Recently, I’ve seen a few condemnations of nerds, such as from Esoteric Trad here, and some stuff from Twitter:
^ which is one reason why it is funny to see so many lol i'm such a nerd types bash the "gamer" culture because it really does exist
— Anime Robespierre (@mylittlepwnies3) April 30, 2016
I’m a bit of a nerd myself, so, I’m going to talk about the nerd/geek culture war. I’ve written on Gamergate a few times before, and if you read my Lightning Rounds, you’ve seen my support for Rabid/Sad Puppies. The standard line is that these is SJW’s vs. anti-SJW’s, which is true, but not the entire story.
The roots of these conflicts go back a bit farther. You may have noticed a link I posted to a comment on SSC where a commenter links the culture wars to the Something Awful/4chan split. That may be part of it, but a larger part of it is the nerd/geek conflict within what we’ll call fandom for lack of a better word.
The terms are often used interchangeably by most, but the terms refer to different groups within fandom and each has there own distinct, if overlapping, culture. Or, perhaps more to the point, nerds have systems around which geeks build a culture.
One man did a statistical analysis of the usage of the words and how they correlate with other words. He defined them as such:
geek – An enthusiast of a particular topic or field. Geeks are “collection” oriented, gathering facts and mementos related to their subject of interest. They are obsessed with the newest, coolest, trendiest things that their subject has to offer.
nerd – A studious intellectual, although again of a particular topic or field. Nerds are “achievement” oriented, and focus their efforts on acquiring knowledge and skill over trivia and memorabilia.
Others looking at this topic make a similar distinctions:
Nerd – intelligent, industrious, understands things
…Geek – Interested in things that others are not interested in, know a lot about their interests, but usually do not understand underlying principles
The statistical analysis comes to this conclusion:
In broad strokes, it seems to me that geeky words are more about stuff (e.g., “#stuff”), while nerdy words are more about ideas (e.g., “hypothesis”). Geeks are fans, and fans collect stuff; nerds are practitioners, and practitioners play with ideas. Of course, geeks can collect ideas and nerds play with stuff, too. Plus, they aren’t two distinct personalities as much as different aspects of personality. Generally, the data seem to affirm my thinking.
Look at his chart:
Note what words are strongly geeky: culture, #shiny (a firefly reference), #stuff, #trendy, #technology, #etsy. Compare that to the strongly nerdy words, which are mostly science and studying. (Cellist was due to outside factors and the goths reference seems to be from making a distinction between high school cliques goths and nerds).
Nerd things are ideas and academics. They like understanding and mastering systems, accomplishing things, and playing with new ideas. On the other hand, geeky things are stuff and culture. Geeks like learning trivia, keeping up with a culture, collecting, and spending time with others doing these things.
On the other hand, there is a geek culture and a geek community. For geeks, the community, it’s culture, it’s status (#trendy), and its accoutrements (#shiny #Etsy #stuff) takes precedence over the thing, and are the focus. They are more into people, and less into systems.
Put simply, nerds are into things and ideas, geeks are into community. Now, these two aren’t mutually exclusive, there’s overlap, but they are still distinct ways of being part of fandom.
I use the word fandom because I can’t think of a better one, but it is misleading, fandom is itself an aspect of the geeks. There is not really nerd culture, there are simply gatherings of nerds. Nerds will enjoy something alone, when they gather, the focus is on enjoying the thing and mastering the system of the thing, not each other. They aren’t people persons, they’re thing and system persons. Nerds are semi-autistic spergs.
This recent Cracked article illustrates nicely. The authors are geeks:
And people need a sense of community to truly and meaningfully coexist with a thing that they love.
A geek needs a sense of community, because the community is what he’s there for. The nerd doesn’t. I’ve played video games my entier life, and have never had a ‘sense of community’. Other than some rare session of SSB with friends, 99% of my game-playing time has been alone. A nerd plays games because he enjoys games, a geek dose it because he wants community.
(Wolinsky then proceeds to punch down at the nerds and say why games need to be ruined because, like a lot of geeks, he enjoys using his meager social skill set to beat on nerds and try to destroy things they enjoy).
I’ve been a nerd my whole life, and was recently introduced to geek culture, in my late-20s. The idea confused me somewhat: why would you need a culture? Nerd stuff was stuff you did on your own or with a few friends and kept quiet about around normal people. Why would you need a culture to play video games or read SF?
