Tag Archives: Nerds

Diverse GenCon

GenCon, the biggest board game convention in North America, has a very diverse (read: non-white male) line-up for its Insider Featured Presenters this year, including a female majority. I’ll let a celebrator explain (H/T: VD):

That’s right, folks. There are 13 female IIFPs and only 12 men. This means there are MORE WOMEN THAN MEN, and that is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL, because that is a HUGE amount of change in a really short period of time.

So, how did GenCon attain this goal of diversity:

And importantly, this lineup is much more reflective of the diversity of activity within the gaming industry as a whole. In years past, in order to get selected you pretty much had to be a cishet white dude working for a mainstream company on trad tabletop games. But this year’s lineup includes a wide swath of thought-leadership in the hobby, including tabletop publishers, LARP designers, event organizers, activists, critics, podcasters, academics, and community managers. Which is EXCITING!

Consider the nerd/geek distinction when reading the italicized list.

Here’s the list of people and their credits.

It has abandoned having presentations from people who create board games in companies that matter, in favour of people who like to talk about board games or have nothing to do with board games. Of course, our diversity celebrator thinks abandoning the raison d’etre of the convention is EXCITING!

Why is it that diversity is only ever achieved by allowing those who don’t make things, unimportant people, and those aren’t involved in the activity equal say to to key players who actually create things?

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Also, notice this: more women than men is a huge deal. The individuals and their worth aren’t even mentioned, just having women there is all that is celebrated. Yet it is evil to suggest that: “Indies chosen as IIFPs were selected because of pretentious identity politics and not merit.” It’s all identity politics all the time with them, yet pointing it out is just wrong.

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Contra Vox, I doubt this particular action will effect GenCon attendance over much. Of the many people I’ve known who’ve gone to GenCon not one has ever mentioned attending a panel. Most of the people I know who go, go to play as many games as possible and buy the newest games. I doubt a change in the industry panel line-up will even be noticed by the majority of attendees, let alone effect their attendance. (Although, it could be a first step to other measures).

The Geek/Nerd War

Recently, I’ve seen a few condemnations of nerds, such as from Esoteric Trad here, and some stuff from Twitter:

https://twitter.com/mylittlepwnies3/status/726469589459152896?lang=en

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.

Solipsism in Action

Slate (always a good place for blog material) had an article on a comment from Quora asking: Why Are Women So Negative About the “Pickup Artist” Community?

Quora has numerous other responses which, along with the comments on this particular answer at both Slate and Quora, vary between pro- and anti-game and which will mostly be familiar to those with experience in the Manosphere. I’m mostly only going to comment on this one because Slate published it, it’s the most upvoted on Quora, and it’s amazing how hard the hamster is running.

I read The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (which I still think is a really interesting book) and ended up meeting a lot of people who were in the pick-up artist community (not a goal—it just happened).

I even ended up helping out with one of their weekend seminars, to be a “female test dummy,” essentially. Far from the stereotype of sleazy guys who want one-night stands, 24 of the 25 guys in the class were just awkward, nerdy guys who just wanted a girlfriend (the 25th wanted to bring home a girl for a threesome with his girlfriend). But that’s not the instruction of these classes. The classes are about getting laid, not getting a girlfriend.

This was my first big hint that something was wrong. There was a mismatch. They were taking guys who wanted girlfriends and teaching them how to pick up girls in bars.

She’s correct that’s exactly what game generally does (Dalrock, Athol, et al. being the minority), but in her self-absorption, she doesn’t even question why there’s a mismatch.

The reason there is a mismatch is simple: there is nothing else.

If you are an awkward, nerdy male, the only people willing and able to teach you practical advice for attracting women are the PUAs. I’ve checked. There is simply no one outside the manosphere teaching men how to meet a pleasant, moderately pretty girl for a stable long-term relationship.

