuality was seen as a disgusting abomination by mainstream society. Nobody ever passed a law banning the "promotion" of comics)

[Mikekerr3]

I am nostagic for my teems when a geek was a side-show act at disreputable carnivals, and erd was not a word.
Hell I am even nostalgic for th days when nerd meant a very smart and social awkward person., not a fanatical hobbiest

[Paradox]

Nerd goes back much farther than your teens, Mike.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nerd

[tombo]

I've thought about this a lot, and I do think that the sci fi fandom world has "opened up" to more "regular folk" in the past 15 years, in my world anyway. You look at the shows that were big before, like Star Trek DS9 and TNG, they all had quite stiff, wooden (or strange and over-acting) characters. All unusual characters with an "asperger" appeal, wheras folk with regular social skills were enjoying the banter on shows like "Friends", with not much in sci-fi to offer them. Now look at what we have had since, Buffy, the Raimi Spider-man films, Doctor Who, the rise of anime over here. When I was a kid in the early 90s, the most popular anime and comics here were only violent action stuff, like Dredd and Akira. My comic book store was full of "erotic" and 60s nostalgia merch about Betty Page, Russ Meyer films, the Steed and Peel Avengers, etc. I was the only non middle aged man in there, apart from the owner's wife. Now you see such a wider appeal across gender, personality type, age. The same store is so much more social, lively and young. I think Buffy definitely opened the floodgates among people I knew for "comic-book-ish storylines that appealed to regular teenagers and normal-social-skills people". I say this, because I myself am a diagnosed autistic and I've always found the banter in things like Whedon's shows much more "non-autistic" than say, DS9 which feels to me like it was made for folk like me. Just a personal feeling.

I mean, the other day I saw a girl of about 15 in town reading a Batman comic, and it made me think how much things changed. When I was 15, if I had seen a girl my age reading a Batman comic..or anyone reading a Batman comic, my eyes would have popped out of my head. I only knew one other Bat-fan in my city then.

As for do I miss it, no. I've really enjoyed the past 15 years of having female friends, friends my own age, getting me into comedy anime, Harry Potter, etc, instead of just being resigned to knowing that most friends will not know my interests and the only people I had to chat about them being a bunch of old men in the comic shop. I did sometimes feel more "in my comfort zone" then though, in terms of sci-fi/comics being a "world to hide away in". (ie, being more obscure and hidden from society).

[tombo]

I am bumping because I feel like introvert and want attention, I apoligise for the rudeness.

[Stony]

No, because I enjoy talking about things I like with people, and the more people that like the things I do, the more good chat there is.

Having said that, I was surprised at my own reaction to something I saw the other week.

I was on Facebook and a friend liked the status of another friend, a guy both my friend and I had gone to high school with
Back in high school this guy was... not a jock, we don't really have those down here, but a pretty popular, rugby-playing guy... though not an *******, from what I recall
Anyway, this guy linked to something that happened at Comic-Con and wrote "Nerds rock!!"

I looked at this and thought "Mate, you were the furthest thing from a nerd in high school!!"

So, it's nice that they're coming around... but I guess we all have to make adjustments