Read this article on geek consumer culture and the first few comments. To them the hobby is all about consumption and status. As a nerd growing up poor, that wouldn’t have even occurred to me. I got SF book from the library because I enjoyed them and games with holiday and birthday money.Their being status or merch behind it, or that people would want the status of nerd or geek didn’t cross my mind.
The fake geek girls controversy illustrates this as well. Girl geeks get legitimately upset when people try to take their geek cred away from them and it seems to some men defending their geek cred is important to them. Both seem alien to me. Why would you care? Growing up, I just wanted to do the thing. I tried my hardest to convince my sisters (and the rest of my family) to play board games (sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, sorry Axis & Allies) because that meant I got to play more. I tried (and failed) to convince my sisters and brother not to play video games because that meant they would hog the system, at least until we got a N64, at which point I needed more Smash Bros partners. There were no thoughts of status. If others did the thing would I get to do more of it or would I get to do less of it?
Anyhow, back from personal digression, the tension between the nerds and geeks has been everpresent in fandom since it began in the way back when. It was a tense, but symbiotic relationship. The geeks needed the nerds in fandom because the nerds made and understood things. The nerds needed the geeks in fandom, at least if they cared at all about fandom, because they’re the ones who created fandom.
This mutual dependence and tension has always been around, but lately there’s been a shift. First, fandom activities have become increasingly accessible: the effort needed for creation or system mastery have lowered, so the geeks don’t need the nerds as much as they used to, if they need them at all. Power slowly shifted towards the geeks.
As well, when the Big Bang Theory came out and was followed by a slew of high-profile superhero and fantasy movies, fandom suddenly became hip. Normal people started wanting to do fandom things and the geeks started inviting them in. That’s not necessarily bad in itself (although, I don’t really see the point). The problem is when this occurred normies don’t have a nerd personality: geeks may be different but they’re still people-focused so normies can understand them. Nerds, though, are still those introverted, systems-focused weirdos. They joined the geeks in the internal culture war, and now they geek/normie alliance is trying to push the nerds out.
Wil Wheaton, is the ur-geek who exemplifies this trend. He’s a geek who outreaches to normies through stuff like Tabletop (not to mention he was in BBT) and is heavily involved in the geek community. He’s set up this dichotomy of what he calls “power gamers” (ie. nerds) who (evilly) like mastering systems and hurt the geek community with their focus on things and ideas over people, while the noble Wil Wheaton builds the geek community (even if he occasionally has to sacrifice rules accuracy or dumb things down a little, both of which nerds generally detest).
In, tabletop RPG’s there have been a number of different play styles. The oldest and, until recently, most common was the power gamer (nerd) playstyle: min/max a character to best master the game system, build a world, explore the world, destroy the baddies, loot the room, save the princess, and level up. It was focused on system mastery, world-building, and problem-solving. These gamers tend to use crunchy systems with lots of numbers (like Shadowrun or the Hero system).
A smaller strain was the Roleplayers (geeks). To this strain story-telling and character interaction was more important. RPG’s were more about collaborative story-telling/improv acting. Combat and dice rolls were minimized because they interrupted the story. NPC’s became fleshed out characters rather than amusing plot devices. And so on. They tend to focus on RPG systems with fewer numbers but (like Fate or Fiasco).
Neither is inherently better (I’ve enjoyed both Fate and Fiasco) and both can be accommodated by a decent GM, so neither is wrong, but recently, the geeks, using their increased influence have been pushing their role-playing style as the correct way to do things. It’s gotten to where the point where the “correct” opinion, the on pushed by Wheaton, is that the story is what matters, while “power gamers” and min/maxers are doing things wrong.
This geek/nerd conflict is what is playing in the Sad Puppies campaigns and GamerGate.
Science fiction has always had a divide (more a continuum, really) between hard and soft. Hard SF stories are geared towards nerds; the world and the ideas would the focus of the story, they were the main characters. The science was central to the story and the story existed to carry the ideas. Characters and their interactions were made to carry the ideas. Asimov is a good example of his, his characters were almost always little more than plot devices to carry whatever idea he was exploring.
Soft SF, on the other hand was more about the characters than the ideas. They were space operas, where the science was meant to carry the story. Star Wars is the best example of this. The science was simply a plot device. You could easily change the setting to medieval Europe, replace X-wings with pegasi, photon torpedoes with arrows, and lightsabers with magic swords, and the story would not change in the least. Dr. Who is similar, the sonic screwdriver might as well be a magic wand.