I’ve read a number of Christian books and articles on dating, but they all assume a woman is attracted to you. They are either discussions of what kind of dating is appropriate and exhortations against sin or man up articles on how to avoid sex in relationships, how to avoid leading women on, and how to be firm in your intentions. There is almost no practical advice on how to actually attract a girl in first place so that the other advice has any relevance.

(For any Christian manospherians reading this, here’s a great book idea: write a guide to help awkward Christian guys attract a Christian wife. Market it in the Christian culture industry and you’d make a killing. I’d write it, but I’m not qualified at this point.)

Going outside the Christian stuff, everywhere else you look the socially awkward male is given the same advice: be yourself and be a nice guy, she’ll come… eventually.

Guess what?

We already do that: it doesn’t work. If it did work, we wouldn’t be looking for advice.

For women (and church leaders and others who may care): if you do not want awkward guys going to PUA’s for advice on attracting women, offer a viable alternative.

The only reason I started taking guys like Roissy or Roosh even remotely seriously was because they were the first people I found anywhere who gave enough of a shit to give some practical, useful advice. I haven’t adopted either game or playerhood, but I have tried some of their more morally neutral advice and it has been useful. (I’m now more influenced by the Athol/Dalrock approach).

How royally screwed up is it that self-proclaimed assholes like Roissy and Mentu are the only ones honest and selfless enough to give practical advice to the awkward guy looking for companionship (even if they mock us while they do it)?

The second thing she misses is this: yes, we want a relationship, but, failing that, getting laid is a nice second place (religious convictions aside) for most men.

If you don’t want awkward men to settle for the second prize, make it possible for them to attain the first.

How many relationships do you know of that started in bars? Do you know any? If you want a girlfriend, go sign up for an online dating site. Start dating! Statistically speaking, bars don’t work.

Solopsism starts here at its finest and continues throughout. (We’ll ignore the fact that a lot of relationships nowadays start in bars). Dating sites may be good advice for women, but, statistically speaking, online dating sites are a horrible option for men, particularly for socially awkward men.

Online dating work for most females (the lower quintile is in much the same position as most men); they can revel in the attention of dozens of men for little cost and choose their pick with minimal effort, but for your average male, online dating is a vicious, slogging grind of inanity, rejection, and flaking with with minimal chance of success.

The problem here is that touching can be flirty, but it can also be really creepy when the touching isn’t natural. And when you’re telling an awkward, nerdy guy who has no idea how to flirt “OK, now, touch a girl here,” it’s almost always creepy. (Personally, I don’t like random guys at bars touching me. It makes me really uncomfortable.)

In other words, women like being touched by guys they are attracted to, but keep those awkward nerds away from them.

And she laments awkward nerds trying to learn how to attract women.

And then you’re telling the guy to criticize the girl, which is just plain mean.

That criticism would probably be more effective if the neg didn’t work. It’s simple really:

If women don’t want men to use negs and “be mean”, they shouldn’t respond positively to it.

And then, when the girl isn’t interested, the guy is now being told, “Oh, she’s just trying to play games with you.” He doesn’t back off. Eww.

Guess what? The awkward nerd has no idea how to tell if the girl is interested or not. That’s why he’s at one of these workshops in the first place. To learn to gauge interest so that he doesn’t get the “eww” response.

And all of this is ridiculous because sometimes, the girl is out of your league or at least just isn’t interested. I’m 5-foot-9, and I’m just not going to go home with a guy who is 5-foot-3, goes by the nickname “Snake” (seriously?!?), or is overweight, pimply, or won’t just answer a direct question about what he does for a living.

Remember to know your place you creepy nerd. Don’t you dare try to improve yourself or better your chances with women.

With this kind of harsh judgmentalism from women (especially a woman pretending she cares about guys), is it really a surprise the awkward go to PUAs for advice?

Also, there’s some internal contradiction here. If the women is already rejecting the guy because she thinks she’s out of his league, what could he possibly lose for being “creepy”? She’ll reject him either way; at least if he hits on her there’s a small chance of success.

Once upon a time, this guy might have been a perfectly normal but nerdy guy, who could have dated online, met someone nice, got married, and been perfectly happy.

Once upon a time this guy could have waited until his mid-30’s to meet a hard-used, bitter women trying for her hail mary attempt at a  baby and who will later divorce him. Now he’s being twisted so much he may no longer be available as a post-wall, last-ditch relationship.

PUA instruction turns awkward, nerdy guys who just want a girlfriend into creepy guys who harass and insult women. And that’s not OK!

How dare they steal away my beta-orbiters and my fall-back plan for when I leave the carousel.

PUA instruction teaches guys these mechanical ways of interacting with women that don’t really work and fails to recognize that every woman is different. Some women just won’t go home with you. Sorry. Maybe she’s out of your league. Or maybe she’s just not interested in you. Or maybe she just doesn’t go home with random dudes from bars.

If it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be near as popular as it is.

The things is, game works for enough men with enough women that men will continue to use it. The specifics don’t matter; the general trends of it working for many men on many women is all that is necessary for game to continue.

The words coming out of a woman’s mouth? It’s not all a game.You can have actual conversations with us.

If the awkward male could have an actual conversation with women leading to a relationship, he wouldn’t be looking for advice from PUA’s.

But he can’t, so he does.

When I say “What do you do for a living?” it’s because I actually care. Because I’m looking for someone to build a relationship with, and someone with no career goals is not a good match for me. Answer the question.

Hurry up and let me judge you so I can get back to those alpha males.

Conversation is not all a giant game.

For the awkward, nerdy male it is. It has to be.

He doesn’t naturally know how to have a conversation, that’s the entire reason we call him awkward.

For him to learn how to have a conversation, he has to treat it like a game with rules, because it’s the only way he will understand it and have a conversation.

When I’m not interested, it’s because I’m not interested. Not because I’m putting some sort of girl test in front of you.

And yet, you, like most women, will judge him on his awkwardness anyway.

So that’s why I’m against it. Because, beyond just giving men the courage to approach women, the instruction is harmful to the guys.

Yes, that’s why you are opposed to it.

Are adult males not capable of deciding whether it is harmful to them on their own?

Some of my friends who were involved in the community got out of it OK, but they were probably more normally adjusted to start with. Another friend, well, he got his taste of one night stands and “can’t understand the point of girlfriend.” And other guys I’ve met are so uncomfortable to be around that, well, we never really became friends.

Translation:

Some of her beta orbiters have remained beta orbiters. Other beta orbiters have succeeded with game and are enjoying their success enough that they no longer pine after fantasies. And other beta orbiters are no longer willing to be beta orbiters.

As I said, the hamster was strong with this one. She has absolutely no sympathy for or understanding of the plight of your average socially awkward male. This is why those opposed to game are going to continue to lose men to game; they refuse to consider why awkward young men are turning to game in the first.

If you don’t like awkward young men turning to game: offer a viable alternative.

Socially awkward males will take it if available. All you have to do is understand their frustrations and give them something that helps them ease them.

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The best response I saw (from Quora):

I’m just as disappointed in women for having low standards. When I can be a nerd and talk about something intelligent and be nice without socially neutering myself because I choose not to talk loud and put other people down and be polite, then the world won’t need pickup bootcamps.

That’s exactly it. If your average beta male could find a half-decent girl to settle down with in his early twenties, there would be no demand for game. There would be PUA’s (probably under a different name), as there have always been and always will be guys who want nothing more than some casual sex, but there would be no demand for game.

You look at a lot of guy on the manosphere, such as Mentu, had met a decent girl to marry while young, they would never have learned game and would never have needed to.

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Another interesting answer at Quora was this.

He describes game as cheating.That’s an interesting way to think of it.

If you think of the sexual marketplace as a game, then game is simply violating the traditional rules to win. Nothing overly profound, but an interesting way to look at it.