Fantasy had a similar, less prounounced continuum. Was the focus on the characters, or the world and the ideas the world-conveyed? The divide was less pronounced because Tolkien, who created high fantasy, Lweis, and Howard who created swords & sorcery, focused on both and did both well. That and fantasy only has to be internally consistent, while SF has to be internally consistent and consistent with known science.
The puppies are nerds. They’re looking for old-school/hard SF/F based on systems-level thinking: world building, ideas-focus, and science. While the anti-puppies are geeks have been pushing for the softer stuff. Even beyond that they’re pushing romances in space, where the SF/F is barely a gloss. Normies who join, generally go towards the soft SF like Doctor Who and Star Wars.
Gamergate is similar. The GG folks are generally nerds, who just want to play games and master complex game systems. Meanwhile, the anti-gg force are all about creating an “inclusive” community (which is somehow needed to play games buy yourself on a screen) by kicking out all the icky gamers (ie. nerds) who are too focused on playing games rather than telling stories with games.
You can see this in anti-gg’s criticisms of games, such as in the Cracked article quoted above or in this piece I wrote on earlier. They want games to become art (ie. have status among the “right” people) and to become a form of interactive story-telling. Gamergate want games to be games so they can focus on mastering systems.
Neither side is particularly “right” in which way is the best to read, write, or play. The main problem, is the geeks are trying to drive the nerds out because those nerds are to focused on enjoying stuff, rather than making an “inclusive” community so that everyone can buy toys and get geek status.
It also the geeks that are forcing this stuff onto you normies. Blame them for perpetuating the culture you detest. We nerds are fine without you and just want to be left alone.
Thank you. I’ve argued that games shouldn’t be art back since the 90s when people tried to defend against the anti-game movement by claiming it was art. I knew that it wouldn’t make normies hate gaming less and I knew it might ruin gaming. Despite all the Gone Homes and Firewatches out there, at least we still have Dark Souls.
So today’s ‘geekery’ is basically the result of ‘normal’ folks invading nerd spaces and absorbing ONLY as much of nerd culture as they can wrap their pea brains around.
Don’t know about you but personally I liked it better back in the 80’s when the ‘normals’ had normal culture.
A: Less hypocrisy.
B: At least in the normal culture the average woman wasn’t a manitee.
C: Nerd culture benefited from being partially shrouded in mystery (familiarity breeds contempt).
Very insightful and a lot to think about.
Hah, greatly written overview. I especially like the pun on ‘art’. I thunk I am somewhere in between. I find it hard to enjoy a game without a decent storytelling, but that is really not that hard. My favorite games ever were the first 3 Splinter Cell parts. Cool enough story, amazing gameplay that rewarded you if you took some time to figure it out. As time goes on, games are adapting to be more like each other. Thr new Tomb Raider plays way too similar to the newest Splinter Cell. Unique game mechanics are sacrificed for, yeah, soap opera drama. I like a decent story, but today it just all seems to be about over-the-top feelz, orchestea soundtrack and big explosions. There is less nuance and dramaturgy and more of an unsophisticated attemot to bombard and deafen the senses. As you, I really never cared for a gaming community. I once visited a games convention and found it quite pointless. I guess I may have liked it if I had some game, but generally I did not get how people were enjoying running around collecting trashy ad gadgets and waiting for hours to get a sneak peek at an incomplete game.
Are Prostitutes Better Than Normal Women?
A Short Essay by John Doe
Is it cheaper to have sex with normal women than with prostitutes? No, and here is why.
When you have sex with a normal girl, it’s by no means “free”. You have to take her out to dinner, buy her drinks, and you might have to go on two or even three dates before you will have sex with her. If you add up the total costs of these three dates, it would be approxiately around 400 dollars.
Now let’s look at the cost of the average high quality prostitute. You can bang a prostitute for 2 hours for 250 dollars.
What are the benefits of using prostitutes instead of dating normal women?
1. The average prostitute is far hotter than the average normal woman you can date.
2. YOU get to do the choosing, and the power of choice is in YOUR hands, instead of in the woman’s hands
3. With a prostitute, you have sex with her and that’s it. No emotional drama, no mind games, no bullshit, like there is with normal women.
4. You don’t have to waste hours of your valuable time that you could otherwise spend on making money, taking women out on dates or trying to pick up women in bars and clubs. No, instead you pay a prostitute for one or two hours of her time, have sex with her, and leave.
5. You choose WHEN you want to have sex. So let’s say you’re a busy businessman, instead of wasting 5 hours at a bar or on a date, instead you’d spend only one or two hours with a prostitute, and that at your convience too. YOU are the one who chooses WHEN, and so you save a LOT of time.
6. Prostites are DEFINITELY cheaper than getting married. Overall, through a 10 year marriage and divorce, you’d end up spending at least 250,000 dollars. Now let’s take that number and divide it by 250 dollars, which is the average price of a high quality prostitute in a Western country. That is sex with 1000 different high quality prostitutes. Now if you talk to any married man, who is HONEST, he will admit that sex with the wife after the first 6 months or year starts to get boring. And this is why people in long term relationships barely have sex, because it’s BORING having sex with the same person time after time. Variety is the spice of life! You could have sex with 1000 different women for the same price it would cost to marry one woman and have sex with her. And considering how unstable most western women are nowadays, the chance of divorce is around 60%, with the woman initiating the divorce 90% of the time. You are likely to lose at least 50% of your assets and savings in a divorce, and so marriage to a western woman may end up costing you up to 500,000 dollars or even a million dollars, once you add in the divorce costs and long term child payment and alimony costs.
So let’s take that number, one million dollars, and divide it by 250. That’s 4000 DIFFERENT women you could pay to have sex with, instead of marrying one woman who will just end up turning into a bitch and divorcing you anyway. So it’s your choice guys. Would you rather marry one woman, who will get bored of sex after 6 months, and end up stealing all your assets and savings in divorce, or would you rather have sex with 4000 different beautiful women for the same price?
Another very relevant point is that the world of modern dating has become quite risky. Most women see nothing wrong with making a false rape accusation against a man. Most rape cases are fake and are done out of a motive of REVENGE by the woman. Did you break up with your girlfriend? Watch out, she might make a false rape accusation against you just to get revenge. Did you cheat on your girl with another girl? Watch out, she might make a false rape accusation just to get revenge on you. Forgot to tell your girlfriend “happy birthday”? Watch out, she might make a false rape accusation against you in order to get revenge on you. At least 90% of rape cases are FALSE, the sex was CONSENSUAL and the woman later changed her mind AFTER the act and decided “oh it was rape”. LOL. And this is why the police no longer take rape cases seriously, because literally 90% of women who claim to have been raped are LYING!
So that is another HUGE benefit of prostitues. A prostitute won’t make a false rape accusation against you.
What’s another GREAT reason that men choose to use prostitutes? Because by paying for sex, they can have sex with a MUCH hotter quality of woman than they would normally. For example, if we rate women on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of beauty. The average guy will be able to pick up and have sex with a 4 or a 5 from a bar, a club, or Tinder. Meanwhile, if the same man paid for sex with a high quality prostitute for $250 dollars (about the same amount of money he would spend picking up a 4 or 5 from a bar, club, or Tinder), the prostitute he would have sex with would be an 8 or 9 on the beauty scale. So for the same amount of money, he can have sex with a much hotter woman, and with much less effort too. Think about all the effort you have to put in to go to a bar or club. You have to buy good clothes, you have to spend lots of money on drinks and food, and also have to spend a lot of money on making sure your apartment is cool and stylish so the girl will feel comfortable there. So unless you’re a man who was blessed with the looks of Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise and have women chasing after you, the easiest and cheapest option for most men to have sex with the hottest quality of women is to simply PAY for sex with a hot prostitute. One guy was asked why he paid to have sex with prostitutes and his reply was “If I’m being brutally honest, the hottest women I’ve ever had sex with have been prostitutes … I would never be able to have sex with women who are ridiculously hot unless they were prostitutes.” I can also personally testify to this point. The types of chicks I was getting from Tinder were mostly fat or at best mildly hot, I would have rated them between a 3 and a 6 on the attraction scale. Then the first time I went to a prostitute, I was blown away with the options and the QUALITY too. Here were super hot girls who I could bang for such a cheap price. Needless to say, I gave up on dating and ONLY bang prostitutes now. I’m a much happier and peaceful person as a result.
Another couple of reasons that men gave as to why they choose to have sex with prostitutes are:
“Getting a prostitute is so easy: no strings attached, you can choose the woman you want before you purchase, then they arrive at your door. Couldn’t be easier.”
I can also testify to this. Getting a normal girl to have sex is a real pain in the ass and involves so much struggle, drama, and mind games. Then of course after you have sex with her, you have to deal with her stalking you, calling you so many times, and with her unrealistic expectation that you are going to have a committed and exclusively relationship with her. All that compared with the EASE of banging a hot prostitute, and the choice is simple. I chose to not waste time trying to date women anymore and only bang hot prostitutes now.
“We want to have sex without all the bullshit of pretending to be really interested in a girl. When you pay for sex, you don’t have to swap numbers at the end when you know you won’t call. You pay, have sex, she leaves. Everyone’s happy.”
This goes along with the above point. With normal women and dating, you have to PRETEND to care about her and PRETEND to be interested in her, when in reality all you want is to have sex with her. With a prostitute, there is no pretensions and that really is a beautiful thing because ultimately then sex becomes about the raw physical act as well as the pure attractiveness of the woman, and thus you are able to enjoy sex a lot more.
Lastly, let’s touch on the issue of legalization. On average surveys, 70 percent of men said they would vote to legalize prostitution, meanwhile 60 percent of women said they would vote to keep prostitution illegal. Now it’s pretty obvious why women want to keep prostitution illegal. Women use sex as a weapon to control men. So it would disrupt the economics of women’s control over sex if prostitution was legalized, because then MEN would have control over WHO they want to have sex with and WHEN. Forget all those arguments about morality, the REAL reason women want to keep prostitution illegal is so that they can CONTINUE to control men with sex. In effect, women are like a mafia that is desperate to keep control of the sexual marketplace. If prostitution was legal, men would be a lot less inclined to put up with women’s bullshit just to get sex from them, when they can go pay for sex from a much more attractive woman and without all the hassles and drama that dating and normal women bring.
What about STDs some of you might say? Well the whole STD scare is mostly a MYTH that has been blown way out of proportion by feminists and conservative religious leaders in order to scare men away from having sex. In reality, the rate of transmission of AIDS is 1 out of 700 during heterosexual sex. That is, if a man had penis to vagina intercourse with an AIDS-infected woman, it would take 700 times on average before he would contract it. The only way people get AIDS is through using needles to inject drugs, or having anal sex, especially with homosexuals. So the whole AIDS thing is a huge scare, a MYTH, that has been blown way out of proportion.
What about Herpes? Well studies show that 80% of the US population already has Herpes in one of it’s forms, so that is not really an issue.
The only other STD that you would have to worry about is Chlamydia, and it can be easily cured within 3 days with antibiotics.
Now, that is UNPROTECTED sex. If you are using condoms to have sex with, then the chances of getting any of these STDs becomes less than zero. And that includes oral sex as well. Most prostitutes will insist that you always use a condom, even during oral sex. So as long as you are using condoms, then STDs are nothing you should even remotely worry about.
So what are some of the main reasons why prostitution should be legalized?
1. If prostitution was legal, it would reduce the STD transmission rate by about 50% amongst prostitutes.
2. If prostitution was legal, it would reduce rape by at least 150%.
Many studies have shown that legal prostitution reduces rape, sexual assault, and other sex crimes by a lot. The same studies have shown that legal prostitution reduces the STD rate amongst the general population by about 50%.
3. The real number of human trafficking victims in the prostitution industry is actually less than 5%. But if prostitution was fully legal, the tiny number of women who are forced into prostitution involuntarily would be able to go to the poliec to get help and escape from their pimps. Keeping prostitution illegal hurts prostitutes the most, so it’s funny how feminists want to keep prostitution illegal and yet at the same time claim they care about women’s health and women’s rights. Feminism is nothing but the biggest pile of bullshit hypocrisy the world has ever seen.
4. Feminists say “my body, my choice”. So if 95% of prostitutes are VOLUNTARILY engaging in prostitution, then why should those women have the RIGHT to choose what to do with their own bodies, even if that includes trading sex for money? What right does the government or anyone else have to tell two consenting adults that they cannot exchange money for sex?
5. It would save a lot of money and resources from our police and government. Tens of millions of dollars a year are wasted by our police and government arresting and putting prostitutes in jail. If prostitution was LEGAL, on the other hand, and taxed and regulated, it would bring in tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year in tax revenue for our government, as well as freeing up valuable police time for REAL crimes like rape, theft, murder, assault, etc.
6. If prostitution was legal, prostitutes would have legal rights and would not longer get taken advantage of by pimps and other shady figures, including corrupt police officers. Yes, the police also contribute to the oppression of prostitutes because there are many corrupt police officers out there who blackmail and extort prostitutes for money and/or sexual favors. If prostitution was legal, all of this would end and prostitutes would finally have legal rights.
7. Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. It is NEVER going to stop no matter how much the police or government tries to stop it. There are ALWAYS going to be men who are willing to pay money for sex, and there are ALWAYS going to be women who are willing to give sex to men for money. Prostitution has also been an integral part of many cultures and thus trying to stop it is literally impossible. And why should it be stopped? No one has the right to tell two consenting adults that they cannot exchange money for sex. So rather than waste time trying to stop it, just legalize it and tax it, the same way we do with cigarettes, alcohol, and now marijuana.
All in all, I believe in personal freedom. I believe that no one has the right to force their own sense of morality onto others. In some very ancient cultures, prostitutes were actually given very high status in society and considered as spiritual people who could heal men of their problems through sex. That was thousands of years ago though, before self-righteous modern western religions were invented and started violently forcing their concepts of morality onto people. Funny how societies that were thousands of years old were actually far more advanced than we are in the modern age in terms of sex and prostitutes.
It took almost a century for people to wake up and legalize marijuana, which is a completely harmless natural plant that hurts no one. In the same way, society and people in general have to EVOLVE and realize that they have no right to force their own sense of morality or control onto others. The modern society is actually a very sexually restrictive society, compared to cultures and civilizations of the past. And it’s this sexual restrictiveness which contributes to so much psychological neurosis, sex crimes, and frustration in general. Is it a coincidence how people in America are so quick to anger and lose their temper, whereas in a place like Thailand where prostitution is legal and accepted, people are very laid back and cool headed? People need to stop seeing sex as such a big thing, and just realize that sex is a normal and acceptable part of life.
With that said, I believe that I have covered all the points as to why prostitution should be legal and an accepted part of society, and so this essay comes to a close. Please feel free to copy, paste, and distribute this essay as my goal is to influence and educate as many people as possible, the only thing I ask is that you do not change it or edit it in any way whatsoever. Thank you very much
Sincerely,
John Doe
I have no idea what John Doe just wrote. Returning to the subject:
It seems to be hard to design a tabletop game in which best play (“crunchy”) serves the game’s theme/story (“roleplaying”) well. No tabletop game does this perfectly as far as I know. The best tabletop games do it better.
Chess for example has a certain general-on-the-battlefield feel to it (remember the first games of chess you played when young?). However, can you imagine someone criticizing Magnus Carlsen for insufficient roleplaying at the board?
In general, if strongest play (“min/max”) requires actions that are not fun, if strongest play is a drag, then the game’s system is probably flawed to that extent. But @FN is right: nerds by nature tend to find min/max play interesting as such.
Provided that the definitions herein are accurate, geeks are better because they’re more people oriented and that sort of collectivism is needed today, in an extremely atomised society. Yet, I’m not sure how important the gaming scene is persay, I imagine gaming geeks to be pretty damn effeminate, though… So perhaps nerdiness in gaming is the best way for that. Too many gaming-scene geeks in entertainment or recreation would definitely sink the ship, and given how polarised women are towards geekiness, there’s apparently a big issue here with regards to men being able to have quality recreation anymore.
A.J.P.
“geeks are better because they’re more people oriented”
Not really. Geeks produce nothing and clog up the popular culture with lowest-common-denominator crap. As often as not their sociability just amounts to groups of losers enabling one another’s loserdom, in a net loss for everyone involved (think bronies).
The OP brought to mind how geeks latch on to niches and pollute them with their inbred obsessions. Shigero Miyamoto designed video games based on his own experiences exploring the woods growing up in rural Japan, but current game designers design games based on the prior games they grew up playing. Hayao Miyazaki made movies based on his fascination with planes and flight, and his interest in the tension between nature and civilization, but later anime directors just made crap based on the manga and anime they grew up on. Tolkien wrote books based on his extensive studies of ancient European myths and languages, but modern fantasy writers just make cheap knockoffs of Tolkien. ANd on and on.
That difference gets to what FN is talking about. Nerdy people are curious about things for their own sake and enjoy making connections and building systems. Geeks aren’t so much curious as they are addicted to pellet-gathering, so while they thrive on creating wikis of every Naruto character or whatever, they have no inner spark of inspiration to see potentialities and break ground.
N.Z.T., I’m going off of the definitions that “Free Northerner” used. If you have disagreement, take it up with him!
A.J.P.
In this case #shiny is probably just pokemon reference. Both because it’s geeks and because of obsessive collecting.
Alan,
The cavet is that we need to collect ourselves around things that mater. What I see of geek culture is a shittonne of empty preening and status signaling over the most worthless things conceivable. Get people together and sure they’re going to preen and signal. But even the most idle aristocratic signaling like tulip speculation at least gave us tulips. I can’t imagine the legacy of randomthing Card collecting will be of any worth to the future, and massive gobs of plastic models are surely a net detriment.
Even sportsball enthusiastics, if they actually did the sports they cheer as their geekdom, would be stronger and build bonds for it. That is what at one point made a sportsfan better than a geek. Of course modern sportsballers usually don’t play what they watch at all and are thus every bit as bad as an action-doll collector.
Geeks are detestable because they obsessively socialize over trivial things. Even women can sense the issue with that. Uniting over stupid things doesn’t even fix atomization, as geek culture forcefully suppresses deeper dialogue so far as I’ve seen.
Nerds are redeemable because they have innovative potential in the field they nerdify over. They’re still contemptible as they typically don’t realize said potential.
Both can be social outside of their fandom and be otherwise functional.
I don’t think that most people are proving their functionality very well as society slips more and more into godlessness and complete depravity barring a 179-180 degree turnaround. But if there were things to be geeky about, professions, religions, fashion, and yes sports as well, but to a lesser degree would be good. But, doesn’t nerdiness where it is most welcome, in one’s own profession, count as expertise?
What is a nerd outside of educational institutions? Is that somebody who lacks sportsmanship?
A.J.P.
But in this case I am a Right-Geek and I wonder why Left-Geeks are dominant, looking at AntiGG and AntiPuppy. I see RPGs as storytelling, not systems. But to me a good story is based on tension and conflict, and the Left-Geeks constantly seek to remove tension and conflict by being all inclusive and nonoffensive. Alternative, in their conflicts, we white males get the role of the villain. And another annoying idea is that they want to cast women and trans into male roles like fighters – that again is a bad story, because it is not about the conflict, it is more about the social status of being a good fighter.
I think in this sense Sad/Rabid Puppies are Right-Geeks, not Nerds, they want stories and plot and characters, just more in the older, better forms.
So I wonder then why Left-Geeks are dominant. And why do you assume people who want stories and characters and not systems would want stories about brown trans women when the readers themselves tend to be white males?
“The puppies are nerds. They’re looking for old-school/hard SF/F based on systems-level thinking: world building, ideas-focus, and science.”
Are you talking about Rabid Puppies or Sad Puppies, and can you give an example of a particular year’s slate that reflects this focus? In 2016 the Rabid Puppies included some mainstream hard SF authors like Neal Stephenson and Andy Weir, but in previous years my impression is that their slates tended to focus on some combination of fantasy, space opera, and military sci-fi. And the latter two are genres that usually don’t pay a lot of attention to modern ideas about science, or modern ideas about where technology is likely to be headed, when these ideas get in the way of telling an action-oriented story about brave human heroes. For example, space opera tends to ignore the theory of relativity and what it says about FTL travel, or the notion that any alien civilizations we might encounter would likely have wildly different technology levels from ours. And military sci-fi tends to ignore the likelihood that in the near future machines with much faster and more accurate reaction times are likely to make humans obsolete in actual combat, with the human role probably being limited to giving orders to the machines about targets and operations. These days, hard sci-fi that isn’t set in the very near future (or in some parallel world with similar or lower technology levels) tends to depict futures dominated by transhuman intelligences of various kinds (I’m thinking of authors like Greg Egan, Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, and Stephen Baxter), stories that would tend to alienate fans of “traditional” genres that emphasize human heroism and derring-do.
similar to a populist – elitist divide in politics?? its weird to think of trump or buchanan being the geek looking for inclusivity and hillary clinton or ted cruz being obsessed with ideas yet now that im typing it…
Ah, i too would dragoon my younger siblings into day long sessions of Axis & Allies. I even used to draw out my own maps.